One of four new I-CORE initiatives for BGU researchers
Ben-Gurion University has been awarded a prestigious Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE) for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters, as part of the Israeli government initiative to encourage stellar research. This is the first such center to be led by BGU and one of four in which BGU researchers will participate announced this month. The three other I-COREs will be headed up by other universities in the fields of communications, plant sciences and Jewish culture.
The funds from I-CORE are used to establish the physical infrastructure for research and support the ongoing research. Each I-CORE is for a five year period, with budgets in the tens of millions of shekels. The government, through the Council for Higher Education, funds roughly two thirds and the university must allocate the remaining third.
Prof. Chaim Hames, Chair of the Department of General History, as the winner of the I-CORE tender, will head the new center, the first to be based at BGU. The scientific committee includes BGU’s Dr. Ephraim (Effie) Shoham-Steiner of the Department of Jewish History, Dr. Ram Ben Shalom from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Dov Stuczynski from Bar-Ilan University. Other BGU members include Prof. Daniel Lasker and Dr. Avraham Reiner, Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Prof. Yair Neuman, chair, Department of Education, and Dr. Nimrod Hurwitz, Department of Middle East Studies.
“Conversion from one religion to another is a significant moment, not only for the person converting, but also for the religious community abandoned and the one adopted. Historical materials contain records of thousands of inter-religious conversions (individual as well as mass conversions), which when examined using interdisciplinary approaches can shed light on religious, social, political and legal phenomena relevant for understanding how religious communities function, how they deal with questions of identity and belonging and how and why they erect boundaries. Conversion can also illuminate the internal politics and structures of a religious community, how they interact with those perceived as ‘others’, as well as the dynamics of minority-majority cultures living side by side,” explains Hames.
One of the major projects includes the creation of a database (the first of its kind) that will attempt to record every known instance of conversion during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period from one religion to another. These materials will be translated into English as well so that the database will be useful for those without the linguistic training necessary to read the primary sources.
“The data collected by members of the Center with the active cooperation of an international group of scholars will be digitalized and made available for anyone interested. The end result will be a powerful fully searchable online reference tool which can then be used by scholars to compare and relate to a wide range of issues dealing with conversion. The immediate and major contribution of the database will be in allowing us to learn more about the socio-economic status of the converts, their professions, their educational and cultural background; to discover whether gender is a leading factor in conversion; patterns of individual conversion and the conversion of whole communities; whether more people convert in an urban setting or in the countryside; and the familial ties and relations between proselytes and their previous co-religionists,” he continues.
BGU researchers are partners in three additional I-COREs.
Learning in a NetworKed Society (LINKS): Co-creation of Knowledge in Technology-Enhanced Communities of Learning
Prof. Nelly Elias, chair, and Prof. Amit Schejter of the Department of Communications, and Dr. Iris Tabak of the Department of Education, will be partners in a University of Haifa based I-CORE “Learning in a NetworKed Society (LINKS): Co-creation of Knowledge in Technology-Enhanced Communities of Learning.” Schejter is a member of the scientific management committee. The goals of the LINKS I-CORE are: (a) to develop a unified theoretical framework that will explain and substantiate learning processes in technology-enhanced communities; (b) to incorporate these insights into the design of open-source technology-enhanced learning environments that will improve education from early childhood to adulthood; and (c) to develop a set of guidelines to support policy-makers in decisions that will provide all citizens with 21st century skills, and eventually lead to social enhancement and economic growth of Israeli society. To meet these goals, three central research areas regarding learning in technology-enhanced communities that are expected to have the greatest potential to produce novel outcomes were identified: (a) ways in which shared knowledge and understanding develop in technology- enhanced communities; (b) ways in which technology-enhanced communities build shared practices, norms and regulations; and (c) ways in which technology can foster learning within and between a diversity of people from various sectors of society.
