Indulge me for a few paragraphs, folks, and I’ll string this together for you.

Archeologists around the world are all alike. They just love to tell you they “found” something “new”, when it’s really something really old that hundreds, maybe thousands of people have seen before. The reality is is that they actually “re-find” something cool and those other thousands of people who already saw it have been dead for hundreds or thousands of years.

The tiny clay fragment – dating from the 14th century B.C.E. – found by Hebrew University archaeologists in excavations outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem. (Photo: Sasson Tiram)

Wayne Horowitz is a cool dude. He’s not just a scholar of Assyriology at the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem. He also plays hockey, and his two boys have been stalwarts on Israel’s junior and senior national teams. However, Wayne playing hockey is only coincidental with the announcment by Jerusalem’s Hebrew University this week of the discovery of a 3300 year old piece of ancient tablet.

I heard about the discovery on the news, and it was really cool because I mis-heard the report that archeologists found an ancient piece of clay with Canadian writing on it. They were now reading it for the first time in over 3000 years.

Wow! Cool! They found a clay fragment with Acadian writing on it!

Then, of course, the coffee I finished 20 minutes before kicked in, I said “DOH!” out loud, and realized that the writing was in ancient 3300 year old Akkadian, not modern Acadian from eastern Canada.

So far it’s the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem and quite an exciting find at an excavation outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls. Even though it’s small (only 2×2.8 cm), Horowitz told me it’s a major find.

As an expert in ancient Akkadian, he’s used to people asking him where he learned old French, and corrects them that it’s Akkadian spelled with a double-k, not French Acadian. The Akkadian empire stretched from the Holy Land to what is now Iraq and Iran – pretty much the other side of the world from Quebec, New Brunswick, PEI and Nova Scotia where the modern Acadians are found.

Wayne is still excited about the find by his colleague, Prof Eilat Mazar, who brought the Akkadian cuneiforms to him to be interpreted.

“I’m the first person to read it in 3300 yours. That’s pretty cool,” he said. On a scale of 1 to 10 in archeological and ancient Assyrian/Akkadian excitement, Wayne said this is a definite 10.

And part of the significance of the find is location, location, location. Horowitz explains that it’s the oldest Akkadian text found in Jerusalem, and even though it’s small and doesn’t say much, it helps shed light on life in the Holy Land over three millenia ago and the influence of the Akkadian empire.

“Basically it’s what would happen if you wrote a letter to a friend, tore it up into a few dozen pieces, then picked one piece from the middle of the letter,” he added. What does it say?

“you,” “you were,” “later,” “to do,” “them,” and bits and pieces of other words.

Not much for us mere mortals to go on, but as the archeological team continues to sift through 3300 year old debris, the odds on finding more have suddenly gone way up.

According to Horowitz, it appears to have been part of a tablet with writing of a very high level, so it may have been written by a highly skilled scribe who in all likelihood prepared tablets for the royal household of the time.

Tablets with diplomatic messages were routinely exchanged between kings in the ancient Near East, Horowitz said, and there is a great likelihood, because of its fine script and the fact it was discovered adjacent to in the acropolis area of the ancient city, that the fragment was part of such a “royal missive.”

The find breaks the previous record for oldest writings found in Jerusalem by about six centuries.

You archeological buffs can read more about the find here.

This is called paying-it-forward: Montreal real estate developer Marcel Adams was a penniless holocaust survivor who immigrated to Canada. But now he’s giving back a fraction of what life in Canada has given him: Marcel has just donated $1 million in scholarships and stipends to Israeli scientists, reports the Jerusalem Post.

Celebrating his 90th birthday, Marcel will give the money to 12 Israel doctoral students today at Jerusalem’s Israel Academy of Sciences and the Arts. This is the committee who selects the country’s most prestigious science fellowships.

The funds donated by Marcel will cover four years of study and research for the students, and all the students chosen are considered Israel’s brightest young stars in research in natural science, math, computers, life science, and engineering.

Adams himself founded the fellowship program in 2005 and has given away 47 similar prizes so far. From Romania, he fought for Israel’s independence and became a millionaire in Canada. Together with his son Dr. Julian Adams they will tell the story of Velcade, a drug Adams Junior developed for treating multiple myeloma, a rare form of blood cancer, at the ceremony.

Past recipients of Adams’ fellowship money includes Itai Roffman, a Haifa doctoral student who works with primate expert Dr. Jane Goodall, with whom he investigates the chimpanzee family and the evolution of prehistoric man.

