When Raquel Ukeles, curator of the Islam and Middle East Collection at the National Library of Israel, began planning a fall series with local Arab cultural figures more than two years ago, she couldn’t have known the first event would end up taking place the day after the funeral of Orwa Hammad, a 14-year-old American-Palestinian who was shot by IDF troops as he was preparing to throw a firebomb at traffic.

Just five hours before the first event — a conversation with writers Ala Hlehel and Salman Natour — was scheduled to start, Hlehel canceled.

It didn’t bode well for the series.

“We wanted to invite Hlehel because he’s one of the leading voices of the younger Palestinian generation and we wanted this to be an authentic series,” said Ukeles. “He agreed and was open to it, until he canceled on the day of the event. That was challenging.”

The library went on with the event, hosting Natour and Dr. Samir Hajj, a scholar of Palestinian and modern Arabic literature, and it turned out to be a “phenomenal” experience, according to Ukeles. At least half of the 120 people in the audience were Arabs, a first for the library.

“It was really meaningful,” she said. “It was the first time that the ‘Nakba’ was talked about at the National Library.” Nakba Day is marked by Palestinians on May 15 to commemorate the “catastrophe” of the creation of Israel and the war that surrounded it.

Natour said he was moved by how respectful the evening was and glad to find he had a platform to speak his truth. “That’s the purpose.”

Speaking volumes

As with any event involving Jews and Arabs, there were reasons other than the funeral for why Hlehel canceled, and it was more complex than just timing.

While Ukeles was planning the series over the summer, Arab students were engaged in protests against the Gaza war and, in turn, were on the receiving end of hate emails and Facebook posts from Jewish students. In response, Arab students organized against normalization and Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, and advocated boycotting such Israeli institutions as the National Library.

The library, by dint of being called “national” and because it has a collection of Palestinian documents and books on deposit since 1948, is often seen in a negative light by some Palestinian intellectuals. So the library set out to change that.

“I had no idea the library even existed,” said Ghada Zoabi, a public relations expert hired by the library and founder of the Israeli-Arab Bokra.net news site. “I said, ‘Let’s explain the library — that it’s a rich resource and not political at all.’”

It wasn’t a smooth process, recalled Zoabi, who contacted Arab journalists and asked them to leave their politics aside and just look at the material they could access. “But people were nervous. They made noise about the library’s logo (a form of the Israeli flag); they tried to boycott the library.”

As the country’s national library, it does work with government institutions, including the Prime Minister’s Office, on several projects, said Ukeles. But when she talks about the library’s 1,800 manuscripts, she purposely leaves out the 600 in the Palestinian collection in an effort to avoid laying claim to something that others believe should not be in the library’s collection.

The library’s efforts to open itself to the broader public through the cultural series ended up opening the institution to more criticism.

As a result of recent unrest and activism, a debate developed in Arabic media and on Facebook over the library’s events. Op-eds discussed why the library was doing the series, ultimately deeming it a “kind of imperialism,” said Ukeles, as if the library were attempting to claim Arabic culture as part of Israeli culture.

Open to the public

The National Library, which has been hosted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1925, will be moving off campus in a few years.

Construction of the new building will begin in 2016 and is expected to be completed by 2019. Designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the 34,000-square-meter, six-floor structure will be located between the Knesset and the Israel Museum.

Not only will it be more accessible, in addition to collecting and preserving material, said Ukeles, but it will also be the scene of a conscious effort to draw in the Arab public.

University surveys revealed that 90% of Israeli Jews had no idea that there was a national library or where it was even located. Even fewer among the Arab community knew, including Arab academics. The library now aims to draw in a wider audience, and specifically, the Arab audience in Israel.

The purpose of the library’s cultural series is twofold: to highlight Arab culture for the mainstream audience, but also to attract the Arab intellectual community.

The first series that Ukeles organized took place three years ago and was called “Sacred Texts and Masterpieces of Islamic Culture.”

“We did this evening on the Quran and 200 people came out, all leaning over the glass display case looking at 25 Qurans we brought out,” she said. “It was very moving — there was all this impromptu Jewish-Muslim discussion over text, and a significant minority of the audience was Muslim.”

Another event, “Between Two Halves of an Orange” — a phrase used in a string of published letters between Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Palestinian-Druze poet Samih al-Qasim — highlights how serious the library is about opening up to the Arab sector.

