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Antisemitism Worldwide Report for 2023

Written by Hilary on . Posted in Newsroom.

Concern for the Future of Jewish Life in the West

The Annual Antisemitism Worldwide Report, published by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), reveals that 2023 saw an increase of dozens of percentage points in the number of antisemitic incidents in Western countries in comparison to 2022. A particularly steep increase was recorded following the October 7 attacks, but the first nine months of 2023, before the war started, also witnessed a relative increase in the number of incidents in most countries with large Jewish minorities, including the United States, France, the UK, Australia, Italy, Brazil, and Mexico. 

“October 7th helped spread a fire that was already out of control,” states the Report.

Link to the full report

Countries recording steep increases

According to the Report, in New York, the city with the largest Jewish population in the world, NYPD recorded 325 anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2023 in comparison to the 261 it recorded in 2022, LAPD recorded 165 in comparison to 86, and CPD 50 in comparison to 39. The ADL recorded 7,523 incidents in 2023 compared to 3,697 in 2022 (and according to a broader definition applied, it recorded 8,873); the number of assaults increased from 111 in 2022 to 161 in 2023 and of vandalism from 1,288 to 2,106. 

Other countries also saw dramatic increases in the number of antisemitic attacks, according to data collected by the Report from governmental agencies, law enforcement authorities, Jewish organizations, media, and fieldwork. 

In France, the number of incidents increased from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023 (the number of physical assaults increased from 43 to 85); in the UK from 1, 662 to 4,103 (physical assaults from 136 to 266); in Argentina from 427 to 598; in Germany from 2,639 to 3,614; in Brazil from 432 to 1,774; in South Africa from 68 to 207; in Mexico from 21 to 78; in the Netherlands from 69 to 154; in Italy from 241 to 454; and in Austria from 719 to 1,147. Australia recorded 622 antisemitic incidents in October and November 2023, in comparison to 79 during the same period in 2022.

 

Antisemitic incidents increased also before October 7th

While the dramatic increases in comparison to 2022 largely followed October 7, the Report emphasizes that most countries with large Jewish minorities saw relative increases also in the first nine months of 2023, before the war started. For example, in the United States, ADL data (based on the narrower definition for antisemitic incidents) point to an increase from 1,000 incidents in October-December 2022 to 3,976 in the same period in 2023, but also to an increase from 2,697 incidents between January-September 2022 to 3,547 in the same period in 2023 (NYPD registered a decrease in that period, while LAPD an increase). 

In France, the number of incidents during January-September 2023 increased to 434 from 329 during the same period in 2022; in Britain – from 1,270 to 1,404. In Australia, 371 incidents were recorded between January and September 2023, compared to 363 in the same period in 2022. On the other hand, Germany and Austria, where national programs for fighting antisemitism are applied, saw decreases.

Prof. Shavit: “Concern that the curtain will descend on Jewish life in the West”

According to Prof. Uriya Shavit, Head of The Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute, “The year is not 1938, not even 1933. Yet if current trends continue, the curtain will descend on the ability to lead Jewish lives in the West – to wear a Star of David, attend synagogues and community centers, send kids to Jewish schools, frequent a Jewish club on campus, or speak Hebrew”.

Shavit said: “With bomb threats against synagogues becoming a daily occurrence, Jewish existence in the West is forced to fortify itself, and the more it does so, the more the sense of security and normalcy is undermined. What the fight against antisemitism needs now is efforts focused on the hubs of poison, and the presentation of measurable and attainable goals. Foremost, the reality in which big companies make big money by spreading big hate has to end”.

Prof. Shavit added: “The reality is that Israel, as a state, is limited in what it can do for Jewish communities. But even the little that can be done is not done. Israel does not have a meaningful strategic plan for combatting antisemitism that is based on the needs of Jewish communities. The main contributions of the government are pompous statements and sporadic initiatives. Responsibility for combatting antisemitism should be delegated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose officials are professionals who know the Jewish communities firsthand. The Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism is redundant. A small example of just how much so: A few months ago, we noted in another report that the link provided on their website in English for reporting antisemitic incidents leads to an empty page. It made headlines in the media. And what happened? Nothing. No one bothered to fix it. It still leads to an empty page. There are no limits to the negligence and lack of professionalism”.

