BIU in the News

BIU Newsbytes

Summer 2008/ Tamuz 5768
In this issue...

1. Israel President and BIU bring Jewish Bookshelf to every Jew
2. BIU Legal Eagles Recommend Prenups
3. Did Freud Slip?
4. BIU Sponsors Holocaust Conference in Albania
5. Automatically Evaluating Wikipedia
6. Giraffes are Kosher?
7. BIU Students First to Receive Statistical Analysis Diploma
8. Learning Mutual Respect through Music
9. The Oldest Date Palm in the World
10. BIU Law Grads Score Highest in the Land!
11. BIU Criminologist on the Pressure to Kill and Tell
12. Alumni Corner
13. In Memoriam

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Israel President and BIU Bring Jewish Bookshelf to Every Jew
Thousands of Jewish religious and other texts in Hebrew will be made available online for the first time by Bar-Ilan University, as part of an initiative sponsored by President Shimon Peres, announced the Israeli Haaretz, recently. The texts, which will be accessible via a special search engine, will be funded by donations raised by Peres.

"Bar-Ilan University seems like the most worthy place to found the 'Jewish digital book shelf'," Peres said. University officials estimated that the database will be up and running within a year. Bar-Ilan President Prof. Moshe Kaveh described the project as "the greatest Jewish-cultural enterprise since the invention of scripture." He said teams are already at work on the project.

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BIU Legal Eagles Recommend Prenups
The Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University, the Center for Women's Justice and the Jewish Women's Foundation of New York have recently joined forces to publish a pamphlet urging marriage professionals to encourage the use of prenuptial agreements.

Meanwhile, the Council of Young Israel Rabbis in Israel, Matan, Mifnim and Yad L'isha together with the Rackman Center organized two conferences recently aimed at teaching marriage professionals the benefits of prenuptial agreements. Among the leading legal professionals represented, Dr. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari of the Rackman Center spoke on the benefits of prenuptials and their use by rabbis in the past and present.

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Did Freud Slip?
According to Prof. Yacov Rofé, of BIU's Interdisciplinary Department of Social Sciences, there is no evidence for Sigmund Freud's "theory of repression" - that the "burying of traumatic memories by the unconscious mind causes psychiatric disorders - even though it has been a cornerstone of his psychoanalytic theory for a century.

Prof. Rofé has made headlines recently in asserting that in his in-depth examination of Freud's famous theory - the first comprehensive study of a century of scientific literature - he has found no proof to support it. According to Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, repression causes mental illness. But Prof. Rofé's paper, published in the American Psychological Association's "Review of General Psychology," theorizes that taking on a "distorted" view of reality could actually help maintain mental health.

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BIU Sponsors Holocaust Conference in Albania
A 2-day international conference, held in Tirana, Albania recently, was aimed at gathering information on how Albania became a haven for persecuted Jews - a fact that has received little international attention because the country remained isolated for decades under communism. The gathering, sponsored by the Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University, the Department of History of the University of Tirana and the International Institute for Holocaust Research of Yad Vashem, was held in Albania's capital, Tirana.

Jews in Albania were saved by the citizens of the mostly Muslim country, which sheltered them and gave them refuge. "Albanian Jewry is the only Jewish community in Europe whose numbers even grew under German occupation," claims BIU Jewish history professor Dan Michman. "Yad Vashem recognized 63 Albanians as Righteous among the Nations, a record number bearing in mind the number of citizens of Albania and the number of Jews living in its territory."

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Automatically Evaluating Wikipedia
Eti Yaari of the Information Science department at Bar-Ilan University wrote her doctoral thesis on the possibility of automatically evaluating the veracity of Wikipedia entries, in order to provide an efficient scale for surfers to judge the quality of an entry. Wikipedia is a free internet-encyclopedia built collaboratively using special "Wiki" software. Yaari's thesis, written with the guidance of Prof. Shifra Baruchson-Arbib, was presented at the Second National Conference for Doctoral Students Who Study the Internet, hosted by the Netvision Institute for Internet Studies at the Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University.