A more recent session held on November 13 included two actors, Salwa Naqqara and Afif Shlewet, who did monologues in Arabic with Hebrew transliteration on the screen.

Despite student protests, some cancellations and the anti-normalization movement, the cultural series is still seen as a success.

“There’s a situation now and tension, and people came and participated,” Zoabi said. “The artists were scared to come, fearful of the reaction they’d get, but now they’re happy they came.”

Still, Ukeles found herself holding her breath before a lecture held a week after the attack at a Har Nof synagogue in Jerusalem on November 18.

On Monday night, Israeli TV presenter Kobi Meidan hosted the cast and producer of “Avodah Aravit” (Arab Labor), the popular four-season television series from Keshet Broadcasting written by columnist Sayed Kashua.

No one canceled, to Ukeles’ relief.

Sitting in front of a packed audience, the actors and Meidan discussed the show’s impact. “Avodah Aravit” was Israel’s first prime-time television show depicting Arabic-speaking main characters and taking a comical look at the cultural divide between Arabs and Jews in Israel. The show mirrored Kashua’s own life as a journalist and writer, which he revealed in a weekly Haaretz magazine column.

When the show won five prizes at the 2013 Israeli Academy of Film and Television awards, Kashua quipped, “We get about 20 percent of the prizes, just like our percentage of the population.”

Mira Awad, whose character marries a Jewish man and who in real life is married to a Jewish Israeli, spoke about how much the show did for viewers, even if it’s not something that’s actively felt in Israeli society.

“This show is a little like a catharsis,” she said. “No hate or hatred.”

She talked about the show’s ability to “stop being so polite and politically correct about everything” having to do with Arabs and Jews.

“All of Israel are responsible for one another,” joked Salim Dau, who played the comedic Abu Amjad in the show. In Hebrew, the phrase uses the word arevim, which is translated as responsible, and can also be a play on the term for Arabs, aravim.

Producer Shai Kapon commented that “the best part about the show was playing with humor, and our understanding of human beings.”

They also spoke about Kashua’s decision to remain in the US after his scheduled sabbatical there and leave Israel for good. Kashua’s announcement made waves among his readership, for he was seen as someone who actively worked to dissipate the dissonance between Arabs and Jews. In October, The New Yorker published an emotional exchange between Kashua and Israeli author Etgar Keret as they discussed their feelings about the summer’s war in Gaza.

“If he leaves, we can all go,” said Meidan. “Someone like Sayed, with his talent, goes and takes his talent with him, ridding himself of the responsibilities of this place.”

By and large, however, the cast, raised in northern Arab towns and well-accustomed to life in Israel, steered clear of the recent uptick in violence throughout the country.

“Politics is so dominant in terms of how Jews and Arabs think of each other these days,” Ukeles said. “I wanted to bracket it and have people hear about how they do their work. We’re looking at them as artists.”

The fourth and final event of the series will feature Arab music as Meidan converses with Amal Markus, with the participation of four musicians on the oud, violin, kanoon, piano and percussion instruments, Tuesday, December 8. Tickets cost NIS 30 each and can be purchased at the National Library website, www.nli.org.il, or by calling 074-733-6181.

Groundbreaking Wireless Material Triggers Brain Activity In Response To light

Jerusalem, December 3, 2014 — Scientists have developed a new light-sensitive film that could one day form the basis of a prosthetic retina to help people suffering from retinal damage or degeneration. Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers collaborated with colleagues from Tel Aviv University and Newcastle University in the research, which was published in the journal Nano Letters.

The retina is a thin layer of tissue at the inner surface of the eye. Composed of light-sensitive nerve cells, it converts images to electrical impulses and sends them to the brain. Damage to the retina from macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and other conditions can reduce vision or cause total blindness. In the United States alone, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) affects as many as 15 million Americans, with over 200,000 new cases diagnosed every year.

Scientists are currently designing a variety of medical devices to counter the effects of retinal disorders by sending visual signals to the brain. But these silicon-chip based solutions are typically hampered by their size, use of rigid parts, or requirement of external wiring such as to energy sources.

In the new study, Hebrew University researchers collaborated with colleagues from Tel Aviv University and Newcastle University to develop a novel approach for retina stimulation. Their device absorbs light and stimulates neurons without using wires or external power sources.

The Hebrew University researchers are Prof. Uri Banin, the Alfred & Erica Larisch Memorial Chair in Solar Energy, and his graduate student Nir Waiskopf, at the Institute of Chemistry and the Harvey M. Krueger Family Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.

