Back to school daze

October 21, 2009 - 11:10 AM by David · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Life 

hu280,000 students started attending classes this week at universities and colleges throughout Israel. No strikes this year, which comes as a pleasant surprise.

An article in Yediot Aharonot over the weekend offered some interesting facts and stats about the the face of Israeli higher education which might be eye-opening for some, such as…

– There are 66 institutions of higher learning in the country, including 34 academic colleges (or junior colleges as they’re called Stateside) and 24 vocational schools.

– Tel Aviv University boast the biggest student body of the nation’s eight universities with 25,800 students, followed by Hebrew University with 23,000, Bar-Ilan University with 22,00, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev with 20,600, University of Haifa with 18,000, the Technion with 13,000, Ariel College with 11,000 and the IDC in Herzilya with 5,200 students. Evidently the Weizmann Institute – the home of recent Israeli Nobel prize winner Ada Yonath is considered a ‘research institute’ and not listed as one of the country’s universities.

– Out of the 221,000 students studying for a bachelor’s degree, 55% are women, and out of those studying for a master’s, 57% are women.

– Onto more important matters, the university cafeteria with the least expensive sandwiches for sale is Tel Aviv University, with a basic sandwich going for only 3 shekels (not sure what’s in that one, maybe just two slices of bread. While the most costly cafeteria sandwich is found at the Technion for 12 shekels (must be organic brain food).

– For a full meal, Bar-Ilan University tips the scales as the most expensive at 27 shekels ($7) with the University of Haifa trailing the field by offering some entrees at 15 shekels.

– Prices of dormitories also fluctuate with Hebrew University costing the most (between 900-1,300 shekels a month) and the Technion being the cheapest at 360-790 shekels.

With tuition becoming more costly each year, students and their parents are sure to be looking at these extra costs in deciding which institution to apply for. My daughter joined the ranks of the 280,000 students as she began classes this week at the instructional college Muzik, a Tel Aviv-based music school. I know that we’ll be urging her to eat meals in her apartment as much as possible.

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Holocaust Remembrance Day and Durban II

April 20, 2009 - 9:58 AM by David · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Politics 

holocaustHolocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Monday evening here, is always a solemn occasion. But this year, with the ghoulishly ironic juxtaposition of the Durban II racism conference taking place in Geneva, there’s an added measure of stark sobriety.

Even as Israelis pause to ponder the memory of the six million Jews who perished during the Nazi regime from 1933-1945, the gathering in Geneva demonstrates that there are still people who would like Israel – and by association – Jews to cease to exist.

So while Iran, Libya and the other latter day plotters gather for their bash-Israel fest, we’ll be remembering. The theme of the annual state ceremony, beginning at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial is ‘Children in the Holocaust.’ Some 1.5 million Jewish children were killed by the Nazis. As part of the theme, a 16-year-old musician will play a violin that belonged to a 12-year-old partisan, Mordechai (Motele) Schlein, killed in the Holocaust and whose violin is on display at Yad Vashem. The museum is also launching a new exhibition and material about children killed in the Holocaust – accessible on Yad Vashem’s Web site

According to a Hebrew University demographer – Professor Sergio Della Pergola – if not for the Holocaust there would be as many as 32 million Jews in the world today, instead of the current 13 million. Before the outbreak of World War II, there were an estimated 16.5 million Jews in the world.

Just imagine how the world might have been different if all the scientists, doctors, musicians and every other Jew who perished had gone on to live their full lives. We’ll never know what their impact would have been, but by refuting and condemning the lies which are going to come out of Durban II, we’ll be helping to insure that such wanton human destruction doesn’t take place again.

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Young Underwater Archeologist, Beverly Goodman, Wins National Geographic Explorer Prize

February 13, 2009 - 11:03 PM by Karin Kloosterman · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Environment 

beverly-goodman national geographic photo

I first “fell in love” with Beverly Goodman, when I dropped in to see the marine research station where she works in Eilat. Hoping to score some research material for my next series of articles, Goodman, a young Canadian-Israeli researcher working there, would go on to give me exciting details about her work in underwater archeology. Not before going through a long list of other marine research, some linked to climate change, happening at the research facility, known as the IUI.

Goodman, I would learn, had been interviewed about her work for a National Geographic program. She’d been collecting core samples from the seabed off the coast of the Roman city Caesaria. After inventing her own method for extracting the cores (she explains it’s practically impossible using traditional methods), Goodman would dive down to the seafloor and pull up layers of sediment to read back into history and find clues about what might have caused the destruction of Caesaria.