::Jpost

Ever wonder where Canada’s Foreign Ministry dollars go? When it comes to teaching Canadian-style global democracy and educational values, some of Canada’s taxpayer’s money goes to creating equal opportunities in Israel. A project through the Merchavim Institute in Ramle, Israel, is helping teach Israeli society how to embrace –– and access –– its multi-cultural identity. With some 8,000 to 10,000 Arab Israeli teachers without work, and with a shortage of Israeli Jewish teachers, the Institute’s project “Teaching Across School Streams” aims to bring Israeli Arab educators into the fold. With four different school systems in Israel, and very challenging political points of view, Teaching Across School Streams is working to make sure that more Arab Israeli schoolteachers are finding employment in Israeli schools.

For Canadians, who welcome any race, religion, and previous nationality to teach in their school systems, this need to bring more Arab Israelis into the school system might sound archaic. As a fairly young country, Israel is still challenged to trust the ‘other’, and to oversee the complicated political reality facing it. It’s the same reality the southern states in America faced 40 years ago when it brought the first black teachers into the school system in southern America. That was only 40 years ago! The organizers of Merchavim see the opportunity of employing more Arab Israelis in the school system and are now in the process of placing several hundred teachers in several hundred Israeli schools.

The director of Merchavim, Mike Prashker, says, “By placing Arab teachers in Jewish schools, we aim to address a growing shortage of Jewish teachers, raise teaching standards and provide employment for some of Israel’s 10,000 unemployed Arab teachers. We also intend to raise familiarity and comfort levels between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel and help them develop a greater sense of awareness and pride in their shared Israeli citizenship.”

When Prashker invited an American colleague to visit a Jewish school in Ramle a couple of years ago, they met Iman, one of a few Arab Israelis teaching at a Jewish school. As part of a program undertaken by Merchavim, Israel’s Ministry of Education, and donors like Canada’s Foreign Ministry, Iman got the opportunity to teach a fourth-grade Arabic class. In traditional Muslim wear, “We could tell that her placement was a great success,” says Pashker to the Forward two years ago. “The special connection and mutual affection between this 25-year-old traditionally dressed Muslim Israeli and her Jewish students was obvious. It was only when we left the school that I saw how deeply moved my American colleague had been by the experience.”

The visit reminded his colleague of her first black teacher in a very white Southern school almost 40 years ago, she told Prashker.

In 2006, Merchavim, working with Israel’s Ministry of Education, began integrating Arab-Palestinian-Israeli teachers in Jewish-Israeli schools to promote shared citizenship, raise teaching-standards and provide much needed employment opportunities. Here is a great video about the project: 

To learn more about Merchavim, please see their website in English.

When I was in university my roommate Catherine once lived in Margaret Atwood’s dorm at Victoria College, University of Toronto. Like many young Canadian women in the post-feminism era, we grew up on writers like Atwood who paved the way for us so we wouldn’t have to be feminists. It was so cool to be able to sit in Atwood’s room for a moment, possibly the one that had inspired her first and my favourite book, The Edible Woman.

Being Canadian and Israeli, and seeing this is a blog about Israel and Canada, I am happy to report that Atwood is expected in Israel this May to collect the Dan David Prize, a $1 million US prize booty which she’ll share with another writer, Amitav Ghosh.

Both won the prize in the category Present — in the field of “Literature — Rendition of the 20th Century.” Each year the Dan David Foundation awards 3 major $1 million prizes in Past, Present and Future categories. Housed at Tel Aviv University, the prize is actually endowed by an Israeli industrialist and philanthropist Dan David who personally, every year with his family, greets the award winners. Previous years prize winners include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, environmental activist Al Gore and Tony Blair.

I have been to the annual shindig for the last 2 years running and have even spotted some Israeli celebrities like the over-the-hill pop star Svika Pik come out for the glamour-filled night. I also got to wave at Atom Egoyan from the bleachers 2 years ago, as the Canadian filmmaker collected his prize; but I am pretty sure he didn’t see me.

It’s always a great source of pride for me to see successful Canadians come to Israel to get a little taste of this small country, vastly different from Canada. This year maybe I’ll bring my dusty copy of The Edible Woman for Atwood to sign. I hope she’ll give a talk or lecture at the university earlier or later in the week. I’d love to hear about what she is working on.

Other prize winners this year are nothing to sniff at as well; and include the President of the Republic of Italy Giorgio Napolitano, and “Father of the Internet” Leonard Kleinrock.

The laureates, including Atwood, will be expected to donate 10% of their prize money towards 20 doctoral and postdoctoral Tel Aviv University scholarships, and the rest of the money will be theirs to take home. The big awards ceremony will take place this year May 9, 2010, at Tel Aviv University in the presence of Shimon Peres, the President of the State of Israel.

