Just before the first Passover, over 3,500 years ago, Moses demanded of the Egyptian Pharaoh to “Let my People Go”. I’m sure that today Moses would be proud of the lengths to which the modern Jewish nation goes in order to benefit humanity.
By: Michael Ordman
Israeli scientists are constantly going where no one has gone before. Researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have gone deep into the behavior of a mutant gene to discover a new molecular mechanism that governs how neuro-degenerative diseases such as ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) attacks motor neurons. They have gone even further and identified that the protein MIF inhibits this mechanism. Meanwhile, Israel’s BrainTech 2015 Conference has brought top international brain technologists to Tel Aviv to learn about the latest innovative ‘brain initiatives’ going on around the world. And would you like to know what is going on in someone’s brain? Well the winning project at this year’s Brainihack in Tel Aviv, Israeli-developed Emochat, used an Israeli Neurosteer Brain Computer Interface device to interpret another person’s emotions based on their brain activity.
In other parts of the body, Israeli scientists have engineered tiny robots to enable cancer-killing drugs to go directly to a tumor. And two Israeli companies, Vectorious Medical and SHL Telemedicine are going forward with their systems that go over wireless networks to perform remote monitoring of heart patients.
Israel’s humanitarian workers go to any lengths to save lives. The surgeons of Israel’s Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) regularly go into action to treat sick children from Syria, Iraq, or Jordan. And every Tuesday Palestinian Arab children from Gaza and Judea & Samaria arrive at Israel’s Wolfson medical center in Holon for treatment and check-ups by SACH doctors. Then, whenever a natural disaster strikes citizens of a far away country, the Israeli organization IsraAID is always one of the first to go to their aid. Residents of the tiny islands of Vanuatu called the Israelis “a light unto the nations” as IsraAID distributed over 40 tons of rice, flour and drinking water to residents of the Tongoa and Mataso islands that were devastated by Cyclone Pam.
Israel is going from strength to strength as its next generation follows in the footsteps of its Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Twelve Israeli teenagers won the top prizes in the Intel-Israel Young Scientists Competition in Jerusalem. Their projects covered medicine, mathematics, linguistics, music, anthropology and satellite technology. All twelve will go to the finals in Pittsburgh and Milan and receive academic scholarships. And Israel’s Center for Educational Technology has been going into the classroom to enroll hundreds of Israeli middle and high schools in the biggest computer-programming contest in Israeli history. Students can win a share of prizes totaling NIS 100,000 by writing computer code using CodeMonkey – an Israeli interactive computer game.
Israeli entrepreneurs and innovators have gone far and wide recently:
– To Barcelona, where crowds flocked to the Israel pavilion at the Mobile World Congress to see the innovative Israeli products and apps on show.
– To New York, where around 250 Israeli startups and leading investors are taking part in the Israel Dealmakers Summit, which this year focuses on digital media, cleantech, Web infrastructure, medical equipment, big data and cloud computing.
– Into orbit, where Israel’s Intelescope Solutions is transforming the forestry industry, using drone and satellite imagery to produce an accurate inventory of forests in the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, India, and China.
– Into kids educational games, where the 350 games developed by Israel’s TabTale have been downloaded 600 million times.
– And into social enterprises, where Impact Investing Israel has organized Israel’s first Impact Investing Conference to motivate investors and startups to go and develop real tangible and measurable benefits to mankind.
Israelis go out of their way to help others. On Good Deeds Day, which this year was on 24 March, a record number of Israeli volunteers joined in 10,000 projects, such as going in to neighborhoods to clean up nature parks and beaches, to distribute food to the needy and to go and help the handicapped and disadvantaged. And as we go into the season of our Freedom, 110 Ukrainian Jews made their Exodus to Israel in a special refugee rescue flight sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
To finish, here is a video of Technion’s go-getting engineering students going speedily through a “moving” account of the Passover story.
Finally, please go and try out IsraelActive.com – my brand new on-line database of positive news stories from Israel. Now anytime you wish you can go and search easily through 7000 news articles about the beneficial work that Israel is doing on almost every subject and in every part of the world.
Here in Israel, it’s all go!
Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.
www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
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