Billion Dollars for the Technion

Mimi alerts me to the new level that has been set for a Jewish fundraising goal. This is money that really and truly will help insure the Jewish future:

AMERICAN TECHNION SOCIETY ON HISTORIC QUEST FOR $1 BILLION

The Technion Campus

A recent string of major gifts have helped the American Technion Society (ATS) eclipse its campaign goal for the 1996-2006 "Shaping Israel's Future" campaign to raise $750 million for the Technion. Fueled by this momentum, the ATS -- the leading organization raising funds for education in Israel -- has announced an ambitious plan to raise an additional $250 million over the next three years, transforming the campaign into an historic quest for $1 billion.

The newly announced campaign places the ATS in the rarified company of the 27 major U.S. universities with current campaigns of $1 billion or more (31 universities have completed such campaigns).

"We're delighted to have contributed so much toward the growth and excellence of the Technion," said Joan Seidel, ATS president." But we can't stop now. Israel's future is linked with the Technion. We're committed to ensuring that the Technion reaches even greater achievements."

Prof. Rafi Semiat and student conduct research at the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute

The announcement of the new campaign is especially welcome news to the Technion -- Israel's leading science and technology university. The Technion, like all Israeli universities, faces continuing and severe budget cuts from the government. But because educating students in science and technology is more costly than educating them in liberal arts, the impact of these cuts -- and the subsequent need for additional funding - is greater for the Technion.

"Maintaining a global edge in scientific education and research demands significant investment in recruiting top faculty, attracting the best students, increasing the size of the graduate school, and building sophisticated facilities," said Technion President Prof. Yitzhak Apeloig. "The support of the ATS is crucial to shaping the Technion and Israel into what they are today."

Since the campaign's launch 10 years ago, transforming gifts toward priority projects such as the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute, the Louis and Bessie Stein Food Engineering Complex, the 800-bed Eastern Village Dormitory Complex and the Institute of Catalysis Science and Technology have propelled Israel toward ever-greater scientific achievements -- including the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Over the past six months, notable gifts to the ATS have included:

$30 million to establish the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Graduate School at the Technion. The gift will mean more -- and larger -- fellowships for retaining and teaching graduate students; new multi-disciplinary research programs; and programs for identifying and nurturing outstanding candidates for Ph.D. studies.

Kinneret Keren was a graduate student when she contributed to the Technion's groundbreaking nanotechnology research at the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.

$25 million to establish the Lorry I. Lokey Technion Life Sciences and Engineering Interdisciplinary Research Center, which will make possible the development of new drugs, medical applications and technologies. Prof. Aaron Ciechanover -- one of two Technion professors who received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry -- will direct the center.

An agreement signed by biomedical entrepreneur and philanthropist Alfred E. Mann towards the establishment of an endowed $100 million life sciences/biomedical engineering research institute at the Technion.

"The ATS offers the best way to support 21st Century Israel through partnership in the Technion's world-class excellence, by being part of the thrilling progress in science and technology," said Melvyn H. Bloom, executive vice president of the organization. "It's an exciting opportunity to build an institution and the brainpower that builds the nation. With the unwavering efforts of our dedicated supporters around the country, we will continue to ensure that the Technion fulfills its vital role in Israel's future."

NY Times: Militant Scientists Plot To Wipe Out Religion

Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, warned that “the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief,” or when a Nobelist in chemistry, Sir Harold Kroto, called for the John Templeton Foundation to give its next $1.5 million prize for “progress in spiritual discoveries” to an atheist — Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist whose book “The God Delusion” is a national best-seller.

Or perhaps the turning point occurred at a more solemn moment, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and an adviser to the Bush administration on space exploration, hushed the audience with heartbreaking photographs of newborns misshapen by birth defects — testimony, he suggested, that blind nature, not an intelligent overseer, is in control.

Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told.

Carolyn Porco, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., called, half in jest, for the establishment of an alternative church, with Dr. Tyson, whose powerful celebration of scientific discovery had the force and cadence of a good sermon, as its first minister.

She was not entirely kidding. “We should let the success of the religious formula guide us,” Dr. Porco said. “Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome — and even comforting — than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.”

More...