The idea behind Yaari's thesis is to base the quality evaluation mechanism on the insights of searchers. Now, in conjunction with Prof. Yehudit Bar-Ilan and Prof. Baruchson-Arbib, Yaari is trying to build a practical application that will automatically evaluate Wikipedia entries based on the quality criteria identified by her study. Their research team recently received a grant from the Israel Internet Association to develop the evaluation tool, which should aid the encyclopedia's users in finding accurate information.

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Giraffes are Kosher?
News published recently by the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot is not likely to have observantly-religious people changing their eating habits. The newspaper reported that an Israeli rabbi has declared giraffe meat and milk to be kosher - news that surely won't inspire individuals to develop an appetite for the meat or milk of the appealing long-necked animal!

The rabbi based his ruling on recent studies by Bar-Ilan's Dr. Zohar Amar of the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, in which he found that the milk of the giraffe forms curds as required under Jewish religious law, a finding confirmed by another research institute, the daily said. Furthermore, giraffe meat is also considered ritually pure because the animal has a cloven hoof and chews the cud.

Dr. Amar, former head of the department, specializes in the history of science in ancient times (particularly in Jewish sources); agriculture; material culture and everyday life in the Middle Ages; the history of medicine and ethnopharmacology.

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BIU Students First to Receive Statistical Analysis Diploma
For the first time in Israel, students studying for a BA in math and statistics at Bar-Ilan University will be certified in SAS systems (a statistical package for data analysis). The diploma will be granted by the representative of SAS in Israel, Mia Computers, to students who successfully complete the required examinations. Many Israeli organizations, such as research institutes, governmental and public offices, financial and industrial institutions use SAS to help their organizations make better decisions.

"Today, when there is a strong demand in the job market for university graduates who have specialized in statistics, it is important that the students be equipped with all the tools needed for their work," says Prof. Malka Shepps, head of the Dept. of Mathematics at Bar Ilan. "In our opinion, programming ability and experience with SAS are most important tools, which will give our graduates a competitive edge on their friends with similar degrees from other institutions."

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Learning Mutual Respect through Music
An innovative program for teaching music was demonstrated at an international conference which took place recently at BIU. Taking part in the program are immigrant children from Ethiopia, children of foreign workers, Arab and Israeli children. All meet and cooperate in studies which are not only enjoyable, but also require concentration, precision and perseverance. During their lessons, the children perform works of each other's musical traditions, and so learn mutual respect.

The children appear in concerts at senior citizens' residences, at graduation ceremonies, and take part in public celebrations that the Jaffa Institute organizes. Some of the children participate in continuing studies at the Music Center in Jaffa, where they perform in an orchestra.

"This special program is the development of the musical branch of Bar-Ilan University's Institute for Social Integration, which cooperates with the Jaffa Institute," explained Dr. Adina Portovich, one of the organizers of the conference, which included a gala performance by the children.

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The Oldest Date Palm in the World
In what is now the germination of the oldest known seed, a date pit plucked from ancient rubble at Masada has sprouted, scientists report. The sapling's genetic fingerprint suggests it is none other than the Judean date palm, a variety referred to in the Bible and long thought extinct.

In 2005, BIU archaeobotanist Prof. Mordechai Kislev gave the seeds to botanists who soaked them in hot water and nutrients and planted three in enriched soil. Three months later, the dirt cracked and a single shoot appeared. The researchers nicknamed the tiny sapling "Methuselah" after the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Old Testament.

The scientists, reporting in the June 12 Science, confirmed the sapling's age with calibrated radiocarbon dating - making it 2000 years old! In a few years, Methuselah may come of age. If the sweet purple dates do blossom, botanists might be able to reintroduce the Judean date palm to the world. It could provide farmers with an edible date palm better suited for harsh, dry climates.