To read more about the Dan David Prize see the AFTAU website.
Full disclosure: I write research news for the American Friends of TAU.

It’s an ancient and holy tongue that’s spoken by millions in Israel and it’s becoming ever more popular in Canada.

Hebrew’s expanding use as both a spoken and written language in Canada is obviously a direct result of the growing numbers of Israelis who now call the Great White North home.

But it’s also linked to some clever educational initiatives.

A case in point is Kachol Lavan, a Centre for Hebrew and Israel Studies located just north of Toronto, which offers a self described “unique adult Hebrew language program brought from Israel.”

Starting this coming February 2, teachers at the centre, located at Leo Baeck Day School in Thornhill, will be providing eager adult students with lessons in how to speak, read and write Hebrew.

The students will also learn about the Holy Land.

Classes will be held on Sunday afternoons and Tuesday evenings.

Kachol Lavan offers a host of other courses and activities in Hebrew, with curriculum including Torah studies, geography and the Jewish holidays.

To learn more, please email or log onto www.kachol-lavan.com

Today is a solemn day not just in Canada, but around the world in all countries that mark November 11. The Middle East is no stranger to Canadian troops, who have been sent to the Holy Land at different times over the past century. Not just the two world wars, but peacekeeping missions that began in 1956 and continue to this day.

There are at least 59 Canadians buried in military cemeteries in the Holy Land. There are 27 from World War I, 10 from World War II, and of the 53 Canadian forces peacekeeping fatalities, 22 are buried in Israel or the Gaza Strip (since 1966, Canadian fatalities were repatriated to Canada for burial). Today, the main ceremony takes place at the Jerusalem War Cemetery with representatives from Canada and all the Commonwealth countries.

Jersualem War Cemetary at Mount Scopus

I was amazed to learn that in the past 50 years about 12,000 Canadian troops have been through the area on peacekeeping missions, in the Sinai desert and most recently in the Golan Heights - a mission that finished in 2006.

Tragically, the number of Canadians killed in or near the Holy Land is higher than the number of graves here. The latest to perish was Corporal Benoit Chevalier from CFB Bagotville who was killed in a plane crash in 2007 while on peacekeeping duties with the Multinational Forces and Observers mission in the Sinai desert of Egypt.

The single worst loss of life for Canadian peacekeeping troops was on August 9, 1974, when Syrian forces shot down the UN aircraft they were flying while on a routine flight from Beirut, Lebanon, to Damascus, Syria. All nine Canadians aboard were killed: Captain George Gary Foster (Pilot), Captain Keith Mirau (First Officer), Captain Robert Wicks (Navigator), Master Corporal Ronald Spencer (Flight Engineer), Corporal Bruce Stringer (Loadmaster), MWO Gaston Landry, MWO Cyril Korejwo, Corporal Michael Simpson, and Corporal Morris Kennington. The bodies of all nine were returned to Canada for burial.

The cemeteries are maintained by the The Commonwealth War Graves Commission. You can search for names on their website, and get more information about cemeteries around the world. Canadian soldiers are among the dead from Europe to the Far East, and the commission maintains a database you can search as well as pictures of the sites.

Doing some research on the web and, with my father having been in an RCAF Lancaster bomber crew, I was drawn to the RCAF members buried here and found that three of them had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. I got help from a special department at the Veterans Affairs ministry in Charlottetown, the Canada Remembers Division, that collects information.

They wrote me that Alexander Donald Fraser From Winnipeg, Manitoba was 22 years old when he was killed on April 3, 1945. The Wellington bomber he was in crashed near Tobruk, Libya during a cross country training. Eight of the crew, not Canadians, were also killed. It’s a far trip from Libya and not clear how Fraser came to be one of three Canadians buried in the Ramleh War Cemetery, roughly located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Nor is there any information on the circumstances of his being awarded the DFC

Ramleh War Cemetary

The second DFC was awarded to James Wilson Mathers, also 22, from Vancouver, who was killed September 28, 1944 when the Wellington bomber he was in suffered engine failure after take off.  A forced landing was attempted at the Ein Shemer airfield in northern Israel. At the time the airfield was run by the British Royal Air Force. Five members of the crew, including Mathers, were killed.

Mathers was just one of 71 Canadians who fell in battle in different theatres of war on that day. He is one of the six Canadians buried at the Khayat Beach War Cemetery just outside of Haifa.

The third DFC was awarded to Wing Commander Earle Douglas Harper, 39, born in Kamsack, Saskatchewan and enlisted in 1942 in Vancouver. Harper died November 2, 1963 and is buried in the Commonwealth military cemetery in Gaza City. I couldn’t find out the circumstances of his death, but the information page showed he received the DFC in World War II apparently flying missions over France and Germany.

