The year was 1966. The sixties were at their height, though we did not know it then. It was two years after the Beatles had landed in New York, and a year before the Six Day War. The Democratic convention in Chicago was still two years away. A group of us, all Israelis, came to UCLA, each for his own reasons. Ruth Kartun-Blum and her husband Amos were there, and so were Ella and Dan Almagor. Professor Joseph Dan, Yossi to his friends, who was the most academically senior among us, came to teach in the Near Eastern Languages and Literatures Department, substituting for Professor Arnold Band who was at the Hebrew University that year. This was Yossi's first visit to the United States. I had just returned from Nigeria and had a one year appointment in the Anthropology Department at UCLA. We all knew each other, at least casually, from the Giva'at Ram campus of the Hebrew University and from the Hebrew Literature Department. In Los Angeles we became friends.