Students from the Paran and Hinaton pre-military preparatory programs took part in the discovery. (photo from Israel Antiquities Authority via Ashernet)
Late last month, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) uncovered an Ottoman-period well, hundreds of years old, as part of the work being carried out by Netivei Israel Co. to widen Highway 38, north of the main entrance to Ramat Beit Shemesh. Students from the Paran and Hinaton pre-military preparatory programs took part in the discovery of the well that is about 3.5 metres in diameter and joins a series of wells that have been documented over the years along Route 38. The palm tree is an indicator that there is nearby a source of groundwater.
U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump lay a wreath during a visit to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, on May 23. (photo from IGPO via Ashernet)
Knowing that, in any one day, hundreds of visitors will pass their shops, usually on the way to the Kotel (Western Wall), shopkeepers in Jerusalem’s Old City stock as many items as possible to appeal to all religions. Prayer shawls, rugs, crosses and ritual items of every size and description are available, as are religious paintings and carvings, key holders and the like. (photo from Ashernet)
An aerial view of part of the Caesarea excavations. (photo by Griffin Aerial, via IAA and Ashernet)
On April 27, the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, Caesarea Development Corporation, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Israel Nature and Parks Authority announced cooperation on an unprecedented scale in conserving and making accessible the public buildings of ancient Caesarea in Caesarea National Park, as well as developing and making the settlement’s beaches more accessible. The more than $28 million project will hopefully help attract three million tourists to Caesarea by 2030.
Caesarea has been a vibrant port city since its establishment about 2,030 years ago and throughout the various ensuing periods. The archeological excavations have revealed many remains that range from the time of Herod to the Crusader period. According to IAA director Israel Hasson, “To date, only about six percent of Caesarea’s treasures have been discovered, and magnificent finds on a global scale are buried beneath its sand dunes.”
The new Shalva National Centre in Jerusalem officially opened on April 27. (photo from Shalva)
History was made on April 27, when hundreds of friends and donors traveled from around the world to gather in Jerusalem to celebrate the grand opening of the new Shalva National Centre. The day began with a rendition of “To Dream the Impossible Dream.”
“I fell in love with the concept that Shalva represents,” said Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. “It is an icon and a role model for the world. Shalva has shown innovation in dealing with children with disabilities and I believe it will create ripple effects around the world.”
Leslie and Gordon Diamond, who dedicated the centre, flew in from Vancouver with family and friends. In addition, they dedicated the Steven Diamond Sports and Wellness Centre in memory of their son, Steven. With its semi-Olympic pool, large therapy pool, fitness centre and gymnasium, it is a significant gift of wellness to the Shalva children, their families and the broader community. Also dedicated was the Shalva Inclusive Parks in memory of Ambassador Ronald E. Arnall.
“Shalva epitomizes tikkun olam, making the world a better place and respect for family dignity. I am sure that Shalva will serve as the gold standard in its field for many years to come,” said Gordon Diamond. “For me and my family, it is an amazing honour to help this institution. Imperfection is inevitable in this world. We cannot make this a perfect world, but this is where society can shine. There is no more shining model than Shalva.”
“We have built a centre of excellence, full of colour, a magical place for the children of Shalva,” said Shalva chairman Avi Samuels. “We are humbled to open this state-of-the-art facility.”
MK Chaim Katz said, “This is a huge day of giving. There’s so much heart and so much soul. I am bursting with pride to know that these world-class facilities are available right here in the state of Israel.”
The ribbon-breaking ceremony began with the sounding of 10 shofars. Barkat said, “When people come to the city of Jerusalem, they ask me what they should see. I tell them to go see the City of David so they see their roots. And then I tell them to go and see Shalva. People who enter this centre do not go out the same people. This place changes them.”
Kalman Samuels, who founded Shalva 27 years ago with his wife Malki when their infant son became blind and deaf following a faulty vaccination, thanked the audience of philanthropists, dignitaries and well-wishers. He said, “Your boundless love and your selfless care for your brothers and sisters with disabilities makes this earthly site heavenly.
I have gratitude to the Almighty and gratitude to each of you who continue to impact precious lives.”
Sara Omer and her kids lost their husband/father Reuven in 2008. (photo from IMP Group)
May 1 was Yom Hazikaron (Israel Memorial Day), May 2 celebrated Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) and this month marks the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem. For the widows of Israel’s fallen soldiers, who paid the ultimate price so that Jews all over the world could revel in the modern-day rebirth of the Jewish state, these anniversaries stir varying emotions.
At 94 years old, Devorah Arkin Roth is one of the country’s oldest war widows. Her husband, Mordechai Arkin, was killed while defending Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem just weeks before the official outbreak of the War of Independence in May 1948. She shares fond memories of her husband, as she stares at the photo album of their wedding and the newborn pictures of their first child.