The researchers combined semiconductor nanorods and carbon nanotubes to create a wireless, light-sensitive, flexible implantable film. The film transforms visual cues to electric signals, mimicking the function of the photo-sensitive cells in the retina. Therefore, it could potentially form part of a future prosthetic device that will replace the damaged cells in the retina.

The researchers tested the new device on light-insensitive retinas from embryonic chicks and observed a neuronal response triggered by light.

According to the researchers, the new device is compact, capable of higher resolution than previous designs, and is also more effective at stimulating neurons. While much work remains until this can provide a practical solution, with additional research the researchers hope their carbon nanotube-semiconductor nanocrystals film will one day effectively replace damaged retinas in humans.

Prof. Uri Banin of the Hebrew University said: "This is a pioneering work demonstrating the use of highly tailored semiconductor nanocrystals in activation of biomedical functionalities. We hope this can lead to future implementation of this approach in retinal implants."

The researchers received funding from the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology, the European Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

The research was published in Nano Letters as “Semiconductor Nanorod-Carbon Nanotube Biomimetic Films for Wire-Free Photostimulation of Blind Retinas.”

They have been called the Dead Sea Scrolls of physics. Since 1986, the Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to whom Albert Einstein bequeathed his copyright, have been engaged in a mammoth effort to study some 80,000 documents he left behind.

Starting on Friday, when Digital Einstein is introduced, anyone with an Internet connection will be able to share in the letters, papers, postcards, notebooks and diaries that Einstein left scattered in Princeton and in other archives, attics and shoeboxes around the world when he died in 1955.

The Einstein Papers Project, currently edited by Diana Kormos-Buchwald, a professor of physics and the history of science at the California Institute of Technology, has already published 13 volumes in print out of a projected 30.

The published volumes contain about 5,000 documents that bring Einstein’s story up to 1923, when he turned 44, in ever-thicker, black-jacketed, hard-bound books, dense with essays, footnotes and annotations detailing the political, personal and cultural life of the day. A separate set of white paperback volumes contains English translations. Digitized versions of many of Einstein’s papers and letters have been available on the Einstein Archives of the Hebrew University.

Visitors to the new Digital Einstein website, Dr. Kormos-Buchwald said in an email, will be able to toggle between the English and German versions of the texts. They can dance among Einstein’s love letters, his divorce file, his high school transcript, the notebook in which he worked out his general theory of relativity and letters to his lifelong best friend, Michele Besso, among many other possibilities. Einstein, who like many other 20-year-old college students did not lack for a sense of self-dramatization, once wrote to his sister, Maja, “If everybody lived a life like mine, there would be no need for novels.” As it would turn out, he did not know the half of it.

The 14th volume, with more than 1,000 documents, is due in January. The digital versions are available at einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu.

U.N. cultural agency to hold special session on threats posed to Jewish heritage sites in Iraq • Organization outlines emergency measures to protect heritage sites from what top official describes as "a form of cultural cleansing."

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization plans to hold a special session in Paris this week, to discuss ways to save Jewish heritage sites in Iraq from being destroyed by the Islamic State group.

UNESCO recently announced an emergency plan to safeguard Iraq's cultural heritage sites, following growing media reports -- including an Israel Hayom exposé  -- that the jihadist terrorist group has been systematically destroying ancient sites.

In its report, Israel Hayom warned of the irreparable damage caused to Jewish heritage sites in Iraq, including the tomb of the biblical prophet Ezekiel outside Baghdad, Daniel's Tomb in Mosul, and Nahum's Tomb near Kush, as well as the destruction of Jewish heritage sites in Islamic State-ravaged areas in Syria, such as the Jobar Synagogue, also known as the Prophet Elijah Synagogue, in Damascus.

Israel Hayom has learned its report had resonated with several international conservation organizations, as well as with UNESCO, which has asked Professor Shmuel Moreh of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who was interviewed in the report, to brief it on the issue and speak before its Paris convention later this week. Journalist Ksenia Svetlov, who wrote the piece, was invited to speak at the meeting as well.

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova recently warned that "Islamic, Christian, Kurdish and Jewish heritage … is being intentionally destroyed or attacked in what is clearly a form of cultural cleansing."

