Ashley Davidoff is a physician and artist who lives with his wife Naomi and four children near Boston, Massachusetts. He started his schooling at the King David nursery school in 1956 and matriculated from KDHS (Linksfield) in 1969. During his school years he participated in many team sports, including tennis, swimming soccer and rugby, and won national championships in tap and flamenco dancing. His dancing remained hidden from friends at school, but subsequently influenced many of his later pursuits.
Ashley graduated from Wits medical school in 1975. He continued his medical education abroad in post-graduate fellowships in Pediatric Cardiology (Sick Children’s Hospital, University of Toronto), Pediatric Cardiac Pathology (Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School), and Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology (Brigham and Women’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School). For most of his professional life Ashley has pursued passions in the realms of art and photography– fields he began to explore after his academic studies, during a year’s sabbatical spent exploring South Africa and Europe. Advancing his career as an academic radiologist, Ashley became a professor of Radiology at the University of Massachusetts, where medical education was a prime focus. He currently is a clinical professor of Radiology at Boston Medical Center where medical education and the incorporation of the arts into medicine is his prime focus.
He has consolidated his multi-disciplinary interests as a medical educator in a program called The Common Vein, which unites art, nature and biology (thecommonvein.net. This web-based educational program emphasizes simplicity of principles that underlie complexity of detail in biology and medicine.
The application of the common vein principles spans science medicine, poetry, literature, the natural world, gardening, dance, and in fact all human endeavors, where the pursuit of wholeness or oneness is both conscious and unconscious
He has personally pursued many of these endeavors including dance, art, sculpture, poetry, athletics, gardening applying the principles of TCV to each of these.
Ashley has won numerous awards at national radiology meetings; his work has been displayed at the Boston Museum of Science and featured on television (Chronicle). Ashley’s multicultural background and interdisciplinary creativity provide a unique and exciting perspective on biology, medicine and art.
Most Influential Teachers from King David School
Mr Katz – Taught the method of word by word Torah analysis
Mr Maish Zimmerman – Taught the value of identifying the roots of words
Noya Shapira Eternally grateful for teaching Pirkei Avoth lessons continue to ring true
Extracted from Dynamic Davidians