"The Pope and the Witch": Catholic Bashing Play at Gopher Theater

We believe in free speech. But we also believe in respect for religions. People tend to think that the Twin Cities is made up mainly of scandinavian Protestants. But that is not the case. I believe the Catholic population is about 50%.

So why does a school go out of its way to insult half the people in the neighborhood? And especially today when insulting Islam via cartoons has led to violence and death?

And why allow state funds to underwrite this production?

I am in favor of free speech but I am not in favor of dumb politics and inflammatory actions. The committee that approved this play ought to be disciplined and the director who suggested it ought to be dismissed.

Here is the Star and Tribune story:

The University of Minnesota said Friday that the academic and artistic value of the satirical play "The Pope and the Witch," to be staged in March, is stronger than Catholic claims that it's blasphemous.

Italian Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo's 1989 work, one of several productions in the Department of Theatre Arts this school year, features a paranoid, drug-addled pope, a witch in nun's habit and a chaotic comedy of errors.

Archbishop Harry Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis met last week with university President Robert Bruininks to voice concerns about the play, said university spokesman Daniel Wolter.

Their talk was "a cordial meeting with a cordial outcome," said archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath, who said news and blog accounts have exaggerated the controversy.

"The Pope and the Witch" has a long history of sparking protests. The New York-based Catholic League, whose president, Bill Donohue, calls the play "pure hate speech," has criticized its appearance at theaters that receive public money from the National Endowment for the Arts. Demonstrations have been held at several colleges where the play has been staged.

Colleen Perfect of St. Paul, a representative of Catholic Parents Online, said the group shares Flynn's distress over the play.

"Tolerating this type of hate is giving license to defamation," she said via e-mail. "One can only imagine what kind of upheaval would take place on campus if the U staged a play smearing Mohammed."

Wolter said the university will hold several forums next year that will offer opportunities for debate about the play.

"It's not our role to be a rigid censor; it is also not our intent to offend folks," he said. "But academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas are the hallmarks of higher education."

Director Robert Rosen said he picked the play, which was approved by a department committee, because it's "very topical, addressing issues we see in the newspaper every day -- birth control, abortion, drugs, religion and politics."Part of my job as an artist is to bring the contemporary world to the stage," he said. "A lot of people upset about this play call Fo a Communist, but in reality he managed to anger both the Communist Party and the Italian right wing."

Rosen said the play is not an attack on the Catholic faith but rather "a portrayal of the Vatican's power structure and its ability to make policy that has a worldwide effect."I welcome discussion and debate," he said. "One of the roles of theater is to put things out there for people to think and talk about."

Beautiful Story: Lender to the poor wins Nobel Peace Prize

My grandparents were proud to constantly support Free Loan Societies and other wonderful charities throughout their lives. The recognition of this man Muhammad Yunus and his bank encourages all of us who follow the path of altruism.... What a great story.

Yunus, Grameen Bank win Peace Prize

Since Yunus gave out his first loans in 1974, microcredit schemes have spread throughout the developing world and are now considered a key approach to alleviating poverty and spurring development.

Yunus's told The Associated Press in a 2004 interview that his "eureka moment" came while chatting to a shy woman weaving bamboo stools with calloused fingers.

Sufia Begum was a 21-year-old villager and a mother of three when the economics professor met her in 1974 and asked her how much she earned. She replied that she borrowed about five taka (nine cents) from a middleman for the bamboo for each stool.

All but two cents of that went back to the lender.

"I thought to myself, my God, for five takas she has become a slave," Yunus said in the interview.

"I couldn't understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things," he said.

The following day, he and his students did a survey in the woman's village, Jobra, and discovered that 43 of the villagers owed a total of 856 taka (about $27).

"I couldn't take it anymore. I put the $27 out there and told them they could liberate themselves," he said, and pay him back whenever they could. The idea was to buy their own materials and cut out the middleman.

They all paid him back, day by day, over a year, and his spur-of-the-moment generosity grew into a full-fledged business concept that came to fruition with the founding of Grameen Bank in 1983.

In the years since, the bank says it has lent $5.72 billion to more than 6 million Bangladeshis.

Worldwide, microcredit financing is estimated to have helped some 17 million people.