Other than the physical damage, one of the greatest concerns is that terrorists are plundering ancient sites and selling artifacts on the black market to fund their operations. In a press release posted on its website, UNESCO reiterated that a ban on trafficking in Iraqi cultural objects was adopted by the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 1483 of 2003, and that it is still in effect.

According to the agency's Emergency Response Action Plan paper, "Relevant parties, including Customs and police at border crossings, Interpol, the World Customs Organization and auction houses, will be alerted and informed about the possibility of illicit trafficking of Iraqi cultural property, as well as the specific measures needed to prevent such acts."

On December 3, 1897, Gerhard Scholem was born in Berlin to an assimilated Jewish family. Yet he became fascinated with Jewish history and culture, most famously with Jewish mysticism, and is widely credited with turning kabbala into a legitimate academic subject. Scholem would also become the first professor of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

His father, Arthur, was a printer, a German patriot and was not religious. His mother, the former Betty Hirsch, was more tolerant of observance and Zionism.

Scholem and his three brothers were all politically active, in different directions. Scholem’s brother Werner served in the Reichstag from 1924 to 1928 as a representative of the Communist Party. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1933 and in 1938 he was sent to Buchenwald, where he was killed in 1940.

In 1915 he was expelled from high school for writing an anti-war pamphlet that was circulated by a Zionist group.

The brothers were not sent to a Jewish school but in 1911 Scholem began studying Hebrew and the Talmud at a Jewish community school. He became fascinated by kabbala, albeit from an academic rather than a purely religious perspective. His fascination with Zionism and Jewish studies eventually led to a deep rift with his father. Scholem, who had already changed his first name from the German Gerhard to the Hebrew Gershom, left home in 1917 with just 100 marks from his father. He moved into a Berlin boarding house filled with Jewish intellectuals and Zionists — including the future Zalman Shazar, who went on to become Israel’s third president, and the author S.Y. Agnon. It was here that Scholem composed his first book, a translation from Yiddish of memorial essays to Jews who were killed in Arab riots in Palestine.

After several years of preparation — including a two-month stint in the German army, from which he was discharged as mentally unfit — Scholem immigrated to Israel in September 1923.

After a brief flirtation with math he returned to studying Zionism and Judaism, especially Jewish mysticism. He found work notably its mystical aspect. He found work at the newly renamed Jewish National and University Library, and began collecting and cataloging kabbalist manuscripts. He went on to teach at the Hebrew University, where he worked for more than 30 years.

Meanwhile he was becoming known around the world for his ground-breaking works on kabbalah. In the late 1930s he made a splash in New York with a series of lectures in English. They were published in 1941 as “Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism,” which marked a turning point in kabbala studies in America. Another landmark book was “On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism,” from 1965, a guide to the central themes of kabbala.

He would eventually write more than 40 books and some 700 academic articles, on subjects ranging from Jewish civilization to mysticism and politics.

Gershom Scholem died on February 21, 1982 in Israel.

December 3, 2014

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem signed its first cooperation agreement with Korea University last month (November 2014).

The agreement is designed to promote cooperation between the institutions in several areas, including joint conferences, lectures, research, cultural programs, and more.

The universities will also promote the exchange of researchers and students from both institutions, and encourage the exchange of scientific materials, publications and information.

The Hebrew University's international engagement includes cooperation agreements with institutions in 43 countries; student exchange agreements with  institutions in 24 countries; postdoctoral researchers from 26 countries; an annual enrolment of up to 2000 students from 85 countries at the Rothberg International School; 90 courses for the study of some 30 languages; and over €120 million in competitive research grants from the European Research Council (ERC) since 2007.

JERUSALEM — Integra Holdings, the biotechnology holdings company of Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, announced today that it has received US $3 million investment from Guangxi Wuzhou Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the Guangxi Wuzhou Zongheng Group, a Chinese investment holdings company. The funds raised will be used to advance Integra Holdings’ existing portfolio companies and to create new companies, based on promising projects originating from the Hebrew University.

Integra Holdings, founded by Yissum in 2012, has a robust portfolio of companies operating in a variety of therapeutic areas such as oncology, Alzheimer’s disease, infectious diseases, analgesia and inflammation. The innovative products developed by the portfolio companies range in maturity from pre-clinical stages of development, through clinical stages, to registration. Currently, the portfolio includes Ayana, Atox Bio, Avraham Pharmaceuticals, Lipomedix, Tiltan Pharma, Lipocure and HIL Applied Medical, in addition to two new companies, which are now being established and develop products with expected short time to market. Investors in Integra Holdings are Invatech Holdings, a group of private US and Israeli investors; Halman-Aldubi Provident and Pension Fund; the Funds of Teaching Personnel and the HUJI Provident Fund. Integra Holdings has raised a total of US $12 million to date.

