Israel Institute for Advanced Studies

This week's Featured Fellow is Sina Rauschenbach, a Professor for Religious Studies and Jewish Thought at Universität Potsdam, and a member of the Research Group, "New Christian and New Jewish Discourses of Identity between Polemics and Apologetics". We spoke to Sina about Conversos, the "New World", and Jewish Suriname…

"My favourite spot in Jerusalem is the reconstruction of the Surinamese Zedeq we-Shalom synagogue in back corner of the Israel Museum. Over the last few years, I have begun to work on Jewish thought in colonial Suriname. I had always seen photos and shown them to my students, but I was overwhelmed when I first saw the synagogue in the museum. It is so similar to the Amsterdam Esnoga, and at the same time, so different. This is exactly what fascinates me when studying Caribbean Jewish history."

Read the full interview here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/featured-fellow-sina-rauschenbach

Last week, over 70 mathematicians came together from across the world for the 23rd Midrasha Mathematicae, on O-Minimality and its Applications in Diophantine Geometry and Hodge Theory! The participants enjoyed lectures and mini-courses from top professors in the field, and had the chance to network with fellow students and faculty members.

Watch the lecture recordings here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTn74Qx5mPsSOLPXxXr1UjYaT93Ng-Xta

This week's Featured Fellow is Edward Breuer, a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an IIAS Individual Fellow. We spoke to Edward about biblical criticism, its reception in modern Jewish history, and kayaking…

"Many assume that traditional Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries stood in opposition to biblical criticism, and that those who sought to reform Judaism, or those who began to espouse a Jewish nationalism that turned its back on traditional Judaism, were more open to it. But the historical picture is more complicated, more nuanced, and far more interesting."

Read the full interview here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/featured-fellow-edward-breuer

This week's Featured Fellow is Rakefet Ackerman, an Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and co-organizer of our Research Group, "Meta Reasoning: Concepts, Open Issues and Methodology". We spoke to Rakefet about meta-reasoning, leaving hi-tech, and the dangers of digital technology…

"Participants received identical tasks, learned texts or solved problems, either on computers or printed on paper. Overall, we found robust screen inferiority across tasks and populations. Screen inferiority means not only lower scores in the task, but also larger overconfidence and less effective time management on screens than on paper. We also found that this screen inferiority did not lessen with technological advances and the population acquiring digital-oriented habits, but actually increased along the examined years. This finding is highly worrisome, as it might suggest that younger generations do not develop or do not apply effective thinking strategies when working in digital environments, despite their daily use."

Read the full interview here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/featured-fellow-rakefet-ackerman

This week, we held the First Meta-Reasoning Conference, organized by IIAS Research Group: "Meta Reasoning: Concepts, Open Issues and Methodology"!

Meta-reasoning research focuses on the metacognitive processes which accompany reasoning and problem solving, and this conference was a novel opportunity for meta-reasoning researchers to come together to share their findings and discuss future directions in the field.

Read more about the Research Group here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/meta-reasoning

Only one week left to apply for the 5th Advanced School in Computer Science and Engineering on AI for Better Medicine! 💊

15-19 January 2023

This Winter School will bring together top researchers to present the opportunities and challenges of the intersection between AI technologies and medicine, and will include interactive sessions, panel discussions, and networking opportunities!

Apply here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/5th-cse-school
Deadline to apply: 30 November 2022

We are delighted to announce the 2022 Michael Bruno Award laureates:

Michal Feldman, Department of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University | אוניברסיטת תל-אביב
Rotem Sorek, Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science
Nachum Ulanovsky, Department of Brain Science, Weizmann Institute of Science

This prestigious award seeks to identify and honor three outstanding Israeli young scholars every year who symbolize not only the excellence of scholarship but who also possess the leadership that has the potential to impact on academic life in Israel, beyond their specific fields of research.
Congratulations to all the laureates on this well-deserved accolade!

Last week we hosted the reunion conference of the 2018-2019 Research Group, 'New Directions in the Study of Javanese Literature'! The conference was a great opportunity for the Research Group members to reconnect and discuss the progress they have made in their research. The conference included a launch event of the Research Group's publication "Reading Javanese Literature: New Directions", recently published in Wacana: Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia.

