Rare coin rediscovered during conservation project of Jerusalem museum tower

(Photo By: Tal Rogovski/Tower of David Museum)

By: Nurit Chinn - March 29, 2021

A box of artifacts was rediscovered during a major conservation project to restore the stones of the “Phasael” tower of the Jerusalem citadel’s $40 million renewal project, the Tower of David Museum said Monday.

Additionally, the team discovered a box of artifacts, originally excavated in the 1980s. Within it, they uncovered a rare silver coin from the Second Temple period  — a “Tyre shekel.”

Two images are imprinted on either side of the coin: On one face is Melqart, the chief god of the Phoenician city of Tyre, and on the other, an eagle.

The coins were struck at some point between 125 BCE and the outbreak of the Great Revolt in 66 CE, when they were used to pay a half-shekel tax. Talmudic sources suggest that the Tyrian shekel was likely the only means of paying the head tax at the Temple for its upkeep.

Read More: Times of Israel

Google taps seasoned Israeli to lead chip-design team

(Photo By: Kazuhisa OTSUBO from Tokyo, Japan via Wikimedia Commons)

By: JNS - March 23, 2021

Google announced on Monday that it’s appointing Uri Frank as vice president of engineering to lead a team developing server chips in Israel.

Google stated that it seeks to develop systems on chip (SoC), where “multiple functions sit on the same chip or on multiple chips inside one package, instead of motherboards,” the Israeli business daily Globes reported.

Frank had just been promoted to corporate vice president of the design and engineering group at Intel.

“Uri brings nearly 25 years of custom CPU design and delivery experience, and will help us build a world-class team in Israel,” said Google, according to the report.

Read More: JNS

Israel Climbs To 12th Spot In World Happiness Report 2021

(Photo By: Screenshot)

By: NoCamels Team - March 21, 2021

Israel climbed to the 12th rank in the latest annual United Nations World Happiness Report for 2021, up two spots from the 2020 survey released last year just as the coronavirus pandemic was gaining speed across the world.

The country ranked 13th in the 2019 World Happiness Report and 11th in 2018, a rank it held consecutively for five years previously. It improved its position in the annual survey in 2021 amid a world-leading COVID-19 vaccination campaign that has seen over half of Israel’s population fully inoculated so far and despite three nationwide coronavirus lockdown and an upcoming national election this week, its fourth in two years.

The World Happiness Report, produced by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), ranks countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be according to six key variables: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption.

Read More: NoCamels

Cyprus to allow Israelis in starting April 1; Greece lifts cap on visitors

(Photo By: AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis)

By: TOI Staff - March 23, 2021

Two Mediterranean nations are opening up to Israelis, with Greece removing its tourist cap and Cyprus announcing it will begin welcoming Israeli travelers without quarantine starting April 1.

Cyprus declared in a press release Tuesday that fully inoculated tourists or those with negative coronavirus tests will be able to freely enter the country no need to quarantine.

“Prepare the beaches, hotels and restaurants for Israelis waiting to return and visit Cyprus,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi told Cypriot counterpart Nikos Christodoulides, in reaction to the agreement. “Your recognition of the ‘Green Pass’ will open the skies and restore widespread tourism soon.”

The deal with Cyprus was made a month ago, when its President Nicos Anastasiades visited Israel. The travel agreement was intended as a step toward restoring tourism in both countries — sectors that have been hit hard by the year-long pandemic.

Read More: Times of Israel

Israeli company claims oral COVID-19 vaccine on its way

(Photo By: INGIMAGE/ASAP)

By: Maayan Jeffe-Hoffman - March 22, 2021

An Israeli-American pharmaceutical company is preparing to launch a Phase I clinical trial for what could become the world’s first oral COVID-19 vaccine.

Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc., a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company based on technology developed by Hadassah-University Medical Center, announced over the weekend a joint venture with India-based Premas Biotech to develop a novel oral vaccine. Together they formed the company Oravax Medical Inc. The vaccine is based on Oramed’s “POD” oral delivery technology and Premas’s vaccine technology.

Oramed’s technology can be used to orally administer a number of protein-based therapies, which would otherwise be delivered by injection. Oramed is in the midst of a Phase III clinical trial through the US Food and Drug Administration of an oral insulin capsule for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

Premas has been working on developing a vaccine against the novel coronavirus since March.

Read More: Jerusalem Post

Israeli teen outstanding player in US Wheelchair Basketball Championship

(Photo By: USTA/Courtesy)

By: Josh Aronson/Maariv - March 23, 2021

Amit Vigoda, 18, from Omar, starred in the US College Wheelchair Basketball Championship. Vigoda, who lost his leg when he was 11, was chosen as MVP (Outstanding Player) in the tournament after he scored 24 points in the finals against an Alabama college. In the semi-finals, the Israeli teen scored 30 points, half the points of his team.