According to Prof. Shavit, “one of the biggest challenges of our time is how to mobilize support for the fight against antisemitism without making it the definer of Jewish identity”. 

 

Prof. Uriya Shavit.

ADL Head Greenblatt: “A Tsunami of Hate”

ADL’s CEO and National Director, Jonathan Greenblatt, said: “The aftermath of Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel on October 7th was followed by a tsunami of hate against Jewish communities worldwide. Unprecedented levels of antisemitism have surged globally in the streets of London, New York, Paris, Santiago, Johannesburg and beyond. This year’s report is incredibly alarming, with documented unprecedented levels of antisemitism, including in the US, where 2023 saw the highest number of antisemitic incidents in the US ever recorded by ADL. We are proud to partner with Tel Aviv University on this important annual report which will be used to inform governments and civil society and help push back against antisemitic trends”.

In a special essay for the Report, Greenblatt wrote: “Antisemitism isn’t just an abstract issue. It is a real-life threat to Jewish life in America and Jews around the world, and our history teaches us that we do not have the luxury to be indifferent when moments like these occur. That means we need to be clear-eyed about the threats we face and have the determination to confront them”.

An Emergency Plan by former Canadian Justice Minister

Former Canadian Justice Minister and Attorney General Irwin Cotler offers in the Report a historical and political analysis of the development of present-day antisemitism and a detailed 11-point plan for globally combatting the phenomenon. Cotler warns that “the explosion of antisemitism is a threat not only to Jews, but is toxic to our democracies, an assault on our common humanity, and a standing threat to human security – in a word, the bloodied canary in the mineshaft of global evil. Jews alone cannot combat it, let alone defeat it. What is required is a constituency of conscience – a whole of government, whole of society commitment and action to fight this oldest and most lethal of hatreds”. 

The 150-page Report includes in-depth essays on different countries, as well as a study on the profiles of the spreaders of antisemitic content on X (formally Twitter). The essays examine, among other issues, the proliferation of antisemitic discourses in the Arab world, Turkey, and Iran following October 7 and trace their roots. The Report argues that “any future diplomatic negotiations must prioritize the uprooting of antisemitism from Arab societies”.

“The fringes encroach on the political center”

The Report notes that hate speech was articulated already before Israel launched its campaign in Gaza, including on leading university campuses, and thus urged against seeing the recent wave of antisemitism as an emotional response to the war. “Some antisemitic attackers emphasize their problem is with Israel, not with Jews, and then attack Jews and Jewish institutions.” 

Dr. Carl Yonker, Senior Researcher and Project Manager at the “Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry,” TAU, who wrote a study for the Report on antisemitism in the United States, said: “Contrary to the conventional wisdom, post-October 7 incidents were also led from the far right in America. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and others glorified Hamas and used the war to spread antisemitic propaganda along with conspiracy theories, according to which the crisis will advance the replacement of the white majority in the West by migrants from the Middle East. The fringes in the United States are encroaching on the political center from both right and left, making combatting antisemitism much trickier”.

Scapegoating Jews in Russia

The Report notes the impossibility of reliably tracking antisemitic incidents in Russia at the present. An extensive essay in the Report examines the antisemitic rhetoric of the Russian dictator Putin and members of his regime. The Report notes that “At the beginning of 2023, the Chief Rabbi of Moscow in exile, Pinchas Goldschmidt, warned that Jews should leave Russia before they are scapegoated. Sadly, 2023 did not disprove the words of this wise and courageous religious leader.”

On the part of Tel Aviv University, the Report was researched by the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry with the support of The Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation and the Irwin Cotler Institute for Democracy, Human Rights and Justice with the support of Richard and Elaine Dubrovsky and Sara Vered. 

See full Report here

The Center for Russian Studies at Tel Aviv University has begun its work

Written by Hilary on . Posted in Newsroom.

The “Chubays Project” at TAU turned out to be scientific, it will deal with the history of Russia to study its future

The Center for Russian Studies (CRS) at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University has begun its work. On April 16, there was a presentation of the launch report of the new center – Russian Future Initiative. Contrary to its name, the project appears surprisingly non-political. In order to talk more or less seriously about Russia’s future, CRS intends to deal with the recent history of Russia – economic, political, social, and cultural. The period that interests CRS is from 1991, when the collapse of the USSR occurred and Russia appeared as a separate state, to the present day.

