The Luncheon Meeting took place on: August 18, 2026
Topic: “Historical Fiction in the Service of Coexistence and Peace ”
Presenter: Dr. Michael Cooper
Summary:
Our guest speaker was Dr. Michael Cooper. His topic was “Historical Fiction in the Service of Coexistence and Peace,” reflecting on his “writer’s journey” as it relates to his medical mission work and lived experience.
Dr. Cooper was born in Berkeley and grew up in the East Bay. He moved to Israel after graduating from Oakland High School in 1966. Living in Jerusalem during the last year the city was divided between Israel and Jordan, he studied at a Hebrew teacher’s academy. After the Six-Day War in June of 1967, he studied biology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for two years followed by admission to Tel Aviv University Medical School in 1969, where he graduated in 1975. Thereafter, he did a rotating internship in Haifa followed by a year of a cardiology residency (combined pediatric and adult).
Hoping to specialize in pediatric cardiology, he returned to Northern California where he was a pediatric intern and resident at Kaiser Oakland from 1978 to 1981 followed by a pediatric cardiology fellowship at UCSF from 1981 to 1983.
He joined Kaiser Sacramento at Morse Avenue and was sub-chief of pediatric cardiology from 1983 to 1988, moving to Kaiser Oakland in a dual role as director of the new PICU and as pediatric cardiologist. After Dr. Ed Shoen hired an actual pediatric intensivist in 1990, Dr. Cooper moved his base to Vallejo under Dr. Vince Pasquariello and became sub-chief of pediatric cardiology, conducting outreach clinics in Walnut Creek, Sacramento, Oakland, Martinez, Richmond, Pleasanton, Fairfield, Santa Rosa, and Stockton.
Remaining on faculty at UCSF after finishing his fellowship in 1983, he published over thirty peer-review journal articles and spent every Friday at UCSF performing diagnostic cardiac catheterizations for the next 12 + years until diagnostic echocardiography largely replaced diagnostic caths in 1995 with almost all studies becoming interventional.
He was promoted to full Clinical Professor at UCSF in 1996 and remained on the clinical faculty. He retired from Kaiser Permanente after more than thirty years at the age of 65 in 2013, though he continued working at UCSF (without call) for the next nine years, finally retiring from clinical practice in 2022.
His “writer’s journey” began in 1995 following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and the death of the Israel/Palestine peace process. Channeling his grief into writing and publishing op-eds and essays in small journals, he turned to writing historical fiction in 2000 and has published four novels, all set in the Holy Land at major historical turning points, as he remains committed to a message of coexistence and peace. His most recently published book, The Rabbi’s Knight, serves as a prequel to a growing series that will soon include five novels. Among other awards, The Rabbi’s Knight recently won the 2025 Grand Prize Best Book Award at the Chanticleer International Book Awards in Bellingham, Washington. (For more information about this and his other books, please go to https://michaeljcooper.net/)
Beginning in 2007, Cooper began doing biannual volunteer medical missions to Palestine to provide specialty service for children without access to care. He is scheduled to travel there for his 27th mission on June 28, 2026. When not traveling for missions and pleasure, he teaches Hebrew to 7th graders at his synagogue, Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek. He and his wife Teri live in Lafayette, California with a neurotic but lovable Golden Retriever and a spoiled-rotten cat. Three adult children occasionally drop by.
