a course that for the next three and a half decades would offer Open University students a challenging survey of the Modern Jewish experience. At the height of his tenure Tsur designed a series of advanced courses in tandem with his own research interest in Jewish history in Islamic lands during the modern period. The first course book produced as part of this effort, co-authored with Dr. Hagar Hillel, was a study of the community of Casablanca during the colonial period. Tel Aviv University As of 1990 Tsur has been on the faculty of the Jewish history department at Tel Aviv University, his main academic home. Rising through the ranks he briefly served as chair of the department (2007) before being tapped to chair the university's Chaim Rosenberg graduate school of Jewish studies. During his TAU tenure Tsur has taught numerous surveys, as well as advanced courses in his fields of expertise. Scholarship Tunisia Tsur's entry point into the field of Jewish history in Islamic lands was his study of the formation of French policy toward Tunisia's Jewish minority as the country ceased to be a sovereign Muslim state and became a European colonial possession. In this trailblazing work Tsur identified the dominant and unprecedented role played by Western European Jewish organizations and entities in determining the direction Jewish existence in the world of Islam would now take in tandem with colonial penetration and designs. Subsequently, Tsur would concur with Edward Said's model of Orientalism Orientalism as a heuristic device for comprehending the European-non European relationship during the colonial era. Jewish Society in Colonial North Africa; A 'sectional' society In his monograph Torn Community: The Jews of Morocco and Nationalism 1943–1954, as well as in related essays, Tsur suggests complementing two classic models of stratification in colonial societies; class, determined by economic potential, as well as the more basic hierarchy between 'European' and 'native', with a third category of analysis based on the individual's cultural capital. The latter component, to Tsur's way of thinking, provides class determinism with a greater measure of historical agency, at the same time it manages to soften the rigid distinction between European and native. In the specifically Jewish context this provides for a whole host of possibilities with one individual belonging to multiple sectors and even serving as an invaluable mediator between them. The dynamic nature of the field as historically reconstructed by Tsur allows