In Russia and Israel, the media has already reported that one of Israel’s universities intends to create a CRS on the funds of Israeli and Russian sponsors-entrepreneurs. Anatoly Chubays, a well-known Russian reformer and former Russian government vice-premier, as previously reported by JP, repatriated to Israel in May 2022. However, the assumptions that a think tank would be created in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Beersheba to prepare scenarios for new reforms in the so-called “post-Putin” period were unfounded. The CSR presentation was purely academic, and Anatoly Chubays is only mentioned as the organizer of the group of sponsors of the new center, whose task is a comprehensive study of Russia’s possible future based on the analysis of the events of its recent past.

Social Sciences Instead of Futurology

In Israeli social science, there are already several centers studying Russia, including on the TAU Faculty of Social Sciences and other faculties. Israeli historians, economists, sociologists, culture experts, and specialists on Jewish community life in Russia and the former USSR are well-known in professional circles and in Russia and the world. Academic science in this sense has no boundaries; Russian Studies have been widespread since the 1950s, the beginning of the “Cold War,” primarily in US and European universities. However, CRS is likely the only Israeli scientific center currently studying the last 30 years of Russian history. As it became clear during the presentation, working on these topics between Russia’s history and the present will be more scholars involved in contemporary research than historians – part of them will work in Tel Aviv, part in Russia and Europe. For example, Victor Vakhshtayn, a sociologist and former dean of the Sociology Faculty at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, will continue his research in the field of social capital studies within the CRS project. Alexander Baunov, a political scientist and author of the popular 2023 book “The End of the Regime: How Three European Dictatorships Ended,” currently working and the Berlin Carnegie Center and as visiting researcher at the Florence University Institute, will continue his research on the structure of Russian elites. Dmitry Butrin, an economist and economic editor of the Moscow “Kommersant,” is an economist in the CRS project. Finally, from Moscow, within the CRS project, cultural studies of Russian culture will be conducted by literary scholar Alexander Arkhangelsky, who continues his work on a series of Russian documentary films.

Over the five years that the CRS initiative is planned, it is assumed that other researchers from Israel, Russia, and other countries will join – the authors of the initial report hint that representatives of other social sciences, such as international relations, may also be involved. The main idea of the research, however, primarily involves working together among CRS staff and working within interdisciplinary research. As the center’s staff explains, which, as it turned out, has been working at TAU’s Faculty of Social Sciences under the leadership of professor Itai Sened since February, the latest Russian history now looks quite unusual in scientific description. There are several “histories of Russia” since 1991, almost none of which are related to each other. One is the history of changes in Russian society at the elementary level. Several others are different parts of the economic histories of the huge populated country, which has appeared as a successfully reforming economy, a backward world gas station, a kingdom of state capitalism, and a battleground for warring oligarchs and siloviki since 1991. Finally, there is the history of the transformation of Russian culture in all its layers – from the return of religion to it to new cults of strength and aggression.

These parts are challenging to reconcile with each other even in publicist descriptions. However, the declared task of CRS is to approach the possibility of “understanding Russia” in its new form in a purely academic sense. In this model, the “cultural” component will not contradict the “political,” and social development will not contradict the economic. CRS assumes that this is the only way to speak reliably about what can and cannot happen to Russia in the foreseeable future because, at least since 2012-2014, forecasts about what would happen in Moscow even next year have usually turned out poorly. And the war with Ukraine, the political protests of 2012, and the current economic upswing have become unexpected for researchers.

However, the same, emphasize the researchers of CRS, can now be said about any other country in the world – quick and bright forecasts, let alone politically engaged ones, attract attention but are just as quickly forgotten. In any case, part of the political sector of neither Israel nor Russia will become the “Chubays Center” in such a composition and with such a research program. However, Tel Aviv University is getting new research team whose answer to the question “What is happening in Russia?” may be more fundamental than before.

How Do We Commemorate the Holocaust in 2024?

Written by Hilary on . Posted in Newsroom.

A Graduate of the Digital Media Track Created A Video Game Based on His Grandfather’s Survival Story During the Holocaust as A Child.

 

 

Ohad Tadmor, a graduate of the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television and a digital media track alum, created a video game that not only entertains but also educates players about his grandfather’s Holocaust survival. This innovative approach revitalizes the crucial mission of transmitting Holocaust memory to new audiences.