“We are pleased to have Guangxi Wuzhou Pharmaceutical Group join as an investor that can also assist us in introducing biotech products and technologies based on research performed at the Hebrew University to the Chinese market,” stated Yaacov Michlin, CEO of Yissum and Chairman of Integra Holdings' Board of Directors. “After only two years since its inception, Integra Holdings has obtained an investment at twice its original valuation.”

“We welcome Guangxi Wuzhou Pharmaceutical Group’s investment and vote of confidence in the therapeutic products of our exclusive companies and our unique model of advancing cutting edge science and innovation towards commercial realization,” commented Dr. Liana Patt, CEO of Integra Holdings. “We look forward to using this investment to advance products currently in the pipeline of our portfolio companies, and forming new companies based on the Hebrew University's most promising inventions in the field of life science.”

This transaction was made possible through the local Chinese contacts of the Lakers Holdings Group.

About Guangxi Wuzhou Pharmaceutical Group

Guangxi Wuzhou Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Guangxi Wuzhou Zongheng Group, a Chinese investment holdings company traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHA:600252) with a current market cap of approximately US $2.8B. The parent company focuses on pharmaceuticals, health and food products, while Guangxi Wuzhou Pharmaceutical Group is the largest pharmaceutical company in Guangxi, and among the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies in China.

About Integra Holdings

Founded by Yissum, Integra Holdings is a unique venture fund, focusing on an exclusive selection of biotech companies with proprietary solutions and a competitive advantage in their respective fields. Integra Holdings takes a hands-on approach by providing its portfolio companies with the strategic planning, business development and R&D guidance they need to bring their technology to the market. For more information, please visit www.integra-holdings.com.

Levitzki’s research led to understanding of cancer and development of potent anti-cancer drugs

Jerusalem, December 7, 2014 — The prestigious Ilse and Helmut Wachter Award for 2014 has been presented to Prof. Alexander Levitzki, the Wolfson Family Professor of Biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the world’s most prominent cancer researchers. The award ceremony took place at the Medical University of Innsbruck in the Tyrol in western Austria.

Prof. Levitzki was nominated for the award on the basis of his leading role in cancer research, which includes helping lay the foundation for personalized cancer therapy, and contributing to the development of new and precise cancer medications. Prof. Levitzki’s research is conducted at the Unit of Cellular Signaling in the Department of Biological Chemistry at Hebrew University’s Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences.

The award’s Executive Committee cited Levitzki’s pioneering role in the field of Signal Transduction, noting that for the past 25 years he “made seminal and landmark discoveries which served as the scientific basis for the subsequent development of two very important novel anticancer drugs, Gleevec by Novartis, and Sutent by Sugen.”

Prof. Helga Fritsch, Rector of the Medical University of Innsbruck, said: “International co-operation andnetworking are important prerequisites for advanced medicine and medical research. Oncology is one of the main fields of research at the Medical University of Innsbruck and we look forward to using our time together for an intensive exchange."

Prof. Lukas Huber, CEO of the Wachter Foundation and Director of the Division of Cell Biology of the Medical University of Innsbruck, said: "The pioneering work of Professor Levitzki has influenced and inspired the scientific community, as can be seen from the more than 24,000 citations of his work.”

Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, President of the Hebrew University, said: “Prof. Levitzki’s important contributions to academia, research and the betterment of mankind make him a most deserving winner of the Wachter Award. May this prestigious prize, presented at the Medical University of Innsbruck, signal the continued flourishing of cooperation between Israeli and Austrian researchers, for the benefit of both our countries and the world.''

Prof. Levitzki said: "I am very pleased and grateful to receive the Ilse and Helmut Wachter Award. When I look at who previously received this award, I see myself joining a very select and prestigious list of scientists."

Prof. Levitzki’s many previous awards include the Israel Prize and the Wolf Prize in Medicine. A graduate of the Hebrew University, he joined its faculty in 1974 and trained a generation of scientists who continue to advance this important area of research.