Vigoda's leg was amputated after he was born with a rare disease, but that didn't stop him from playing for ILAN Spivak Ramat Gan and Israel's team. Six months ago, he was signed by a Texas team.

"This was one of the most challenging years of my life in all respects," Vigoda said. "To move to a strange county, with a different language and new team, and learn how to be responsible and independent. 

"My team and I brought everything we had to the court from the start of the season, and like they say, hard work pays off," he said. "In the finals, we played together without an ego, we worked one for the other, and that's earned us the win and the ability to bring the championship back to UTA after three years."

Read More: Jerusalem Post

Israeli and Emirati companies sign deal to bring greentech innovation to region

(Photo By: Wikimedia Commons)

By: Eliana Rudee - March 19, 2021

In the footsteps of the Abraham Accords, a recently signed partnership between two Israeli and Emirati entities aims to bring greentech innovation to the Gulf region and to Israel.

The deal between Gulf-Israel Green Ventures (GIGV) and the UAE’s United Stars Group aims to expand people-to-people, business and economic cooperation through the exchange of green technologies—solutions that promote sustainability by mitigating the negative environmental impacts of development. These include reducing the use and depletion of resources through water recycling, energy-efficient buildings and renewable energy.

Initial sustainable development projects, according to GIGV, will focus on reducing emissions while building more environmentally friendly economies and societies. In light of explosive growth in submarkets in the Gulf, the partners have already begun work on several large projects. The development of commercial and residential real estate on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai is but one project in progress for which the two companies are looking to integrate technologies that will make it more energy-efficient, including through the use of renewable energy. The companies are also examining projects in sectors as diverse as hotels and shipping to power plants.

“Israel is known for its cutting-edge startups in many fields, including greentech,” United Stars group founder and president Omar Al Suwaidi told JNS. “We have had our eye on Israeli greentech and cleantech technologies for quite some time and looking for a partner with deep expertise in this sector in Israel,” he explained. “The leadership of the UAE, through such strategic plans as UAE Vision 2021, UAE Centennial 2071 and the UAE Environment Plan, has set clear and courageous goals for making the UAE a leader in sustainability and green technology will play a major role in achieving these goals.”

Read More: JNS

Archaeology in Israel is more exciting than ever before

(Photo By: Yaniv Berman/IAA)

By: Herb Keinon - March 20, 2021

‘Archaeology in Israel is a popular movement,” Amos Elon wrote in his 1971 book The Israelis: Founders and Sons. “It is almost a national sport. Not a passive spectator sport but the thrilling, active pastime of many thousands of people, as perhaps fishing in the Canadian Lake Country or hunting in the French Massif Central.”

Those words, published a half-century ago, reverberated this week as dramatic archaeological finds hit the front pages of the newspapers, and squeezed into prime-time television and radio news shows.

While it has been a long time since one could honestly say they felt that same fervor for archaeology among the masses as Elon described, the fact that the media did devote so much attention to these findings on Tuesday – in a week dominated by political news – indicates that the embers still burn from the country’s once great passion for excavations.

On Tuesday, the Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced a trove of finds from a wide-scale archaeological operation ongoing since 2017 in hidden caves in the Judean Desert, in cooperation with the Civil Administration’s Archaeological Department.

Read More: Jerusalem Post

University of Texas passes resolution to adopt IHRA anti-Semitism definition

(Photo By: Blanscape/Shutterstock)

By: Shiryn Ghermezian - March 16, 2021

The student government at the University of Texas at Austin unanimously passed a resolution on March 9 urging the school to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

Resolution A.R. 09 calls on UT’s student government to do three things: commit to better address anti-Jewish sentiments on campus; adopt the IHRA definition for anti-Semitism; and issue “a pledge of support for better Jewish inclusion and protection.”

The resolution was penned by UT student Jordan Cope.

University enrollment exceeds 50,000 students with Jewish students comprising around 7 percent of the UT undergraduate body.

Read More: JNS

Israeli Researcher Co-Leads Global Study To Predict Snakebites, Saves Lives

(Photo By: Shantanu Kuveskar)

By: Viva Sarah Press, No Camels - March 18, 2021

Every year, some five million people will suffer snakebites, about 100,000 will die from the toxic venoms and some 400,000 people will undergo amputations and other permanent disabilities as a result of snakebite envenoming, according to World Health Organization statistics. Now, an international group of scientists and researchers say they’ve created a simulation model for predicting snakebites that could lead to reducing snakebite cases. 