“I wanted to create a game that I would want to play, experience, and be moved by.”

Ohad, tell us about the idea of turning your grandfather’s story into a computer game.

“As a third generation Holocaust survivor, the subject very present in our family. The story of my grandfather, Abraham Hertzock, may he rest in peace, who survived the Holocaust alone as a child in the forests of Czechoslovakia, seemed like a suitable and unique template for a game that combines history, creativity, fear, danger, and courage. It has all the elements of a good story and in my opinion, a good story is one of the most meaningful factors in video games. Despite the sensitivity of the topic, I wanted to use this medium to bridge the gap in Holocaust remembrance among younger generations.”

 

Ohad and his grandfather, Abraham Hertzock, may he rest in peace.

Which tools did your Film and Television degree, especially the Digital Media program, bring to your creative process?

“Throughout my life, I’ve been playing video games, but I never created one. During my studies, I immersed myself in game development software. We learned techniques in areas such as coding, animation, 3D modeling, lighting, and stage design, which helped me independently build the framework for an experience and understand how a general video game system operates.

 

“The narrative aspect was very important to me, and thankfully, during our studies, we also received personal guidance in developing a script for our creations. It was challenging because, unlike in films, a video game is interactive, and I had to think about how to adapt personal narratives into a unique interactive experience.”

Who’s the game’s main audience?

the game is in actuality aimed towards girls and boys aged 12 and up who are into story-driven video games. But I can say that a lot of people with no prior gaming experience got really excited about it.”

Link to the game >>

Do you think children living abroad could also identify with it and enjoy it?

“Of course, many players from around the world have played the game, and the message of resilience and coping resonates universally. Additionally, the game has no text, so it contributes to its accessibility from anywhere and at any age.”

What emotional and gameplay experience awaits players?

“First and foremost, there’s empathy for Emil (our avatar), along with feelings of fear, danger, creativity, resilience, and hope. These are the exact emotions I recall feeling myself when I listened to my grandfather’s testimony, and they’re what inspired me to craft this gaming experience. In terms of gameplay, I aimed to create a challenging and true-to-life experience.”

 

A scene from the game ‘Emil: A Hero’s journey’.

Are there parts of Grandpa’s testimony integrated into the game?

“Of course. The fantastical elements are products of our imagination, but many segments of the game are based on his testimony. One example is the gameplay section where Emil has to hide from soldiers’ flashlights while concealing himself in a wheat field. When the Germans came to take his family to the camps, my grandfather, being the eldest among his siblings, leaped from the house window to the wheat field and hid there until they left. That’s how his father found him, believing he could survive on his own.

“Another example is that since there’s no text in the game, I utilized the environment itself to tell the story (Environmental Storytelling). In the forest Emil traverses, you can see scattered Jewish belongings such as suitcases, carts, and photo albums. On one of the albums displayed prominently, you can see the real photos of my grandfather’s lost family – his father, mother, sister, and little brother.”

 

On the right: The Hertzock family, who perished in the Holocaust (Abraham, the survivor, is the rightmost child). On the left: Abraham Hertzog in his youth.

“I believe my grandfather would have been surprised to see a video game tackling this topic… but I think he would have understood that to reach today’s young audience, adaptations in the medium are necessary.”

Was the animation process of the child mainly technical, or did emotions take over?

“The process was quite complex. Since I wanted Emil’s movements to be authentic and as similar as possible to those of a small, frightened child wandering alone in the forest, we brought an 11-year-old child actor named Yoav to portray Emil. Training Yoav on the character and his story, and on the game itself, wasn’t easy and required a lot of sensitivity, especially when tackling a topic like the Holocaust, and certainly trying to integrate it into an emotional-conscious state that my grandfather experienced. Thankfully, Yoav is a sensitive and talented child, and based on his movements, we created those of Emil’s 3D character.

The music accompanying the game is deeply emotional (string instruments), and actually reminiscent of Holocaust films. How did you caft it? Did you expect it to be Emil’s accompanying sounds?