Now in its eighth year, the Watcher Award is given for exceptional scientific achievements in all fields of medicine. The Ilse & Helmut Wachter Foundation was founded to further medical science for the welfare of mankind and by doing so, to contribute to the reputation of the Medical University of Innsbruck.

The Medical University of Innsbruck, with some 3,000 students and 1,800 employees, is a leading medical research and training facility in Austria, providing top quality teaching and training, world-class research and continuous advancements in top-flight medicine.

To some of us the events of last summer’s war in Gaza, better known as Protective Edge, might feel like a nightmare left far behind, but to many others in Israel and elsewhere, this war has created stress in unimaginable places. One of these places is the Rothberg International School (RIS) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a school that brings together students from countries all over the world, providing a multi layered environment of communication and learning. Gail Asper, a member of the Rothberg International Board of Governors, said: The Rothberg International School is instrumental in developing future community leaders as its alumni serve in key leadership positions around the world.

As the war continued and rockets continued to fall in and around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, previously looked upon as cities mainly out of the reach of Arab terror, the cancellations began to pour into RIS both from individual students as well as major universities who have had robust programs and partnerships with RIS. By the time the school year began, the enrollment was 30% less than had been anticipated. The Rothberg International School is facing one of the biggest financial hurdles of its existence. At a recent Hebrew University Capital Campaign meeting, which we attended along with Nathan Lindenberg past National Chair,  a decision was made to launch an emergency campaign to assist with their huge deficit of US 1.8 million dollars. Canada has made a commitment to raise $200,000 toward this unexpected financial challenge.

During the summer there were many appeals for funds, including scholarship support for student/ soldiers returning from Gaza who did not have the opportunity to have a normal summer and supplement their income in order to return to school. But the economic pain has not disappeared, especially at RIS, and we are asking you to once again lend a hand in support of this impressive component of the Hebrew University’s educational outreach. Rothberg needs your help NOW to withstand this crisis. Please help by making a contribution and in this meaningful way become part of the Rothberg Family at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In what could be called a Hanukkah miracle, researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority have discovered what they believe to be evidence of the earliest use of olive oil in not just Israel, but possibly the entire Middle East. An archaeological salvage excavation between 2011 and 2013 led by Ianir Milevski and Nimrod Getzov in the Lower Galilee – a region in northern Israel — unearthed 8,000-year-old remains of olive oil, according to a release from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The excavation took place in the ‘En Zippori area in the Lower Galilee before the widening of Highway 79, which cuts through the region. The research team took samples from pieces of pottery at the site. With the help of Dvory Namdar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Earth and Science, the team conducted chemical tests on the objects to determine what “organic remains” were still “absorbed in the sides of the vessel.”

The pottery was found to contain olive oil that dated back to the Bronze Age. The organic material was compared to samples of modern-day, one-year-old olive oil.

Out of 20 items that were sampled, two were especially ancient, dating back to about 5,800 B.C.

The team’s announcement is certainly seasonally appropriate, taking place at the start of Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday that commemorates the re-dedication of Jerusalem’s Holy Temple during the second-century B.C. The story of Hanukkah describes the olive oil being used to light a menorah at the temple that shined brightly for eight days.

Despite the significance of the find to Jewish culture, the community that actually used the olive oil was actually pre-Jewish, Milevski told The Times of Israel.

“We have no writing during that period so we know little about them,” he said. “We do not know what language they spoke but we assume it was an early Semitic language, from which Babylonian and Akkadian evolved and later also Hebrew and Arabic.”

Hebrew University archaeologists unearth 20-meter-high complex at Herodium National Park

Jerusalem, December 18, 2014 — Archaeologists from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archaeology have discovered a monumental entryway to the Herodian Hilltop Palace at the Herodium National Park. The unique complex was uncovered during excavations by The Herodium Expedition in Memory of Ehud Netzer over the past year, as part of a project to develop the site for tourism.

The main feature of the entryway is an impressive corridor with a complex system of arches spanning its width on three separate levels. These arches buttressed the corridor’s massive side-walls, allowing the King and his entourage direct passage into the Palace Courtyard. Thanks to the supporting arches, the 20-meter long and 6-meter wide corridor has been preserved to a height of 20 meters.

The Hebrew University archaeologists — Roi Porat,Yakov Kalman and Rachel Chachy — suggest that the corridor was built as part of Herod’s plan to turn Herodium into a massive artificial volcano-shaped hill, a vast and impressive monument designed to commemorate the architect-King.

