Events

The first meeting in a new series – dialogues with researchers who have written essays on various aspects of illusion in their fields of research, as appeared in the 2026 edition of ‘Poetry of Science’, a periodical published once a year concurrently with the Weizmann Institute’s annual Ofer Lider prize for encouraging creative writing among scientists award ceremony. The editor of ‘Poetry of Science’ is Idan Barir, a translator of poetry and prose from Portuguese, Arabic, English, and Turkish.

"All history is contemporary history, according to Italian historian Benedetto Croce. Any representation of the past (including academic history research papers) is shaped by the reality within which it is created; it reflects prevalent beliefs, ideologies, hidden assumptions, writing strategies, and more. The difference between Travels to the Past and history in its academic sense is that historians are expected to be aware of the contemporary nature of their writings.” (Avner Wishnitzer)

Public discourse often raises the possibility of simultaneously returning to a glorious past and the greatness of a nation. Prof. Avner Wishnitzer and Idan Barir discuss the credibility, the validity, and the glory of that past, and the question of whether this past, which can ostensibly be visited or returned to, is indeed the one that historians refer to in their historical research.

Prof. Avner Wishnitzer – Historian, author, translator, Head of the Middle Eastern and African History Department at Tel Aviv University, and co-chair (with Prof. On Barak) of the Laboratory for the Histories of Climate Change at Tel Aviv University's Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies
 

The series is sponsored by the Braginsky Center for the Interface between Science and Humanities.
 

Series Schedule:
16/2 Travels to the Past as Deceptive Illusion, with Prof. Avner Wishnitzer
16/3 The Placebo Effect, with Prof. Asya Rolls
18/5 The Psychedelic Renaissance, with Prof. Shauli Lev-Ran

 

The second meeting in a new series – dialogues with researchers who have written essays on various aspects of illusion in their fields of research, as appeared in the 2026 edition of ‘Poetry of Science’, a periodical published once a year concurrently with the Weizmann Institute’s annual Ofer Lider prize for encouraging creative writing among scientists award ceremony. The editor of ‘Poetry of Science’ is Idan Barir, a translator of poetry and prose from Portuguese, Arabic, English, and Turkish.

“The neural networks involved in positive expectations, those that incite a sense of hope, satisfaction, and motivation, are not limited to the mental realm. They influence the entire body, activate the immune system, and stimulate healing processes. Placebos, in this sense, serve as a portal to understanding the power of the brain to shape a physiological reality – how thought or faith can stimulate actual biological mechanisms.” (Prof. Asya Rolls)

The placebo effect is a phenomenon in which a patient receives a sham treatment, but the brain and the immune system are stimulated into performing an actual healing process. Prof. Asya Rolls in a dialogue with Idan Barir, on the potential of understanding the relationship between body and soul, the extent to which physical reality can be based on illusions created in the brain, and the role of faith and hope in the healing process.
Prof. Asya Rolls – Researcher at the School for Neurobiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics at Tel Aviv University’s Life Sciences Faculty.

Sponsored by the Braginsky Center for the Interface between Science and Humanities
 

Schedule:
16/2 Travels to the Past as Deceptive Illusion, with Prof. Avner Wishnitzer
16/3 The Placebo Effect, with Prof. Asya Rolls
18/5 The Psychedelic Renaissance, with Prof. Shaul Lev-Ran

 

Based on the diaries of Etty Hillesum, this series by Golden Globe winner Hagai Levi, ("Be’Tipul"  [In Treatment], "Scenes from a Marriage", "The Affair"), traces the extraordinary personal journey of the young Dutch woman from 1941 to 1943.
In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, a young woman goes to therapy. 
This is Etty Hillesum. At the age of 27, driven by a deep passion for life, she embarks on a spiritual and emotional journey, all chronicled in her diaries. In them, she unfolds her turbulent love affair with psycho-chirologist Julius Spier - a relationship that becomes the catalyst for a radical inner transformation, accelerated by the growing threat she faces as a Jewish woman, ultimately leading her to an enormous act of solidarity.
Hillesum’s diaries were first published 40 years after her death. Since then, they have been translated into over 20 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. Told in an unconventional fashion, the series offers a dialogue between past and present, revealing how Etty's striving for meaning continues to resonate today, and evoking the timely question: How do we find hope in a hopeless world?

Director: Hagai Levi 

The series will be screened in two parts :

Part 1(Episodes 1–3) and Part 2 (Episodes 4–6). 

Part 2 will be screened on Monday, February 9, at 19:00 p.m.
A conversation with the creator Hagai Levi after the screening of Part 2

Dutch | 148 minutes | Hebrew subtitles