“The music accompanying the game is something I’m very proud of. I’ve always wanted to be a musician, and I truly believe that music is a significant part of an experience and can convey a lot of emotion. In creating the original soundtrack, I worked with a talented composer named Yotam Aluf, and we discussed the period, the story’s essence, and the important feelings I wanted to emphasize through the melody. Of course, we also referenced a lot of tunes from various genres. Yotam composed and played the soundtrack on the piano, and then we recorded a live cello in the studio to accentuate the string instruments characteristic of Jewish music from that period.

What would your grandfather say if he could see and play the game?

“My grandmother, Devi, my grandfather’s widow, said that Grandpa would have been very proud knowing that his grandson is sharing his story and using it to commemorate the memory of the Holocaust, something he and other children his age endured. Personally, I believe my grandfather would have been surprised to see a video game about this topic, but with a deep and thorough explanation, I think he would understand that to reach today’s young audience, adjustments in the medium are necessary, and as long as it’s done with respect and awareness, it’s a blessing.

Do you have any advice for someone considering enrolling in the Digital Media program?

Since the Digital Media track provides a wide range of tools in a comprehensive way, I would recommend anyone considering enrolling to try and understand what it’s about. Whether they want to specialize or work in it in the future, in combination with cinema studies, this track offers a background and general understanding that can greatly assist in building our world, story, and design of our experience, as well as tools in programming, animation, and creating effects. Moreover, like any degree, I found myself learning and researching many topics independently and not waiting to study them only when required to do so in homework assignments.”

The team that worked with Ohad on this meaningful project:

  • Afik Yairi – Producer
  • Or Hadar – Animation and 3D
  • Nadav Litver – Programming
  • Shachar Amiri – Concept Art
  • Yotam Aluf – Music Composition
  • Naor Hazan – Sound Design

 

Is the Heaviest Black Hole in Our Galaxy Closer Than We Think?

Written by Hilary on . Posted in Newsroom.

Gaia Spacecraft Reveals Massive Black Hole in Milky Way

An international team of researchers, with the participation of researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) led by Prof. Tsevi Mazeh, discovered a star which orbits a black hole 33 times heavier than the sun’s mass, and lies 1500 light-years away from Earth. The black hole, discovered using data from the European Gaia spacecraft, is more than three times heavier than the other known black holes in our galaxy.

The Gaia spacecraft was launched by the European Space Agency in 2013 and has since then been regularly measuring the position and brightness of over a billion stars in our galaxy – the Milky Way galaxy – with unprecedented precision, equivalent to accurately determining the position of a single grain of sand on the moon to the millimeter.

An organization of hundreds of scientists across Europe processes the data coming in from the spacecraft and makes it accessible to the entire scientific community. The research group was led by Prof. (emeritus) Tsevi Mazeh, from TAU’s Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, recently awarded the Israel Prize in Physics for the year 2024. Prof. Mazeh participates in the study of binary star systems discovered using spacecraft data. The research was published in the prestigious journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC

Cosmic Odyssey: Exploring the Depths of the Universe

The large sample of binary stars should also include systems which include a black hole – one of the rarest celestial objects in the universe. The existence of a black hole is one of the most amazing phenomena in the universe, the existence of which was predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity back in 1939.

According to the accepted theory, when the fuel for the nuclear combustion process that takes place in the core of a star runs out, it collapses in on itself, towards its center. If the star is massive enough, all the remaining matter collapses into a single point of infinite density. It is possible, therefore, to see the black hole as the “corpse” of a star that has ended its life cycle and collapsed in on itself. Astrophysicists are still trying to understand the extreme conditions that lead to the collapse of matter into the central point, and therefore every discovery of a black hole is accompanied by enormous excitement among astronomers.

Into the Abyss of the Black Hole

It is very difficult to discover black holes since light cannot overcome the strong gravitational force in its vicinity. When a black hole is in a binary system with a normal star, the motion of the visible star is used to measure the mass of its invisible partner and thus prove that it is indeed a black hole. Indeed, in a matter of just a few years, the Gaia spacecraft has already discovered two black holes.

With the expectation that the data that continues to be collected by the spacecraft will lead to the discovery of more black holes, Prof. Mazeh together with Prof. Laurent Eyer from the University of Geneva established a small team to find black holes using the spacecraft’s data, including scientists from France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Poland and Switzerland. While examining the new data, the team came across a binary system containing a special black hole, the likes of which has never been found before, with a mass of 33 solar masses, around 1,500 light years away from us.

