Grapevine December 13, 2024: A boy at last

Early in the Bible, God blesses Noah and his sons and tells them to be fruitful and multiply. For all that, Judaism does permit birth control, but in religious circles only after both genders are represented in first-degree offspring.

Golan Regional Council head Ori Kallner happily welcomed all his children when they were born. But one suspects just a little bit more so the most recent, who is a boy. The baby’s five siblings are all girls. That doesn’t mean that the baby boy is the last in the tribe – but it means that if they so desire, his parents can stop reproducing.

■ EVEN THOUGH a shocked Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged, after inspecting the burnt-out ruins of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, that the Australian government would help restore it, the congregation has nonetheless launched an international fundraising appeal calling for donations to rebuild it.

The appeal poster includes before and after photographs. In the before photograph, young boys can be seen in the large crowded synagogue studying together with adult men. In the after photograph, all that can be seen is devastation. The difference between the two, with one placed on top of the other, is painfully dramatic in its contrast.

■ AT A ceremony in the Knesset this week, Knesset Speaker MK Amir Ohana (Likud) presented the Jabotinsky Prize for Liberty to Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders, who heads the largest political party in the Netherlands. The prize was in recognition of his support for Israel.

The event was held in the presence of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli; Innovation, Science, and Technology Minister Gila Gamliel (Likud); other members of Knesset; and Shomron Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, who earlier in the day accompanied Wilders on a tour that included a security observation point overlooking the Shomron Mountains, and cities in central Israel.

In expressing his appreciation for the award, Wilders said, “This is not the time to be silent, but to stand up and support Israel. After the October 7, 2023, massacre, where 1,200 innocent Jewish lives were lost, the world was shocked, but as so often, unfortunately, only for a short time, after which too many countries, politicians, and institutions like the UN and the ICC started bashing Israel for rightfully defending itself and its people against an existential threat.

“You deserve our full support, for you are also fighting our fight against the evil forces of terror from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. As I always say and will say, if Israel falls in the war against these evil powers, the West will be next.

“The main reason I am here today is to show you my full and never-ending support. To show you that there are also political leaders in Europe that are not afraid to come here and say out loud, here and in Europe, very clearly, that we will never, ever abandon you and we’ll always be at your side.”

In exploring what drives the hatred of Israel, Wilders said: “I’m afraid it’s the Jew-hatred of radical Islamists, fanatics, but don’t forget – it’s also the self-hatred of woke Westerners who no longer believe in fighting for the truth. I can never repay the Jewish people and the State of Israel [for] what they have given to me, and that is the best example ever of patriotism and courage.” Wilders concluded his remarks in Hebrew, saying, “Am Yisrael Chai.”

“This award is a fitting tribute to a man who, for so long, embodied Jabotinsky’s courage and conviction,” said Ohana. “He has confronted the lies propagated by institutions like the ICC, which distort justice and reward terror. In America, we are seeing [President-elect Donald] Trump assemble a dream team. Geert brings that same optimism to Europe, where it is needed even more.”

■ LATER IN the week, Ohana was equally happy to greet Santiago Pena, the president of Paraguay, who came on an official visit to Israel to reopen his country’s embassy in Jerusalem. It had previously been transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but then was moved back again by Pena’s predecessor in office.

Israel had previously closed its embassy in Paraguay for economic rather than political reasons, and it was Ohana who reopened it in September of this year following a fresh spurt of support for Israel in Latin America.Although Paraguay is a relatively small country with a population only two-thirds the size of Israel, the vote of every member state of the United Nations counts, and so does the presence of every embassy in Jerusalem because each signifies recognition of Israel’s capital.

■ IT ALWAYS pays to have more than one profession up your sleeve so that if you can’t get a job in one, you can try for something in the other. Aside from giving you more options, it gives you more contacts, friends, and acquaintances, and a broader range of experiences.

Real estate developer, entrepreneur, film and television producer Yaki Reisner also happens to be haredi (ultra-Orthodox), which means that he has relatives, friends, and acquaintances on both sides of the divide of religious observance. They showed up en masse at the Hilton Tel Aviv to join him and his wife, Tovi, in celebrating the bar mitzvah of their son Amitai.

The Reisners spared no expense in decor, fine food, and entertainment. Among the guests were Niv Sultan, whose third season as the star of Tehran is currently screening on Channel 11. She came with her husband, Maor Schweitzer. Also present were film producer and cinema owner Moshe Edery and actor Yehuda Levi, among many other well-known personalities.

■ HEADS OF state do not always agree with the governments and parliaments of their countries or even with the majority of the population. We have seen this in Israel, where President Isaac Herzog spoke out against judicial reform, consistently reiterated his call to bring home the hostages now, and emphasized the importance Jewish tradition places on the redemption of prisoners taken captive by an enemy.

The same goes for certain academic institutions.

Despite increasing academic boycotts against Israel in Belgium, The King Baudouin Foundation has awarded the prestigious Rousseeuw Prize in Statistics to Israeli researchers from Tel Aviv University.

The award ceremony was held at the Catholic University of Leuven, where students are demanding that all ties with Israeli academic institutions be severed.

The recipients of the awards were: Prof. Yoav Benjamini, Prof. Daniel Yekutieli, and Prof. Ruth Heller from the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at TAU for their pioneering work on the False Discovery Rate (FDR). The $1 million prize, established as an equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which does not include mathematical disciplines, recognizes outstanding contributions in statistics that profoundly impact science and society.

Outside the building in which the ceremony took place, students distributed flyers advocating a comprehensive boycott, similar to the policies adopted by other Belgian universities.

In his acceptance speech, Prof. Benjamini emphasized the importance of science as a bridge between societies. He called for the preservation of scientific collaborations, avoidance of boycotts, and protection of science from political interference. He also shared the story of the brutal kidnapping and murder of family friend Carmel Gat, noting the ongoing protests in Israel in support of a deal to release hostages and end the war, so far to no avail.

The prize was awarded to the researchers for their work enabling the scanning of numerous experimental results to identify meaningful findings while limiting the number of false discoveries. Their work has extended the applicability of the Benjamini-Hochberg FDR approach beyond the original paper, enabling its use for challenges in genomics and neuroscience and proposing methods to assess the reproducibility of scientific findings.

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