“The model can be used as a warning system to say when and where there’s high risk for snake bites, which is something that doesn’t really exist right now,” Eyal Goldstein of the School of Zoology at Tel Aviv University, a co-lead author of the study, tells NoCamels. “We’re the first to offer this kind of scientific development.”

While in many parts of the world snakebites are barely even acknowledged, in South Asia it is a serious problem, even a daily concern, and boasts the highest incidence of venomous snakebites in the world, according to the recent study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Read More: NoCamels

Are the newest Dead Sea Scrolls just the beginning?

(Photo By: Hadar Yahav)

By: Rossella Tercatin - March 18, 2021

Hundreds of caves in the Judean Desert are still left to explore, offering a concrete possibility that new biblical texts will emerge, Israel Antiquity Authorities researchers said a day after it unveiled the first such discovery in over 60 years.

“The rescue operation is continuing,” said Dr. Eitan Klein, deputy director of the Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Looting at the IAA. “So far we have covered some 60% or 70% of the relevant area, which means that we still have about 40 km. of desert left. I believe there is work for another two or three years.”

Conducted by the IAA in cooperation with the Civil Administration’s Archaeology Department, the initiative launched in 2017 employs drones and mountain-climbing equipment to reach remote and inaccessible hollows.

Some 600 caves have already been surveyed and hundreds more are awaiting, Klein explained.

Read More: Jerusalem Post

Israel Declares Most Beaches Restored Following Massive Oil Spill

(Photo By: Reuters/Amir Cohen)

By: Israel Hayom / JNS.org - March 17, 2021

Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry on Wednesday announced the lifting of the state of emergency declared last month due to a massive oil spill off the country’s Mediterranean coast.

Intensive clean-up efforts have restored 82 percent of the country’s 101 official beaches to usable condition, the ministry said in a statement. Sixty-one percent of all beaches, both official and unofficial, are clean or lightly polluted, 36 percent suffer from low- to mid-level pollution and only 3 percent are “significantly” polluted, according to the ministry.

“After an especially intense month, we are moving to the next stage and continuing to support coastal authorities in their work to clean and remove the tar to allow the beaches to be fully cleaned,” said Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel.

Read More: Algemeiner

Saving the Red Sea’s coral reefs by building fake ones

(Photo By: Marcin Czerniawski/Unsplash)

By: Paul Driessen - March 16, 2021

Israel’s bustling city of Eilat, at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba and Red Sea, is renowned for beaches, hotels and one of the world’s northernmost coral reefs.

Magnificent, colorful, diverse corals, sponges, giant clams, fish and other marine life make these reefs a national and world treasure. Barely 40 feet offshore and only five miles long, the reefs link with Egypt’s reefs along the Sinai Desert to the south and lie just miles from reefs off Aqaba, Jordan to the east.

But Eilat’s corals are being loved to death.

Over 60,000 city residents join hundreds of thousands of tourists every year from Israel, Europe, the United States, newly friendly Middle Eastern countries, and beyond. The new Eilat airport could bring even more, once Covid travel restrictions ease.

Pre-Covid, the reefs were already hosting over 350,000 scuba dives and many more snorkeling visits annually. Even careful visitors take a toll, and some aren’t careful or are just clumsy novices.

Read More: Israel21c

Bible scroll fragments among dazzling artifacts found in Dead Sea Cave of Horror

(Photo By: Eitan Klein/Israel Antiquities Authority)

By: Amanda Borschel-Dan - March 16th, 2021

In a stunningly rare discovery, dozens of 2,000-year-old biblical scroll fragments have been excavated from Judean Desert caves during a daring rescue operation. Most of the newly discovered scroll fragments — the first such finds in 60 years — are Greek translations of the books of Zechariah and Nahum from the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets, and are written in two scribal hands. Only the name of God is written in Hebrew in the texts.

The fragments from the Prophets have been identified as coming from a larger scroll that was found in the 1950s, in the same “Cave of Horror” in Nahal Hever, which is some 80 meters (260 feet) below a cliff top. According to an Israel Antiquities Authority press release, the cave is “flanked by gorges and can only be reached by rappelling precariously down the sheer cliff.”

Along with the “new” biblical scroll fragments from the Books of the Minor Prophets, the team excavated a huge 10,500-year-old perfectly preserved woven basket — the oldest complete basket in the world — and a 6,000-year-old mummified skeleton of a child, tucked into its blanket for a final sleep.