The new black hole is more than three times heavier than any other known black hole in the Milky Way galaxy. The binary system, named Gaia BH3, contains an ordinary star that seems to have formed more than ten billion years ago when our galaxy was still very young. The star orbits the black hole in an 11-year cycle.

Prof. Tsevi Mazeh – 2024 Israel Prize Winner in Physics

At the suggestion of Prof. Mazeh, it was decided to publish the sensational disclosure right now and not wait until the orderly publication of all the systems that were discovered. The entire spacecraft team, including researchers from TAU – Prof. Shay Zucker, head of the Porter School of Environment and Earth Sciences, Dr. Simchon Faigler, Dr. Sahar Shahaf (now at the Weizmann Institute), Dr. Dolev Bashi (now at the University of Cambridge), Avraham Binnenfeld (research student) and Oded Orenstein (second-year undergraduate student) – are listed as contributors to the scientific article published today which reports on the discovery.

Prof. Tsevi Mazeh: “This is an exciting discovery of the heaviest black hole in a binary system known today in the galaxy. About thirty years passed from the first hypothesis of the existence of a black hole until the discovery of the first black hole, and more than fifty years passed before we were able to discover Gaia BH3 – the binary system with the longest cycle known today. It is amazing how humankind manages to navigate the vast expanses of the universe and discover such mysterious objects. I am convinced that the discovery will lead to a new mode of thinking regarding the presence and prevalence of the black holes that cruise through the expanses of our galaxy.”

Heart Disease’s Cancer Link Unveiled

Written by Hilary on . Posted in Newsroom.

A Recent TAU Study Exposes the Connection Between Heart Disease and Cancer

Researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Leviev Cardiothoracic and Vascular Center at the Sheba Medical Center have found a mechanism that is responsible for increasing the risk of developing cancer among patients with heart disease: those small extracellular bubbles, or vesicles (sEVs), that are secreted from the sick heart to heal itself are released into the bloodstream – and promote the growth of cancer cells throughout the body. The researchers estimate that the important discovery may improve the protocols for treating heart disease so that clinicians also consider the increased risk of cancer. The study was funded by the Israel Cancer Association and the Israel Science Foundation.

The research was conducted under the leadership of Prof. Jonathan Leor from the Neufeld Cardiac Research Institute, Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences at Tel Aviv University and the Taman Institute at Sheba’s Leviev Center and his student Tal Caller, a medical and research student at Tel Aviv University’s School of Medicine. The research was published in the important medical journal Circulation.

Heart Disease’s Silent Hand in Cancer’s Rise

Caller explains: “In 2013, the Israeli cardiologist Tal Hasin showed for the first time that there is a connection between heart failure and cancer. Patients with heart disease are at a higher risk of developing cancer, and since heart disease is already a leading cause of death–first place in the US and second place in Israel – that means that many people are at risk. Our research revealed that the diseased heart secretes cancer-promoting factors, which we identified as small extracellular vesicles (sEVs). These are tiny particles wrapped in a simple membrane, which all cells secrete, However, due to heart damage, these vesicles are released in greater quantities and contain factors related to inflammation, healing, growth, creation of new blood vessels, and changes in the immune system. These vesicles move through the circulatory system and eventually reach the tumor or the pre-cancerous tissue”.

Caller adds, “Following an injury in the heart muscle and deterioration to heart failure, sEVs containing growth factors and small nucleic acid molecules that promote cell division are released. These sEVs contribute to the healing of the injured cardiac tissue. However, released from the injured heart, those vesicles move within the body’s circulatory system, eventually targeting cancerous growths”.

Prof. Jonathan Leor: “Many theories have been proposed to explain the increased risk of cancer in heart patients. They started with shared risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, and obesity and ended with a single protein or molecule. We showed for the first time that the diseased heart secretes sEVs that contain thousands of different growth factors. These bubbles directly promote the growth of certain tumors and also modulate the immune system, making the body more vulnerable to tumor growth”.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers at TAU inhibited the formation of sEVs in animal models with heart disease and found that the risk of cancer decreases along with the inhibition of vesicle production. However, this is not a viable therapeutic option since inhibiting the production of the vesicles causes severe undesired side effects.

