While flying back on EL AL flight # 030 from Toronto today, I realized that I should adjust a notation in the calendar of my smart phone. The meeting scheduled for next Wednesday morning will not take place. Anat Dolev will be unable to host me for the private rendezvous that we scheduled. And yet, the slot with her name will remain unchanged as I cannot bring myself to press the delete key.
During the past decade, I was privileged to develop a special relationship with Anat. In 2007, the spokesperson of my hospital set up an interview for me on her radio show to discuss the latest updates of radiotherapy. Halfway through our discourse, it was clear that she understood the physics of the new machinery and grasped the engineering behind the software that I was describing, but she was much more curious about the struggles of cancer patients to find meaning despite an ominous prognosis. Questions about protons and Nikola Tesla morphed into nuanced comparisons of the philosophies of Victor Frankel and Emmanuel Levinas.
Subsequent broadcasts with her were designed, from the outset, to discuss unfurling research about the softer side of cancer medicine and to reflect on the existential thought that consumes oncologists. In 2012, we were on the air to expose her listeners to the blog I was writing, in my mother tongue, for the Jerusalem Post. The blog was called “52” because of the triple-entendre that included my father’s premature death at age 52, my turning 52 in 2012 and the fact that there were 52 weeks in the year. She loved the idea that once-a-week I tried to resolve the painful topics (insecurity, tensions between work and family, vulnerability etc) that descend on modern life. She vowed to carry out the same weekly exercise when she reached that age.
Anat was a fascinating collage. Brilliant. Beautiful. Moral. An animal rights activist. A musicologist who was willing to lump Beethoven and the Beatles since both answered to her criteria for the timelessness and universality that defined classical music. Indeed, our most recent interaction was triggered by a text message in which I informed her that David Bowie had died to which she answered “Blessed the Righteous Judge” (which is a phrase Jewish tradition offers in times of death). No emoji was needed to convey her unapologetic feeling that the world had lost a true genius.
She loved people, but not just in an abstract way. And she suffered. Somehow I sensed this, even when I met with her for the first time, and certainly, I could palpate her agony as her neuromuscular disorder progressed.
During this trip to North America, I was meeting with colleagues to design a cluster of studies to explore the scientific underpinnings of hope. “Hope?” she inquired, “there’s a science to hope?” Our conversation quickly intensified. You could decipher Anat’s fascination with what seemed to be a contradiction: science and hope. As she thought about it more, she intuited that not only is there no contradiction, but rather the scientific process and hope may be intertwined. The true scientist can endure results that challenge the initial hypothesis. Yet, she reasoned, this only serves to make the scientist more hopeful as new breakthroughs are anticipated.
There was no mistaking Anat’s deep thirst for hope. “You’re a physician, not a rabbi or a positive psychologist,” she acknowledged, “but you’ve obviously figured out some techniques for creating and sustaining hope. Will you come over to share those gimmicks with me?” We agreed to meet next Wednesday.
Unfortunately, before I could exchange this latest set of ideas with her, the complete, vital, independent human being known to all as Anat Dolev was no more. Taken from us, ironically, at the age of 52.
The author is Professor of Oncology at Tel Aviv University School of Medicine, Chairman of the Institute of Radiotherapy at Tel Aviv Medical Center and Co-Founder of the NGO “Life’s Door.”