You can read all the deets on ISRAEL21c, which I’ve made handy for you here — Israel’s Freshest Face in Archeology Works Underwater — but her story goes like this:

Goodman’s research may give science new clues about the coastal environment in the context of global warming. Are the seas rising? Could a melting glacier break off and create a tsunami? Will storms and floods increase as the earth warms? Goodman’s questions might be more local in nature, but her work has global significance by adding to the information science holds about earth events and climate change.

Sifting through broken shells and sediment from coring samples, she has determined that at least three ancient tsunamis struck Israel’s port of Caesarea in the past. Concurrently, she also works in the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba to determine how local flood cycles and sea levels have changed over time.

I’m apparently not Goodman’s only big fan. Our editor Nicky, at ISRAEL21c and ISRAELITY, sent me a notice she’d received from National Geographic this week. It went on to state that Beverly, was awarded awarded $10,000 by National Geographic and is one of the media mogul’s Emerging Leaders, “one of 10 visionary young trailblazers from around the world,” the magazine/news channel writes.

The program recognizes and supports uniquely gifted and inspiring adventurers, scientists, photographers and storytellers making a significant contribution to world knowledge through exploration while still early in their careers. Introduced in this month’s issue of National Geographic magazine, you can also see a web feature of Goodman and her cohorts at http://www.nationalgeographic.com. A few months ago she appeared on a Nat Geo program, too.

“National Geographic’s mission is to inspire people to care about the planet, and our Emerging Explorers are outstanding young leaders whose endeavors further this mission. We are pleased to support them as they set out on promising careers. They represent tomorrow’s Edmund Hillarys, Jacques Cousteaus and Dian Fosseys,” said Terry Garcia, a rep from Nat Geo.

Goodman deserves it and I look forward to reading about her new advances: She knows about water and the forces of nature. She grew up on the shores of Lake Superior at Whitefish Bay in Canada, 17 miles from where the legendary freighter, the Edmund Fitzgerald, floundered and then sank.

She told me poetically, in the ISRAEL21c article: “As much as I love the shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, Israel is different,” she says. “Israel has been a crossroads forever. The time scale is so long. We can get a historical and pre-historical perspective from a long view, while being connected to well-known historical events.”

Read all about Goodman, and her great work on underwater archeology, here at ISRAEL21c.

More Israeli award winners:
Waltz With Bashir Gets Oscar Nod
Israeli Singer Shiri Maimon Wins MTV Prize
Israeli Film Students Come Out As Prizewinners in International Student Film Festival

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IBA’s Close Up feeds news jones

January 16, 2009 - 1:13 PM by Harry · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Politics, Pop Culture, War 

Steve Leibowitz and Leah ZinderEarlier this week, the relatively new free daily nationalist tabloid Yisrael Hayom (Hebrew-only informational website viewable here) reported that mainstream Israeli news websites have been experiencing around a 30% spike in traffic since the start of the current Gaza conflict – hardly a surprise, and hardly a trend relegated to the video-heavy, Hebrew-language outlets cited in their stats.

With the thirst for Zionist-friendly war-related information peaking even among English speakers, the Israel Broadcasting Authority has been wise to initiate the launch of a new English news program called Close Up. Airing Wednesdays at 5:25 PM on the IBA’s Channel 33, the live in-depth weekly analysis magazine Close Up premiered this week with a half hour’s worth of content headed by IBA talking heads Steve Leibowitz and Leah Zinder.

The program joins the growing stable of English-language IBA news reports, which includes the ten-minute weekday News Bulletin and the 20-minute daily IBA News, all of which streams over the web on-demand at the IBA’s video mini-site (like most Israeli websites, works best in the Explorer browser).

For the inaugural episode, Zinder and Leibowitz were joined at the news desk by panelists Effi Eitam, a controversial MK from the hawkish religious National Union, and left-of-center David Horovitz, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. Eitam remarked on the high levels of motivation among IDF, proclaiming that “The spirit of confidence will prevail amongst the soldiers, and, I might add, amongst the citizens.” Horovitz commented on pragmatic goals for ceasefire arrangements.

In other segments, Hebrew University’s Dr. Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, spoke about the ethical issues of the war, reporter Leah Stern gave over a timeline for how diplomacy breakdown led to the current battles, and a visit to opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s office yielded a predictably “I told you so”-style statement.

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