Disrupting Cancer’s Path

Prof. Leor: “When you systemically inhibit the formation of sEVs, you get less cancer – but you cause collateral damage along the way. That is why we tried a different strategy: treat the patient’s heart to reduce the damage to the cardiac tissue so that it secretes fewer sEVs. We used spironolactone, which is a well-known, old, and effective drug used to treat heart failure. We treated the animals with spironolactone at a very early stage of the disease and found that the heart secreted 30% fewer sEVs– and the cancerous tumors grew more slowly. Our experiment shows that it is possible to intervene in heart disease in a way that reduces the risk of cancer among heart patients”.

As for the clinical implications of the study, Caller is careful in his words: “It may be necessary to adjust the existing treatments for the heart so that they also consider the risk of cancer. In addition, it is possible to find biomarkers among heart patients that will indicate an increased risk of cancer since not all patients are at an increased risk. This is basic research, and much work is still required to unravel the connection between the two”.

Moshe Bar-Haim, CEO of the Israel Cancer Association, adds: “Thanks to public donations and designated funds, the research committee of the Israel Cancer Association examines and selects dozens of studies every year and funds researchers and doctors from research and treatment centers across Israel. From these studies, new methods were developed for the diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of cancer patients. Research has no territorial boundaries, so every achievement in research here in Israel is an achievement for the entire world. We hope that the new research – that reveals that because of heart diseases, extracellular bubbles are secreted and increase the risk of cancer – will allow for immediate application in Israel and around the world for the benefit of accurate treatment for patients”.

Berlin Architecture Workshop Unites Jewish and Arab TAU Students

Written by Hilary on . Posted in Newsroom.

Fourth-year students explore architecture together

Every year, Eran Neuman, professor of architecture at Tel Aviv University (TAU), takes the fourth-year students in his design studio to a different world city for an architecture and urban design workshop. This year, the trip almost didn’t happen, however the students had different plans. “I thought the students wouldn’t want to go, especially with everything going on, but it really came from the students,” reflects Neuman. “They said, we want to go – it’s tough times, but it’s important for us and we want to go.”

A Week in Berlin

And so, at the beginning of March, and with the support of The Lowy International School, Neuman took 14 of his students with him on a one-week trip to Berlin, where they toured some of the most well-known architecturally designed buildings, went to museum and art exhibits, and met with local architects and architecture offices – including the office of Diébédo Francis Kéré, the famed Burkinabé-German architect and winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize (often referred to as the Nobel prize for architecture).
 

Neuman in Berlin with two of the students from the TAU design studio.

However, the trip was also special for an entirely other reason: Neuman’s design studio at TAU is made up of approximately half Arab students and half Jewish students. “For the most part, they work perfectly together; all-in-all they are students who want to come and study,” says Neuman.
“They care about getting a good education and they leave politics and what’s going on in the region outside the classroom.”
At the same time, with all the heightened tension in the region since October 7, Neuman was still a bit anxious about whether there would be any strain during the Berlin workshop. “You can’t totally avoid the politics, because this is part of our reality,” says Neuman.

A Platform for Coming Together

However, instead of tension, Neuman says he found a group of students – half Arab, half Jewish – who were keen to listen to one another and be open with one another, especially as they grew more relaxed as the trip went on. “When they did talk about politics, they were open and respectful and they acknowledged each other and each other’s suffering,” he says.
“We told them, it’s in your hands to make this place livable and they completely accepted it – that there are two nations living here and that we have to learn to live together and next to one another.”
On the final day, after dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, the students even decided to go to a club together, where they asked the DJ to put on Arab and Israeli music.
“They went together with each other, Jewish and Arab, accepting each other’s culture and being together … I came back really optimistic from the workshop.”—Eran Neuman.
Gal Wiesman, a fourth-year student who attended the Berlin workshop, agrees. “It was a great trip,” she says.
“I think it was extremely refreshing to go … and during the trip we created a special bond, and it’s made us all closer since then.”—Gal Wiesman.

 

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Email: [email protected]

New South Wales

Level 22, Westfield Tower 2, 101 Grafton Street, Bondi Junction NSW 2022
Phone: +61 418 465 556
Email: [email protected]

Western Australia

P O Box 36, Claremont,
WA  6010
Phone: :+61 411 223 550
Email: [email protected]