Surprisingly, during the course of the excavations, it became evident that the arched corridor was never actually in use, as prior to its completion it became redundant. This appears to have happened when Herod, aware of his impending death, decided to convert the whole hilltop complex into a massive memorial mound, a royal burial monument on an epic scale.

Whatever the case, the corridor was back-filled during the construction of the massive artificial hill at the end of Herod’s reign. The upper section of a new monumental stairway stretching from the hill’s base to its peak, constructed during the course of this building phase, appears to have been built over it.

The excavators point out that not only was the arched corridor covered over in the course of the construction of the hill-monument, but also all the structures earlier built by Herod on the hill’s slopes, including the Royal Theater uncovered by the expedition in 2008, while still led by Prof. Ehud Netzer, since deceased.

The only edifice not covered over was the splendid mausoleum-style structure, identified by Netzer and the expedition as Herod’s burial-place. Together with the monumental cone-shaped hill, this constituted the unique Herodian Royal burial-complex.

During the course of the current excavations, the original impressive Palace vestibule, blocked when the corridor became redundant, was also exposed. This entry-room, decorated with splendid painted frescoes, had a magnificent entryway leading into it, and offered evidence of the rebel occupation during the Great Revolt (66-71 CE), including Jewish Revolt coinage and crude temporary structures.

In addition, the excavations in the arched corridor also turned up impressive evidence from the Bar Kokhba Revolt period (132-135/6 CE): hidden tunnels dug on the site by the rebels as part of the guerilla warfare they waged against the Romans. Supported in part by wooden beams, these tunnels exited from the hilltop fortress by way of the corridor’s walls, through openings hidden in the corridor. One of the tunnels revealed a well-preserved construction of 20 or so cypress-wood branches, arranged in a cross-weave pattern to support the tunnel’s roof.

In the future, according to Mr. Shaul Goldstein, Director of Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority, the excavation of the arched corridor will allow visitors direct access to the Herodium hilltop palace-fortress, in the same way that Herod entered it two thousand years ago. There are also plans to provide tourists direct access from the structures on the slope, the Royal Theater and the Mausoleum, via the earlier monumental stairway, to the hilltop Palace.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority, the Heritage and Commemoration Department of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Etzion Bloc Regional Council and Civilian Administration are all co-partners in the development of the Herodium.

Ehud Netzer was a world-renowned professor at the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology. Following several decades of excavations at the Herodium, Netzer discovered the tomb of Herod the Great in 2007. He died in 2010 at age 76 after being injured in a fall at the Heroudium archaeological site.

The Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology, founded in 1934, has shaped many of the current paradigms in Israeli archaeology. In addition to its many archaeological endeavors at major prehistoric and historic sites, it serves as a teaching and training institution within the Hebrew University's Faculty of Humanities and as a center for interdisciplinary research. The Institute's academic programs include studies for B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in prehistoric, biblical, and classical archaeology, Civilizations of the Ancient Near East and Computerized Archaeology. For more information, go to http://archaeology.huji.ac.il/.

First person video appears to be a perfect way to broadcast footage without revealing an individual’s identity. It’s intimate but anonymous: hiding the filmmaker’s face and body while showing the world through their eyes. But now, as GoPros, Google Glass, and police body cameras make this sort of footage more common, Professor Shmuel Peleg and Yedid Hoshen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have created a method of identifying first-person filmmakers solely from the wobble of their cameras.

"The idea of distinguishing one person from another comes from analyzing the person’s gait," explains Professor Peleg in an interview with The Verge. "Everyone has a different body build, height, muscles, and skeleton, and so the body moves differently and uniquely."

Peleg and Hoshen found that these biometric markers convert neatly into distinctive camera movements, publishing their results in a paper titled Egocentric Video Biometrics. By tracking the "optical flow" of objects and surfaces from one frame to the next they were able to determine volunteers’ identity from just four seconds of first-person footage.

"This is like a fingerprint," says Peleg. "In order to find the person you have to have their fingerprint beforehand. But we can compare two people and say whether two videos were shot by the same person or not." He says that his main motivation in publishing the findings was to "make people think twice before uploading egocentric footage to the web, adding: "The fact that their face isn’t seen doesn’t mean that they are anonymous."