Elias will examine the ways minority youth explore diverse social, linguistic, cultural and knowledge resources through their use of media technologies, while comparing between three minority groups (immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and Bedouin) and native-born Israeli-Jewish youngsters. She will explore online practices of minority students across local and transnational environments in the context of a networked society where knowledge is mediated through various digital networks. Tabak will draw on literature reviews and empirical studies to re-formulate the construct of context so that it better applies to the study of online communities. Part of her research will analyze the use of online resources for health care decisions. Schejter's proposed research project aims to develop a novel theoretical framework for providing access to information and communication technologies to disadvantaged population groups with unique educational needs. To that end, he will explore the causes for and the nature of the educational digital divide in Israel; examine the educational needs of marginalized and excluded communities, and analyze how they can be met with the use of different technologies; and design policy interventions that will address the educational essentials of the needy. He will collaborate with an Israeli mobile operator to develop a virtual infrastructure that will allow him to follow the use that distinct population groups with unique information needs make of different mobile ICTs: smartphones, tablets and laptop computers.
Comprehensive understanding and modeling of plant responses to multiple abrupt abiotic stresses and to prolonged climatic changes
Prof. Dudy Bar-Zvi of the Department of Life Sciences is a member of the scientific management team of an I-CORE entitled “Comprehensive understanding and modeling of plant responses to multiple abrupt abiotic stresses and to prolonged climatic changes.” This center, headed by Prof. Hillel Fromm from Tel Aviv University, is a joint program of researchers from Tel-Aviv University, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, BGU and The Weizmann Institute of Science. Prof. Moshe Sagi of the French Associates Institute for Agriculture & Biotechnology of Drylands of Ben-Gurion University is also a member of this center.
Being sessile organisms, plant species can adjust, to a limited extent, to novel conditions by phenotypic plasticity through appropriate stress-response mechanisms, or by adaptation through trans-generation natural selection. Understanding these mechanisms is required to develop plants that will cope better with harsh environments and to cope with the threats of climate changes. The Center will provide novel insights into how plants cope with prolonged climate change and transient stress situations, and will reveal rules and genes underlying developmental plasticity and trans-generation adaptation. These will assist in laying the foundations for a holistic vision of plant behavior, and models with reasonable predictability in the face of climate change.
“The Center brings together internationally recognized Israeli plant biologists to coordinately decipher the mechanisms underlying short- and long-term adaptation to abiotic stresses. The research will span studies from the single molecule, through cellular structures to whole plant behavior at the experimental and virtual levels,” according to Bar-Zvi.
’Da'at Hamakom’: Center for the Study of Cultures of Place in the Modern Jewish World
Prof. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin and Prof. Haviva Pedaya of the Department of Jewish History will be partners in a Hebrew University-based I-CORE “’Da'at Hamakom’: Center for the Study of Cultures of Place in the Modern Jewish World.”
At the center of the approach to Modern Jewish Culture is the spatial dimension in all of its connotations. It was once common to assert that Jewish culture was characterized by its portability, abstractness, and lack of grounding in any given physical space. Jewish "space" was acknowledged, if at all, as the self-segregation of the "ghetto." Since then, an entire generation of scholars, both in Israel and abroad, has argued that Jewish cultures are closely intertwined (in the plurality of their symbolic systems and practices) with specific locales where they are produced or consumed. Today it becomes necessary to re-define cultures of "place" as a focal point in understanding Jewish life and culture. How has the relation between "place" and "Jewish culture" changed in light of the vicissitudes of the 20th century and the creation of a Jewish homeland?
"Place" is a strategic master key with which to explore the tensions that characterize Jewish culture in modernity, namely, between the sacred and the secular, the local and the global, the historical and the virtual, Jewish culture and other cultures. Notions of "place" have always permeated Jewish life and consciousness, but they have taken dramatic turns in modern times, particularly in light of modern processes of mass Jewish migrations and the inner "migrations" of Jews between different language communities.
The Center’s study includes the boundaries crossed and the routes traveled in reality and in the imagination, in language and spirit. Above all, cultures of "place" in Jewish modernity express different understandings of such core conceptual constructs as Zion, Diaspora, "home," "exile," and "belonging."