“He was a very talented man who wanted to go to Columbia University in New York to study physics,” she recalled. “But the deteriorating security situation in the country wouldn’t permit him to leave. He worked at Hadassah Hospital and doubled as a guard when he was killed. At the time of his death, I was already pregnant with our second child.”
Though Roth remarried and feels privileged to be a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, she still gets the jitters each time one of her grandchildren goes into the army. “It’s difficult to see your grandchildren being drafted into the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] after what I had to endure, and even more so because one of my grandchildren was injured as well in battle,” she said.
The Six Dar War was an astounding military accomplishment, as the IDF beat back the armed forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan – but 776 IDF soldiers lost their lives.
Pte. Yossi Mori was killed on the first day of the Six Day War (June 5, 1967) after his unit was shelled in a minefield. His widow, Dania, recalled, “We had a great group of friends and, to this day, we meet every Memorial Day at his grave. During these years, you keep going, building your home, raising children and grandchildren. You don’t just sit all day thinking about your loss, because then your life would stop.”
First Lieut. Yehuda Ram died while liberating the Golan Heights on the last day of the war (June 10). “Yehuda died when he was 23 years old and we had only been married for a year. It was young love, an innocent one,” Shoshana, his widow, remembered. “I actually came back from the war filled with guilt. Why did I survive and he didn’t? Those feelings disappeared with the years because you can’t keep living like that.”
Even in between wars, when IDF soldiers constantly train in order to be ready for the next conflagration, there are inherent dangers, which can exact a toll.
For example, Sara Omer’s world was nearly destroyed in 2008, when her husband Reuven was killed in the midst of a training exercise as part of his IDF reserve duty. She had to face life alone with her three young boys, twins Nadav and Yotam, who were 6 years old, and Guy, then 2 years old.
“The unexpected loss of my husband was indeed shocking and, when Yom Hazikaron comes around every year,” she said, “it is a difficult day for all of the widows, but my children, who are now teenagers, attend a special ceremony at the Knesset, which is both uplifting and inspiring.”
Run by widows and orphans, the IDF Widows and Orphans organization (IDFWO) creates a support network to help them through difficult times. The organization provides services that touch every aspect of their lives, from a communal bar/bat mitzvah service at the Kotel, to professional training courses.
One of the most important activities of the IDFWO is to bring together people with common experiences for mutual support. Regular retreats give widows a break and a chance to benefit from mutual understanding. The IDFWO Otzma Camps give orphans the same opportunity.
“Once a war widow, always a war widow, even if you remarry and love your second husband. The IDFWO gatherings and activities are very important for a very specific reason,” one of the widows explained. “We might not always agree with each other’s opinions about different things, but we all speak the same language and understand each other, as widows. Since we have all experienced the same loss and trauma, we can speak to each other in our language and help each other when we need to, especially on Yom Hazikaron, when we all could use a hug and a smile.”
Featured on israelbds.org are popular articles that describe the history of Israeli-international scientific cooperation, research that has resulted from that cooperation and the people involved, as well as links to scientific papers. (image from israelbds.org)
Building Dialogue through Science, or BDS, is the purpose of a new website, israelbds.org, which features the many and varied scientific studies that rely on close collaboration between Israeli researchers and those in different countries.
These studies range from the SESAME synchrotron, a Middle Eastern facility based in Jordan that serves life-sciences researchers from Egypt to Iran; efforts to discover the processes that lead to the stellar explosions known as supernovae, in which Israeli researchers are alerted to possible events in the California night sky; brain research; quantum physics studies; scientific archeology; and much more.
Featured on the website are popular articles that describe the history of Israeli-international scientific cooperation, research that has resulted from that cooperation and the people involved, as well as links to scientific papers.
“Building dialogue through science, rather than building walls, has always been our way of doing things,” said Weizmann Institute of Science president Prof. Daniel Zajfman. “If we are going to work against the other BDS [boycott, divest from and sanction Israel], we must do so with real information. That is the intent of the site we have created. When scientists cooperate in their research, they bring back to their countries an understanding of the ways people can work together on many levels – over and above the scientific – including respect for other cultures and a desire for peaceful coexistence. That is why we believe that cooperation between Israeli scientists and those in universities and research institutes around the globe must be preserved at all costs.”
The hope, indeed, is that anyone visiting the website will understand what the world stands to lose from cutting off ties to Israel’s researchers and preventing students and labs around the globe from benefiting from Israeli advances.
Valeria Ulisse, an Italian research student studying the development of the nervous system at the Weizmann Institute of Science sums it up: “In Italy, I was in a really good lab but I was missing something internally. I wanted to improve my knowledge, to start a new project, to change my life and I found the place to do it.”
Israeli science is open to collaboration with anyone, independent of their political opinions.
“Research thrives on the meeting of different worldviews, and it is important to preserve that freedom to meet and discuss, even with those with whom we don’t always agree,” said Zajfman.