There is also Warrant Officer Class II Patrick Vernon O’Brien who died on August 17, 1943 when he was only 20 years old and serving in the RCAF assigned to the 38th RAF squadron. He is buried at the Khayat Beach War Cemetery and a picture of his gravestone was photographed by volunteer Asher Thompson. O’Brien’s grave is in Israel, but his memory lives on in Canada, as I found that a mountain is named after him: Mount Obrien.

We Jews have a tradition of naming our children after those who came before us. My oldest nephew and my second son are named for my father who was a navigator in the RCAF. One of my daughters is named for my Uncle Solly, a combat soldier who landed in Italy in 1943 and fought his way up to Holland. My dad and uncle survived the war and came home, but today we remember and mourn those who didn’t.

All the Canadian men and women who fought and died and have their final resting place here in the Holy Land are only a small part of the more than 110,000 Canadians who have perished in the service of their country. I don’t know that any of them have descendants named after them, but since they perished the internet has come along and allows us to study them, find out more about them, and keep their memory alive.

Each one of them is important, each grave is tended to. In a thousand years will the cemeteries still be here and will November 11 still be marked by our descendants a millennium away? We’ll do our part to make sure that happens.

It’s estimated there are some 45,000 Israelis in Canada, a number that piqued the interest of Brent Harris a few years ago, when he first heard the number. “Although I had grown up in the Canadian Jewish community, I had never encountered too many Israelis, and this led me to wonder how much the two communities intermingle,” he says.

When it came time to choose a thesis topic for his masters’ degree in anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Harris, who hails from Kingston, Ont., decided to study Israelis in Canada – and specifically in Vancouver – further. He spent nine months observing Vancouver’s Israeli community, conducting 34 in-depth interviews. His recently completed thesis tackles two subjects: the first is identity and integration and the second is changing times and changing attitudes among Israeli migrants in Canada.

Harris estimates there are only 2,000 Israelis in Vancouver, and interviewed those aged between 19 and 58 for his study. “Among the Israelis I met in Vancouver, most have had success entering the labour market, but for some, their social integration has not come as easily,” he says.

“Even after a number of years in Canada, some Israelis find it difficult to forge close friendships with Canadians – including Canadian Jews – because of a difference in their styles of interaction.”

His interviewees explained that Israelis tend to speak very directly, while Canadians often don’t – making it difficult for Israelis to interpret what they really mean. “Many of the Israelis I interviewed also found Canadians to be not as warm as fellow Israelis,” Harris says.

Most of the Israelis Harris interviewed maintain a strong sense of Israeli identity, but were not as clear about their Canadian identity. “While the majority are content with life in Canada, many do not express a strong feeling of being Canadian and some even have difficulty pinpointing what exactly “Canadian” means,” he says.

“Interestingly, those who do feel some sense of Canadian identity are not necessarily the ones who have been here the longest or who have come at a younger age—this varies. What many Israelis do experience in Canada, however, is a greater awareness of themselves as Jews now that they live among a non-Jewish majority.”

Some thirty years ago, Israelis who left Israel were plagued with guilt by their departure. Termed “yerida,” which literally means going down, implying an immoral act, it was denounced by the Israeli media back then, disparaging emigrants for having abandoned the struggling state. But things have changed, and that feeling of guilt and stigmatization has lifted considerably, Harris found.

“There’s a growing number of people in Israel who look favourably upon living abroad or acquiring a second citizenship. Consequently, many of the Israelis I met do not express strong feelings of guilt over having left Israel and many are unsure whether they will return,” he says.

“Most of my informants expressed no feelings of guilt over having left Israel, and of those who did, it was not a patriotic longing for the land or state, but rather, a longing for family and friends back home.”

Previous studies had found that Israelis harbour a “myth of return,” a continuously expressed desire to return to Israel and a reluctance to accept their stay abroad as permanent. Harris found that myth was not as strong today, and suggests, in his thesis, that “these shifting attitudes are the product of a growing individualism in Israeli society.”

What surprised him most about the results of his thesis were the social barriers that many Israelis face in their relationships with Canadian Jews. “Although many Israelis feel a connection to them as fellow Jews, they often find that Canadian Jews are decidedly Canadian in their mentality and style of interaction,” he explains.

“As a result, many of the social barriers they face with Canadian non-Jews, for example a lack of directness and a lack of warmth, they also face with Jews. Some of the Israelis I met have a sense that there are more cultural differences between them than the commonalities they share.”