Peleg and Hoshen explain that in the future, law enforcement agencies might even be able to link first-person footage to video captured by CCTV. "Though we haven’t done this form of recognition, when you look at a person from a surveillance camera you can see the way they move and the way they move their head," says Peleg, adding it could be "possible" to connect the two, especially in surveillance-heavy countries like the UK where there is one CCTV camera for every 11 people.

Although their research only looked at head-mounted cameras, Peleg and Hoshen are confident the same methods could be used for body-mounted devices: an important development considering President Obama’s recent pledge to purchase 50,000 body cameras for US law enforcement. In the future, confirming that certain footage was filmed by one individual and not another could be as important for holding law enforcement accountable as it is for bringing criminals to justice.

“They were amazing children and they didn’t believe that they could break free of this cycle."

Taking responsibility for society is the key to success, Moriah Ben Ami, CEO and co-founder of the Sky is the Limit recently told The Jerusalem Post.

The Sky is the Limit is a nonprofit youth organization that uses social entrepreneurship to establish communal awareness and leadership among at-risk youth, helping impoverished communities improve themselves from within.

The nonprofit was co-founded based on the shared experiences, vision and enthusiasm of two young Hebrew University of Jerusalem students – Moriah Ben Ami and Eldad Postan – only two years ago.

Beginning with only a handful of youth and three counselors, they aimed to “transform” at-risk youth into socially involved citizens by developing their sense of self-worth and fostering in them a desire to be held accountable for their own futures and their communities.

“Working with youth is the key to instill change. What is unique is that the youth themselves are instilling the change in their communities,” said Ben Ami.

Ben Ami grew up with a privileged background in Kibbutz Revivim in the Negev. As part of a high school leadership program to help the underprivileged, she began volunteering at the Ashalim orphanage in Beersheba for young boys with behavioral problems.

“I realized that there was a completely different life going on here than the life I had led up to this point,” she said.

“They were amazing children, and [yet] they didn’t believe that they could break free of this cycle. It was like living in two parallel worlds, and they just didn’t have the tools [to succeed]. I realized that I want to provide these youth with exactly what I received and give them an equal opportunity to succeed in life,” she said.

Ben Ami credits her time at the orphanage as a life-changing experience that “opened her eyes” to the inequality among youth from underprivileged backgrounds.

She has since enrolled at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she studies education and international relations.

During her first year of studies she met Eldad Postan, a student of philosophy, economics and political science at the university.

During his time in the IDF, Postan served as an instructor at the Naval Academy. One of the goals of the course was to impart a sense of capability to young cadets and provide them with tools to realize their potential.

Following his service, Postan began to work with youth at risk and quickly realized that many of their behavioral problems stemmed from a feeling of a lack of competence and control over their lives.

“We want to give youth long-lasting tools for life,” said Ben Ami. “These are youth to whom it is not enough to say ‘You are worthy’; they have to feel as though they are equipped with the tools to feel empowered.”

The two partners joined forces and established The Sky is the Limit.

The nonprofit program selects students, aged 13 to 15 in grades seven through nine, from low socioeconomic backgrounds to participate in the program. The students participate in a three-year “initiation” process, after which they can give back and take part in mentoring and guidance of the younger students joining the program.

According to Ben Ami, the first part of the program is geared toward teaching the students useful life skills and tools that they were unable to learn in school or at home. The second part aims to bring these newly acquired tools back into the community, with each group of students developing a social project.

“For example, last year students in the program created a movie theater where local children in Katamon, whose families were unable to afford summer camps, could spend their evenings,” she explained.

“Another group opened a small coffee shop at their school where they could sell cheap food and beverages to the underprivileged students, and they even had discussions about violence against animals,” she said.

While the program is only in its second year, it has already grown to encompass countless students in the Jerusalem district. Next year, the program is set to expand even further to include a total of 26 groups of children and some 40 counselors.

“The Jerusalem Municipality opened a huge door for us and gave us our start,” Ben Ami explained. However, funding a nonprofit is a very difficult and cut-throat venture.

Ben Ami and Postan count themselves very lucky that, within a short time span, they were able to attract numerous investors and philanthropists, including the Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, JVP Media Quarter, Bank Yahav, UBS Swiss Financial Company, the Ariel Foundation and “especially” the Lenny Shapiro Foundation.

“Our dream is to become a national youth movement,” said Ben Ami. “We are responsible for our community, and if we don’t rise up and act, nobody will. And this is what we try to teach our youth – that our society is what we make of it.”