Elephant skeleton and wildlife forensics on the agenda
Australian Friends of the Hebrew University (AUSTFHU) together with the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), Zionism Victoria and South Caulfield shule hosted the event.
A capacity crowd of Melbourne supporters of the Hebrew University filled South Caulfield shule’s hall recently to listen to eminent Hebrew University Professor Gila Kahila Bar-Gal in conversation with Zionism Victoria executive director Zeddy Lawrence.
Australian Friends of the Hebrew University (AUSTFHU) together with the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), Zionism Victoria and South Caulfield shule hosted the event.
AUSTFHU CEO Rob Schneider spoke about Bar-Gal’s remarkable diversity and mentioned she has speaking engagements at Monash University, the Doherty Institute and RMIT.
Alon Cassuto, CEO of the ZFA, spoke of his longstanding ties with the university as both his parents studied there and he too had undertaken a course.
He passed on greetings from ZFA president Jeremy Leibler who serves on the international board of governors of the Hebrew University.
Zeddy Lawrence, who had researched Bar-Gal’s wide field of endeavour, posed several questions to her relating to areas such wildlife forensics, ancient DNA analysis, and how her expertise in these areas led to her involvement in determining what sort of parchment the Dead Sea Scrolls were written on.
Sadly, Bar-Gal’s unique talents were also employed after October 7 for the purposes of identifying victims of the terrible massacre.
She became quite emotional recounting how she almost broke down when presented with the bones of children. Due to the accelerants used by Hamas in some instances, it was extremely difficult to extract DNA.
The professor and the rest of the forensics team worked tirelessly as they knew how important it was for the family of victims to get closure.
On a lighter note, Bar-Gal also touched on the discovery near Dimona of the bones of an ancient elephant from about 20 million years ago.
Her team in the National Natural History Collection are aiming to build its complete skeleton to stand at the entrance to one of the campuses.
“We don’t have dinosaurs,” said Bar-Gal, “But we do have the only elephant skeleton of its kind in the world today and we want to show it off.”
The evening ended with the audience being invited to put questions to Bar-Gal and after further animated discussion, Schneider brought the evening to a close and presented South Caulfield shule’s Mark Sarachik with a certificate in appreciation of the synagogue hosting the event.
In his response, Sarachik expressed his gratitude to the Hebrew University for bringing such an enlightening and knowledgeable speaker to Melbourne.
Finally, Schneider also mentioned study opportunities at the Hebrew University and urged interested students to contact the AUSTFHU office in Sydney to explore areas for study as well as possible financial assistance.
For more information visit austfhu.org.au
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