Read more about the Research Group here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/New-Directions-in-the-Study-of-Javanese-Literature

Are you a scholar looking to enrich your research with fresh perspectives? If you seek the opportunity for full-time research with collaboration from fellow scholars, apply now to form a Research Group for the 2024-2025 academic year. You can find out more information here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/rgopencall

Apply now for the 5th Advanced School in Computer Science and Engineering on AI for Better Medicine!

15-19 January 2023 at the IIAS

Healthcare and medicine are undergoing a rapid and radical transformation. Technological breakthroughs increasingly allow for high-resolution medical history and measurements – including detailed records of blood works, indications and drug purchases, detailed imaging, molecular profiles of DNA, RNA, and proteins, and dense temporal behavioral and physiological recordings — generating a deluge of data on each patient. Still, medical research and medical practice are struggling to handle this wealth of information, and how to exploit it for a better understanding of disease and to improve medical practice.

Part of the solutions to better use these masses of data are based on the rapidly evolving disciplines of AI and data science. Automation is clearly the only viable way to scale data “mining” of such amounts of diverse data.

The emerging interface between AI and medicine poses unique challenges and opportunities. This one-week Winter School will bring together top international researchers to present the current state of the field and discuss emerging future directions. The program will include tutorials, hands-on sessions, panel discussions, and multiple opportunities for networking between students and faculty.

Apply here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/5th-cse-school
Deadline to apply: 30 November 2022

Don't miss your chance to apply for the 23rd Midrasha Mathematicae, on O-Minimality and its Applications in Diophantine Geometry and Hodge Theory!

The Midrasha will be held at the IIAS on 11-15 December 2022. Click here for more details, and to apply: https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/23rd-midrasha

What a week! Last week we hosted the 28th Advanced School in Life Sciences on Novel Roles for RNA in Biology and Therapy, and had a packed week full of lectures from international speakers, panels, poster sessions, and a one-day conference with the Israeli RNA Society. The school was a fantastic opportunity for scientists at all stages of their career to learn from each other, network, and discuss ground-breaking research.

We are sorry to update that Prof. Robert Newman's lecture this Wednesday, 2 November has been cancelled, as Prof. Newman is unwell. We wish Prof. Newman a speedy recovery, and hope to welcome you all at the IIAS for another event soon!

Only one week left to apply for the 38th Advanced School in Theoretical Physics, on Quantum Field Theory and String Theory in the Times of COVID!

The school will be held at the IIAS on 27 December 2022 – 5 January 2023. Click here for more details, and to apply: https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/38th-physics-school

Application deadline: 31 October 2022

In one month, Robert D. Newman, director of the National Humanities Center, will be delivering a public lecture at the IIAS!

The lecture will be on "The Fluttering Heart of the Matter: An Activist Agenda for Revitalizing the Humanities" – an essential lecture for anyone concerned about the future of the humanities as a discipline.

The lecture will be at 5pm on Wednesday, 2 November, and is open to all. Click here for more details, and to register: https://iias.huji.ac.il/Public-Lecture-Newman

Applications are open for the 6th Advanced School in the Humanities, on the Crusades and the Societies of the Latin East!

The School will be held on 28 May – 2 June 2023 at the IIAS. Topics will include:
🔹 New angles on the cultural history of Frankish settlements in the East
🔹 Crusader cities in a Mediterranean context
🔹 Immigrant societies compared
🔹 The integration of archaeological data and texts
🔹 Biographies, politics, and the (re)construction of historical identities
🔹 Crusades studies and diversity

Click here for more details, and to apply: https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/6th-humanities-school
Application deadline: 2 January 2023

All of us at the IIAS wish you a Shana Tova - Happy New Year!

Last week, we had our first conference of the academic year: 'Liturgy and Religious Culture in an Age of Transition: The Gellone Sacramentary (Paris, BnF lat. 12048)', organized by our very own Director, Prof. Yitzhak Hen, and Prof. Charlotte Denoël from BnF - Bibliothèque nationale de France. The conference brought together scholars of early medieval history to explore in depth the Gellone Sacramentary, a late 8th century illuminated manuscript.