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BIU Law Grads Score Highest in the Land!
The Israel Bar Association admission results are in and once again, BIU has cause for pride: BIU law graduates achieved the highest average grade compared to examinees of all the other institutions in Israel, and one of the highest grades recorded in the last five years! Of the 103 Bar-Ilan law graduates who took the exam 96% of them successfully passed. (Only 88% of the examinees in general passed). Bar-Ilan law grads were continuing a trend as last year the percentage of Bar-Ilan graduates who passed the Bar exam was the highest in Israel (98%). "We are proud of our graduates and of their achievements," says Prof. Aryeh Reich, Dean of BIU's Faculty of Law. "Bar Ilan law graduates are really making their mark, achieving top positions in the Supreme Court as well as in leading law firms throughout the country."

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BIU Criminologist on the Pressure to "Kill and Tell"
The Israeli public was "shaken and shocked" by recent revelations of a 17-year-old who reportedly told police he killed a woman two years ago, yet has continued to go to school regularly like any other teenager. Most criminologists believe that such a crime leaves a mark on one's personality and behavior. When interviewed on this topic by the press, Dr. Uri Timor, of BIU's Department of Criminology, asserted: "We don't know if he told anyone. My intuition tells me he did, perhaps to a friend who revealed his own secret."

"Murderers sometimes have complex psychological defense mechanisms to deal with the guilt," Dr. Timor added. "I meet prisoners who murdered and hear them deny it. A murderer can claim he only injured the victim and that doctors were responsible for his death, or that they held out knives and that the victims charged them and were stabbed. They say the victims are to blame."

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BIU Alumni Corner
Bar-Ilan alumni continue to make their mark. Below, some highlights:

• Segi Eitan (degree in Economics) was chosen by Globes newspaper as one of fifty most influential women in Israel's economy. Ms. Eitan is CEO of "Nichasim U'Vinyan" Property & Building Corporation, of Nochi Dankner's IDB group.
• Kobi Haber (degree in Economics) was appointed head of the Finance and Economics Division of Bank Leumi. Haber, former supervisor of budgets at the Ministry of Finance, will join the Leumi Group and take office on January 1st 2009.
• Yaron Meerfeld (degree in Economics and Business) was appointed acting Chief Executive Officer at InkSure Technologies Inc., a leading provider of covert machine-readable security solutions for the prevention of counterfeiting, fraud and diversion.
• Udi Itzhayek (degrees in Organizational Psychology and Psychology, both summa cum laude) was appointed VP Human Resources at Imperva®, the leader in application data security. Itzhayek began his career at Bar-Ilan University, where he was organizational consulting manager at the Institute for Advancement of Integration, and training manager for the Public Activists Program.

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In Memoriam
Bar-Ilan deeply mourns the recent passing of two exceptional women who were among the University's most stalwart supporters.

Rachel Dahan, z"l, of Baltimore, Maryland, was well-known for her lifelong commitment to Jewish causes through her philanthropy in the United States, and for her generous contributions to Jewish education in the United States and in Israel. In 1999 she joined her husband, Aharon, as a Doctor Honoris Causa of Bar-Ilan University. In 2002 the couple received Bar-Ilan's Award of Distinction.

Together the Dahans have established a long list of projects at BIU, among them the Aharon and Rachel Dahan Center for Sephardic Heritage, the Aharon and Rachel Dahan and Family Sephardic Undergraduate Student Scholarship Program, the Exodus Classroom Building, the Dahan Family Unity Park, and the Aharon and Rachel Dahan Electronic Technology Building, one of the four structures that comprise the newly dedicated Engineering Complex.

Erica Jesselson, z"l, of New York, was, together with her husband Ludwig, z"l, deeply devoted to Jewish education, art and culture in the United States and Israel. Ludwig was a 1980 Doctor Honoris Causa of Bar-Ilan University and in 2002 he and Erica were recipients of the Award of Distinction. Bar-Ilan University is particularly indebted to the Jesselson's for founding its unique Ludwig and Erica Jesselson Institute for Advanced Torah Studies.

The Jesselson Institute is dedicated to the synthesis of Torah and academic study, providing an opportunity for young men and women from Israel and the Diaspora studying at Bar-Ilan to undertake a rigorous double schedule of studies - traditional Judaic Studies combined with full degree programs in all the University's faculties.

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