Read More: Times of Israel

Israeli national rugby team to compete against UAE in first ever match

(Photo By: Yariv Veinberg/Courtesy)

By: Tobias Siegal - March 15, 2021

The warming relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have seen many historical collaborations in a variety of fields ever since the Abraham Accords were signed in August last year.

Now, rugby is joining the historical list of exciting collaborations between Israelis and Emiratis - creating exciting new opportunities for rugby fans in both countries.

Israel's national Olympic rugby team departed Ben-Gurion Airport Monday night toward Dubai for a joint training camp with the UAE's national rugby team ahead of the European Rugby Championship Cup, starting June 19.

On March 19, the teams will meet at Dubai's Rugby Park in the city's Sports City, for the first ever friendly match between Israeli and Emirati national teams in any sport.

Read More: Jerusalem Post

6-year-old Ethiopian boy successfully undergoes heart surgery in Israel

(Photo By: Save A Child’s Heart)

By: Idan Zonshine - March 15th, 2021

Six-year-old Biniyam Tesfahun Maru of Ethiopia successfully underwent a life-saving open-heart surgery at the Sylvan Adams Children's Hospital at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon on Sunday evening, a spokesman for the Israeli NGO Save a Child's Heart (SACH) told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Dr. Lior Sasson, head of the Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Unit at Wolfson and the surgeon that operated on Biniyam, told The Jerusalem Post after the surgery that "We are very glad that Biniyam was brought to us in time to fix his heart defect, save his life and enable him to grow up like all other children."

After all but a select few flights to Ben-Gurion Airport were grounded in January due to the emergence of alarmingly infectious new variants of COVID-19, SACH was able to arrange for Biniyam to fly to Israel on a special Jewish Agency immigration flight so he could receive treatment for a life-threatening cardiac defect on February 12.

Read More: Jerusalem Post

Israel, Cyprus, Greece to link power grids via undersea cable

(Photo By: Twitter)

By: JNS - March 9, 2021

Israel, Cyprus and Greece on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding regarding a project to link their power grids via the construction of the world’s longest and deepest undersea power cable.

The project, called the “Euro-Asia Interconnector,” will help Israel build on more options for renewable energy, contribute to energy security and reduce energy prices, said Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz at the signing ceremony in Nicosia.

Steinitz called the MoU “great news for the citizens of Israel,” according to a ministry statement.

Read More: JNS

Israeli trumpeter’s unique East-West sound wins jazz prize

(Photo By: Aviram Valdman)

By: Abigail Klein Leichman - March 9, 2021

Israeli trumpeter Itamar Borochov and Immanuel Wilkins of Philadelphia recently won 2020’s two LetterOne Rising Stars Jazz Awards, besting more than 700 candidates and winning the services of a professional team to arrange their appearances at seven leading international jazz festivals.

That is, when jazz festivals resume. The Covid-19 pandemic temporarily silenced these popular events and led to Borochov’s return to Israel after 14 years honing his talent in New York.

Now 37, he has created a hybrid between the Mideast-North African sounds of his Jaffa childhood and the classic jazz exemplified by Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

Read More: Israel21c

Israeli boy finds biblical-era figurine in the Negev

(Photo By: Oren Shmueli, Israel Antiquities Authority)

By: TOI Staff - March 9, 2021

An 11-year-old boy discovered a rare figurine from around 2,500 years ago during a family hike in the south of Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday.

The figurine, depicting a bare-breasted woman wearing a scarf, is an amulet that was believed to protect children or increase fertility.

The authority said that only one similar example, also from the northern Negev Desert, has been previously found and is now housed in the National Treasures collection.

Zvi Ben-David from the southern city of Beersheba was on a family trip to Nahal Habesor a few weeks ago when he found the figurine. His mother, a professional tour guide, realized the significance of the discovery and contacted the IAA.

Read More: Times of Israel

Story of Israeli, Iranian judokas’ friendship on its way to TV

(Photo By: Courtesy PR)

By: Jessica Steinberg - March 2, 2021

The story of the friendship between Israeli and Iranian judo world champions Sagi Muki and Saeid Mollaei is being developed for television by Israel’s Tadmor Entertainment and MGM.

The series will tell the story of the two judokas, who have reportedly become fast friends since Iran ordered Mollaei to forefit the semifinal at the 2019 Tokyo World Judo Championship so as not to compete against Israeli athlete Muki in the finals.

Mollaei then fled to live as a refugee in Germany. He recently participated in the Grand Slam international judo competition held in Tel Aviv, making headlines for his warm relations with the Israeli athletes.

Read More: Times of Israel