Humanities

This January 7-9, 2025, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is hosting an international conference celebrating 100 years since the establishment of its Institute of Jewish Studies. The conference, titled “Jewish Studies Between the Past and the Future,” will bring together leading scholars, policymakers, and public figures to reflect on a century of achievements and envision the future of Jewish Studies.

An international team led by Professor Hagai Levine of Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Braun School of Public Health, with Prof. Shanna Swan at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York, along with researchers in Denmark, Brazil, Spain, Israel and the USA, published the first meta-analysis to demonstrate declining sperm counts among men from South and Central America, Asia and Africa.

The alphabet was invented around 1800 BCE and was used by the Canaanites and later by most other languages in the world.  Until recently, no meaningful Canaanite inscriptions had been discovered in the Land of Israel, save only two or three words here and there. Now an amazing discovery presents an entire sentence in Canaanite, dating to about 1700 BCE. It is engraved on a small ivory comb and includes a spell against lice.

This first of its kind partnership between Meta and an Israeli university marks a significant step to bring industry-leading Artificial Intelligence research from Hebrew University’s Rachel and Selim Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering to the AI marketplace. 

(Jerusalem, October 26, 2022)--Today, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)’s School of Engineering and Computer Science and Yissum, HU’s technology transfer company announced a new research partnership with Meta AI.

The Technion and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have signed a partnership agreement with IBM Research to advance artificial intelligence capabilities and applications in Israel. The collaboration was announced this week at a conference held by IBM in Tel Aviv to mark 50 years since the establishment of the IBM Research Lab in Israel.

A $650,000 grant from The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation will support a new partnership between UCLA and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) focused on developing school violence prevention strategies that turn campuses into safe and welcoming places for children worldwide.

When it comes to the world’s climate, in the past decade, planet Earth keeps sending us its summer siren’s call. According to NASA, nineteen of the hottest years have occurred since 2000, with 2016 and 2020 tied for the hottest on record. This summer is already making worldwide headlines, with England scorching beyond 40 degrees Celsius.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) climbed 13 places to rank 77^th among the world’s top universities and number one in Israel, according to the 2022 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), published today (Monday).  Topping the list were Harvard, followed by Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, and UCLA Berkeley.  Two other Israeli universities placed in the top 100, as well—the Technion and Weizmann Institute both shared the 83^rd spot.  This is a major achievement for Israel’s higher education at large and for Hebrew U., specifically.

From the Middle Bronze Age, Egypt played a crucial role in the appearance of calcite-alabaster artifacts in Israel, and the development of the local gypsum-alabaster industry. The absence of ancient calcite-alabaster quarries in the Southern Levant (modern day Israel and Palestine) led to the assumption that all calcite-alabaster vessels found in the Levant originated from Egypt, while poorer quality vessels made of gypsum were local products.

Back in the day, the Assyrians were one of the Near East’s superpowers, controlling a land mass that stretched from Iran to Egypt. They accomplished this feat with military technologies that helped them win any open-air battle or penetrate any fortified city.  While today, air power and bunker busters help win the war, back in the ninth to the seventh centuries BCE, it was all about the siege ramp, an elevated structure that hauled battering ramps up to the enemy’s city walls and let the Neo-Assyrians soldiers wreak havoc on their enemies.

A recent archeological dig in central Israel unearthed evidence that Homo sapiens, humans that inhabit the earth today, likely lived alongside a group of archaic humans known as the Middle Pleistocene Homo.  This discovery, and the international collaborations that made it possible, provide the first evidence that the two human types lived at the same time and interacted with one another.  Their findings were published today in Science.