Applications are open for the 23rd Midrasha Mathematicae, on O-Minimality and its Applications in Diophantine Geometry and Hodge Theory!

The Midrasha will be held at the IIAS on 11-15 December 2022. Click here for more details, and to apply: https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/23rd-midrasha

Only 4 days left to apply for the 28th Advanced School in Life Sciences, on Novel Roles for RNA in Biology and Therapy!
23-27 October 2022 at the IIAS

View the full program here: https://bit.ly/3BwfVis
Click here for more details, and to apply: iias.huji.ac.il/event/28th-life-sciences
Application deadline: 15 September

Applications are open for 2024-2025 Research Groups and Individual Fellowships at the IIAS!

View the open call for Research Groups: https://iias.huji.ac.il/rgopencall

View the open call for Individual Fellowships: https://iias.huji.ac.il/open-call-individual-fellowships-2023-2024

Welcome Gail Hareven, this year's Artist in Residence, to the IIAS! Gail is an award-winning author, playwright and columnist, and we look forward to seeing the projects she will be working on this year. Read more about Gail here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/people/gail-hareven

We are delighted to welcome five of our Individual Fellows for the academic year of 2022-23 and wish them a year of enriching and productive research! We look forward to welcoming three more Individual Fellows next semester.

Duke University
University of Oxford
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Technische Universität Berlin
University of Nevada, Reno

We look forward to welcoming our 2022-23 Research Groups in September! Our second Research Group is "New Christian and New Jewish Discourses of Identity between Polemics and Apologetics", organized by Claude Stuczynski (Bar-Ilan University) and David Graizbord (The University of Arizona).

The Research Group will be devoted to the multi-disciplinary study of how and why New Christians (Iberian Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants who were living as Christians) as well as New Jews (New Christians who adopted normative Judaism, mostly in the Western Sephardi Diaspora) understood (1) their own identities, (2) Jewish and Christian identities in particular, and (3) identity in general.

This will be a unique occasion to bring together scholars from the fields of Iberian studies (Spain, Portugal and the Iberian colonies) and Jewish studies, medievalists and early-modernists, historians and literary scholars, to map, contextualize and understand polemical and apologetic discourses and explore their impact in framing New Christian and New Jewish identities.

Read more about the Research Group here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/new-christian-and-new-jewish-identities

We look forward to welcoming our 2022-23 Research Groups in September! Our first Research Group is "Meta Reasoning: Concepts, Open Issues and Methodology", organized by Rakefet Ackerman (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology) and Valerie Thompson (University of Saskatchewan).

Metacognitive processes accompany people’s thinking while investing mental effort towards achieving their goals (e.g., making decisions, learning, solving problems). Metacognitive monitoring reflects feelings of (un)certainty about how well a particular thinking process progresses. Research has demonstrated that monitoring guides further action, such as acting, thinking further, seeking help, or giving up.

However, there is little research on metacognitive processes involved in higher-order reasoning. Relative to memorizing or retrieving a piece of information, reasoning typically requires more time and effort, and involves a combination of cognitive processes (including memory).

This Research Group will bring together experienced researchers with diverse expertise and a proven track-record in offering out-of-the-box research approaches, to develop concepts, measures, research and research programs for pushing the Meta-Reasoning domain forward.

Read more about the Research Group here: https://iias.huji.ac.il/meta-reasoning

Applications are open for the 28th Advanced School in Life Sciences, on Novel Roles for RNA in Biology and Therapy!

23-27 October 2022 at the IIAS

This Advanced School will feature top speakers responsible for recent ground-breaking developments in RNA-based therapies, and will include entry to the Israeli RNA Society meeting on 26 October.

Click here for more details, and to apply: iias.huji.ac.il/event/28th-life-sciences

Applications have opened for the 38th Advanced School in Theoretical Physics, on Quantum Field Theory and String Theory in the Times of COVID!

This school will take place on 27 December 2022 – 5 January 2023, under the directorship of David Gross (UCSB, KITP), 2004 Nobel Prize laureate in Physics.

Click here for more details, and to apply: https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/38th-physics-school