To read Harris’ thesis in detail, click here or email him at brent.harris@mail.mcgill.ca. 

Canada’s Israel would like to congratulate Professor Ada Yonath who has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Yonath is the first Israeli woman to win a Nobel, and she shares the prize with two other scientists for “mapping the ribosome – one of the cell’s most complex machineries,” according the Nobel jury.

Yonath is only the fourth woman to win the chemistry prize and the ninth Israeli to be awarded a Nobel.

The award-winning professor conducts her research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and is considered a pioneer of ribosome crystallography.

Yonath did her undergraduate studies and earned a master’s degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  She  moved to Weizmann for her PhD, and she did post-doctoral students at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University.

The two students are enrolled in law school courtesy of funds raised by the Canadian Ben Gurion Society (BGS), a young leadership program launched by Jewish Federations across Canada.

“Members of the BGS visited Ethiopia and Israel in 2006, and on that visit, they saw Ono Academic College and were impressed by the fact that it offers scholarships to Ethiopian students on a higher level than any other college in the country,” says Stephen Gaerber, vice-president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the initiator of this project. “The group was moved by this and the program was begun, to start funding scholarships for academically qualified Ethiopian students to study business and law at the college.”

There are approximately 177 Ethiopian students at Ono Academic College, where the student population is 8,000. A three-year degree costs NIS 28,000. In the two years since this fundraising project began, BGS has funded almost 10 degrees, says Mindy Ecklove, national director of young leadership at the United Israel Appeal.

“Last year we decided to take this project a step beyond the financial, because in Israel, even if you have a degree, it can be hard to get a job without connections,” she explains. “So we started a volunteer-driven internship program in Canada for students.”

In 2008 three students visited Toronto, while this year, two were sent to Vancouver and two to Toronto, the latter from the Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzlia.

As he reflected on his month in Vancouver just days before his return to Israel, Naga said his experience was “excellent. We’ve had a chance to learn from the best, and for me, that meant being around 100 lawyers working together at Lawson, Lundell, Lawon and McIntosh. But also meeting members of the Vancouver Jewish community has changed my perspective,” he said. “People here are more Jewish even than those in Israel.”

Naga said his time with fellow Ethiopian and lawyer Ben Gabriel, as well as Irv Laskin at Lawson Lundell was inspiring. “Seeing the way they think, their approach to problem-solving has been so beneficial, far more helpful than studying legal texts,” he said.

Erez left a small farming village in Ethiopia’s Gondar province at the age of five, and in 1984, was among the first to make Aliya in Operation Moses. He and his family made their way by foot from Ethiopia to Sudan over four months, surviving attacks by bandits and starvation that claimed the lives of many of their fellow travelers en route.

Being the first recruits, they found themselves in absorption centres that were ill prepared for their arrival. But the Naga family forged ahead, found work and settled in their new home. Erez became a sergeant in the Golani combat unit of the Israeli Defence Force, and when he completed his service, traveled extensively in Asia.

His plan is to finish law school and start a business degree at Ono College right away. “We have so many lawyers in Israel that you need something more,” he says. “I’ll practice law initially, but I want to start a business where I am the boss. I don’t want to work for anyone else.”

Truneh says she has always wanted to be a lawyer. “Ono is a prestigious academic college, and this degree will allow me to enter mainstream Israeli society,” she explains. Her move from Ethiopia to Israel came a decade after that of Erez, in the 1994 Operation Solomon. She spent a year in an immigrant absorption centre, served in the army and worked in a variety of jobs before starting her studies.

“I’m so thankful to the organizations that have funded my studies,” she says earnestly. “What they’re doing by giving us education is a great thing, and we pass it forward by mentoring new Ethiopian immigrants and acting as role models. I want to thank those organizations for helping us realize our dreams and encourage them to continue doing what they do.”

Naga agrees. “Many Vancouver Jews I’ve spoken to feel bad about not being in Israel, but they need to understand that they’re doing great things from here,” he says. “They’re defending Israel from here, giving us a voice, and the country needs that. Vancouver’s Jewish community should feel good, because they’re doing a fantastic job here.”

If you are a fan of Sesame Street (and who isn’t, really?!), then you will definitely enjoy a new 12-part series, scheduled to come out next year called “Shalom Sesame.”

Aimed at teaching Jewish children about Jewish culture, the always loveable globe-trotting Muppet Grover will travel to Israel on his latest adventure.

But he is not travelling alone.  Hollywood names such as Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Stiller and Christina Applegate, to name a few, will also be in the Holyland to be part of this great Sesame adventure.

Watch for it on store shelves ahead of Hanukka in December 2010!

AP Story