CAMDEN — The Coastal Senior College will offer a course on the history of Israel at the Camden Public Library beginning Tuesday, Sept. 9. "The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel: Ten Films Exploring a Remarkable History, a Complicated Present, and an Unknown Future" with instructor Steve Shaw will meet on ten Tuesday mornings, 9:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m, September 9 to November 18. To register for the course call the Senior College, 800 286 1594.

Ten films have been selected to explore the founding of the state and its on-going conflict with the Arab world; the centrality of the utopian vision of the kibbutz; the in-gathering of Jewish exiles from a myriad of different countries; the significance of Israel's citizen army and the dilemmas created by its governing the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967; and the complicated role of religion in Israeli political and cultural life.

Two recently published and highly acclaimed books will serve as background reading: Ari Shavit's My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, and Yossi Klein-Halevi's Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation.

Steve Shaw is a graduate of the University of Michigan where he studied both philosophy and forestry. He holds a rabbinical degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary where, for many years, he served as director of the Seminary's Department of Community Education.

He has lived in Israel for the greater part of eight years, first as a student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and, more recently, as a consultant working with Israel's Bedouin Arab community in the Negev.