Conference Circuit

This year's Herzliya Conference is officially part of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Sunday, January 20 THE EIGHTH Annual Herzliya Conference, entitled Balance of Israel's National Security, and coordinated by The Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya's Lauder School of Government, will be held from Sunday to Wednesday. The theme for this year's conference will be "Israel at 60: Tests of Endurance." It will also include subjects relevant to the global impact of events taking place in Israel and throughout the Middle East. Among the topics to be tackled are: Beyond Bali: Climate Change and National Security; Energy Security and Policies - National and International Contexts; From the Outside Looking In: International Perspectives on the Middle East; Preventing a Nuclear Iran; Beyond Annapolis: Risks and Opportunities in the Final Status Negotiations; and Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and the Jewish People. This year's Herzliya Conference is officially part of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations. As such, the first day of the conference will be held in the Knesset, with nearly all of the speakers being Israeli. Among the confirmed guests for this day are: President Shimon Peres, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and former president of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak. The remaining three days of the conference will be held at the Daniel Hotel in Herzliya as in previous years. The final day will include the "Herzliya Address" delivered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Registration is mandatory for those who want to participate in the conference. THE SHALOM Hartman Institute will host a five-day international conference on theology, bringing together leading Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians for a week of tripartite dialogue and interreligious study. This year's conference will address the notion of family in the three faiths - as value, as religious metaphor, as resource and as challenge. In the Hartman Institute's continuing exploration of challenges that are significant to the three religious communities, albeit often in quite different ways, the conference will focus on family, which is swiftly emerging as one of the primary challenges of modernity to traditional modes of religious thought and practice. Monday, January 21 WHEN BEAUTY meets Science, the conference of the international cosmetics industry, will be held at the Avenue Conference Center in Airport City. Participants will represent some 100 cosmetics companies from abroad and 50 from Israel. There will also be academics who are engaged in the science of beauty and representatives of retail outlets for cosmetic products. A DISCUSSION in Hebrew on "The concept of human dignity in German law" will be held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 4.30 p.m. at the Maiersdorf Faculty Club, Mount Scopus campus. It is under the auspices of the Minerva Center for Human Rights and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, in cooperation with Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer from the HU Faculty of Law and former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. For more details call (02) 588-1156, or e-mail mchr@savion.huji.ac.il PROF. MOSHE Maoz will lecture in Hebrew on his book The Shiite Crescent: Myth and Reality. The lecture will be held at noon in the Abba Eban Hall, Ground Floor, Truman Institute, HU Mount Scopus campus. It is under the auspices of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace. For more details call (02) 588-2329. Tuesday, January 22 THE TWO-DAY European Commission-Israel Seminar on the Fight Against Racism, Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism, held in conjunction with the Foreign Ministry and Yad Vashem, will open at the Foreign Ministry at 8.30 a.m. Participation is by invitation only. The seminar brings together 30 education experts from across Europe for in-depth discussions on how to combat racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. The opening session will be addressed by Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism Isaac Herzog and Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini. THE INTERNATIONAL Institute for Counter-Terrorism will host a symposium on The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaida. Participants include Dr. Jerrold M Post, director of the Political Psychology Program, professor of psychiatry, political psychology, and international affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University; Prof. Ariel Merari, member and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University and director of the Political Violence Research Unit; and Dr. Boaz Ganor, founder and executive director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. The event will begin at 10 a.m. at The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Kanfei Nesharim Street, Herzliya, Arison, Lauder Building, Room A316. Reservations: (09) 952-7277. KIVUNIM (directions) 2008, a conference on capital markets and corporate governance will be held at Prime Sagol, Gan Oranim, in the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds from 8.30 a.m. The conference is geared toward survival and improvement of performance in London Markets and attracting UK investments. Speakers will include Manufacturers Association of Israel president Shraga Brosh, Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, British Ambassador Tom Phillips, Lord Mayor of the City of London David Lewis, Lloyds chairman Sir Victor Blank, BATM Advanced Communications chairman Zvi Marom, London Stock Exchange senior manager Graham Dallas, IBBC chairman Sir Trevor Chinn and others. To register, call: (03) 733-0774 THE DEVELOPMENT of written Jewish Italian during the 16th century is the subject of a lecture in Hebrew by Dr. Michael Razak of the Jewish Language Academy and HU. The lecture will be held at 6 p.m. in the Meeting Room of the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, Room 4121, Humanities Building, HU Mount Scopus campus. It is under the auspices of HU's Center of Jewish Languages and Literature, the Faculty of Humanities and the Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies. Wednesday, January 23 AS A prelude to the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, the Friends of the Hebrew University will host a seminar on the generation of 1948 and The War of Independence. Participants will address issues such as: What became of The Young and the Beautiful? The Generation of 1948? A portrait, a memory, a heritage; the Palmach; the War and its warriors; politics and religion, the "Old Jew" and the "New Jew"; the formation of collective Israeli memory; myth and reality; criminal activity and the War of Independence; the few against the many; the creation of the refugee problem; and the legacy of the Generation of 1948 - Does the "Sabra" still exist? Other related topics will also be discussed. Among the participants will be: Prof. Alon Kadish, Prof. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Prof. Israel Bartal, Prof Daniel R. Schwartz, Prof. Raphael Israeli , Prof. Yechiam Weitz, Prof. Oz Almog, Prof. Maoz Azaryahu, Dr. Mordechai (Mora'le) Bar-On, Dr. Hillel Cohen, Former MK Geula Cohen, Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin, Maj.-Gen. (res.) MK Matan Vilnai, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Dr. Elad Peled, and authors Yoram Kaniuk, Haim Gouri, Didi Manusi, Israel Harel and Rachel Rabin-Jacob. The seminar will be held at Jerusalem's Inbal Hotel. THE PROF. Albert Neuberger Memorial lecture in English will be delivered at 6 p.m. in Room 503 of the Maiersdorf Faculty Club by Prof. David Farrell of the University of Manchester. His topic will be: "If electoral reform is the solution, what is the problem?" Thursday, January 24 THE LAUNCH of the new Yad Vashem Web site in Arabic will be followed by a panel discussion at Yad Vashem at 11 a.m. on "The Holocaust and the Arab World," with the participation of journalist Nazir Majali, Dr. Meir Litvak and Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev, in the presence of Science and Technology, Culture and Sport Minister Ghaleb Majadle. The Web site, www.yadvashem.org http://www.yadvashem.org http://www.yadvashem.org/> >, will include the historical narrative of the Holocaust, concepts from the Holocaust, academic articles, artifacts, maps, photos, archival documents and an on-line video testimony resource center, all translated into Arabic, as well as a special multimedia presentation of the Auschwitz Album, stories of Righteous Among the Nations - including Muslims from Turkey and Albania - and the movie We Were There, which documents a joint visit of Arabs and Jews to Auschwitz. Friday, January 25 BIOENGINEERING ASPECTS of Human Reproduction is the subject of the lecture by Prof. David Elad of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University to the Israeli Friends of TAU. The lecture will be held at 11 a.m in the Cohen-Porter United Kingdom Building of Life Sciences.