Vehicles at a standstill alongside the ancient walls of Jerusalem’s Old City on April 24, as drivers honor the memory of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. At 10 a.m., sirens sounded throughout Israel, and pedestrian and car traffic stopped to remember. (photo from Ashernet)
A malaria vaccine based on stabilized proteins could circumvent today’s problems. (photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)
Despite decades of malaria research, the disease still afflicts hundreds of millions and kills around half a million people each year – most of them children in tropical regions.
Part of the problem is that the malaria parasite is a shape-shifter, making it hard to target. But another part of the problem is that even the parasite’s proteins that could be used as vaccines are unstable at tropical temperatures and require complicated, expensive cellular systems to produce them in large quantities. Unfortunately, the vaccines are most needed in areas where refrigeration is lacking and funds to buy vaccines are scarce. A new approach developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science, recently reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, could, in the future, lead to an inexpensive malaria vaccine that can be stored at room temperature.
The RH5 protein is one of the malaria parasite’s proteins that has been tested for use as a vaccine. This protein is used by the parasite to anchor itself to the red blood cells it infects. Using the protein as a vaccine alerts the immune system to the threat without causing disease, thus enabling it to mount a rapid response when the disease strikes, and to disrupt the parasite’s cycle of infection.
Research student Adi Goldenzweig and Dr. Sarel Fleishman of the institute’s biomolecular sciences department decided to use the computer-based protein design tools they have been developing in Fleishman’s lab to improve the usefulness of this protein.
Based on software they have been creating for stabilizing protein structures, Goldenzweig developed a new way of “programming” proteins used in vaccines against infectious diseases. Such proteins, because they are under constant attack by the immune system, tend to mutate from generation to generation. So, the program she developed uses all the known information on different configurations of the protein sequence in different versions of the parasite. “The parasite deceives the immune system by mutating its surface proteins,” she explained. “Paradoxically, the better the parasite is at evading the immune system, the more clues it leaves for us to use in designing a successful artificial protein.”
The researchers sent the programmed artificial protein to a group in Oxford that specializes in developing malaria vaccines. This group, led by Prof. Matthew Higgins and Simon Draper, soon had good news: the results showed that, in contrast with the natural ones, the programmed protein can be produced in simple, inexpensive cell cultures, and in large quantities. This could significantly lower production costs. In addition, it is stable at temperatures of up to 50°C, so it won’t need refrigeration. Best of all, in animal trials, the proteins provoked a protective immune response.
“The method Adi developed is really general,” said Fleishman. “It has succeeded where others have failed and, because it is so easy to use, it might be applied to emerging infectious diseases like Zika or Ebola, when quick action can stop an epidemic from developing.”
Fleishman and his group are currently using their method to test a different strategy for treating malaria, based on targeting the RH5 protein itself and blocking its ability to mediate the contact between the parasite and human red blood cells.
For more on the research being conducted at the Weizmann Institute, visit wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il.
From left to right, Staff Sgt. Maya, Sgt. Noam and Brigadier General (Res.) Gila Klifi-Amir at a Friends of the Israel Defence Forces program April 3 in New York City. (photo by Shiryn Ghermezian)
Israel’s female soldiers seem to break barriers on a consistent basis. In January, new figures revealed that the number of women serving in combat roles in the Israel Defence Forces’ Homefront Command is up 38% this year. Last month, the IDF launched a pilot program in which women will be trained as tank operators for the first time.
Indeed, the Jewish state takes pride in being an oasis for gender equality in a Mideast region largely bereft of women’s rights, and this attitude extends to Israel’s military. At the same time, for a nation facing ever-present security threats both internally and on its borders, gender equality has its limits.
“The mission of the army is to protect and win. We need to understand that the mission of the army is not equal opportunity,” Brigadier General (Res.) Gila Klifi-Amir, who has had a 30-year career with the IDF and served as an adviser on women’s issues to the military’s chief of staff, said April 3 in New York City.
Klifi-Amir moderated a discussion with three female Israeli soldiers – Sgt. Noam, Staff Sgt. Maya and Staff Sgt. Y, whose full names were withheld for security reasons – in a program hosted by the Young Leadership Division of Friends of the Israel Defence Forces, a nonprofit whose mission is “to provide for education and well-being” of IDF soldiers.
The soldiers on the panel all told JNS.org they have never felt discrimination for being a woman in the military, and that their male counterparts treat them with respect. Y described the interactions as “very, very professional,” and Maya – who commands an infirmary at her battalion’s headquarters – explained, “We train with the guys, we do everything like them. Inside the unit, everything is the same.”
Israel is the world’s only country where military service is obligatory for women. From ages 18-26, women must serve two years in the military – with some exceptions, such as if they are pregnant. Today, 95% of the IDF’s positions are available to women, according to Klifi-Amir.
Yet “equal opportunity” does not exist in the purest sense, the soldiers said. Klifi-Amir told the crowd she does not believe all military positions should be open for women, depending on the mission. The physical training required for some military roles may be too grueling for a woman’s body, and the IDF is responsible for the life of each soldier, she said.