"The communists took education seriously," says Professor Alfred Brookstein, who currently serves as head of the Technical Excellence Program. "The time has come for us to take it seriously too, otherwise the Israeli hi-tech engine will stop moving and we won't win more Nobel Prizes"
"Precisely in my position as the head of the excellent program, I am exposed to the great gap in the education of the graduates of the Israeli education system," says Professor Alfred (Freddy) Brockstein, a member of the Faculty of Computer Science. "The brightest young people are coming to us, but the trend of multidisciplinarity hit them too early. They studied modern courses in nanomechatronics, genetic engineering and biotechnology, in robotics and computer science, at the expense of the basic knowledge that is really required: physics, mathematics, chemistry and biology. They have wonderful grades in the matriculation exams andpsychometric, and very superficial knowledge of 'astro-physical mechatronic robotics', 'computerized biomolecular nanotechnology' and other vegetables, alongside enormous 'holes' in general education and the basic subjects."
And why is this happening? "Because in my opinion, the education system puts the cart before the horse. This happens because the best teachers in the real subjects, along with enormous resources, were 'sucked' into all kinds of illusory, 'modern' and multidisciplinary programs, instead of being directed to what they were really intended for - imparting the basics. The good teachers need to be brought back to teaching mathematics, physics, chemistry and literature, and of course their salaries need to be greatly and urgently improved and their social status restored."
Professor Brockstein's visits to the Far East only reinforce his opinion on this matter. In recent years, he occasionally travels to teach math and science at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. "The government in Singapore places education at the top of the priority list - exactly the opposite of what happens here. Singapore invests enormous resources in the education system and the higher education system, with a long-term view. With us, we are constantly "optimizing" by making cuts and "improving" by building new study programs. If we continue with these "improvements", even high-tech - the engine that still drives the economy - will stop moving, because its real fuel, the in-depth basic education for the brilliant young minds, is running out."
into the world of art
Freddy Brookstein was born in Siget, Romania in 1954. "In the small town in the Maramures region of northern Transylvania, I received an excellent education. The communists took education seriously. The teachers were the most important and respected people in the community and the students treated them with reverence." Along with his studies in realism, the young Brookstein also approached the world of art. His father was a writer and the "house playwright" of the Yiddish Theater in Bucharest and ran an art school. His parents enrolled him in piano lessons, but, of course, at the "competing" music school. "We didn't have a piano at home, so I would practice without too much enthusiasm, at school. When I was in the 1944th grade, one of the residents of the town came to my father, who was a well-known and well-known person, and told him where the piano of his sisters, who were murdered in Auschwitz in May 20, was found. The contents of the house. When my father and his younger brother, the only survivors of the horrors, returned to the town, no one volunteered to return anything to them. After about XNUMX years, the heirs of the "thieves" quarreled over the division of the inheritance and when one of them took the piano for himself, the other went to my father and informed on him. I remember my father was very upset when he went to get the piano back and told us that the house was full of things he knew well from his parents' house. The beautiful grand piano I received improved my music studies for a while, but after about a year I started using it mainly as a large, beautiful drawing surface."
Painting is true love for Professor Brockstein. About a year ago, at the workers' exhibition held at the Technion on the occasion of the Couratorion, he presented a series of self-portraits that he painted for about 40 years. He arranged the paintings in reverse chronological order (from 2009 to 1969) and called the series Anti-Aging Self Portraits
"The painting captured me more than anything else. I never studied in a formal and orderly way, but luckily my father was friends with Vasila Kazar (Katz), a Jewish artist from Sighet who was one of the most prominent painters and graphic artists in Romania and an art professor at the National Institute of Fine Arts in the capital, Bucharest. Kazar bought an old wooden house in a village near Sigat and he would come there every summer together with his students and I - a little boy - would join them and we would go out together to paint cows and landscapes and rural wooden houses in the vicinity."
Professor Brockstein owes his love for mathematics to the teacher who started teaching him in the fifth grade. "He was a military man, an admiral of the Romanian Navy who retired in favor of teaching. He forced us to sign a mathematical monthly for high school students called "Gazetta Mathematica" in which interesting articles about mathematicians and problems and beautiful and surprising results appeared. Since I wanted some kind of combination between mathematics and art, I thought that when I grew up I would study architecture."
From the Technion to Stanford and back
When the moment of truth came - the decision regarding an academic course - the young Brockstein chose electrical engineering. Freddy, who immigrated to Israel with his family in 1972, passed the Technion's screening exams and was accepted to study at the electrical engineering faculty. He then enlisted, and at the end of his military service he returned for a master's degree at the Technion, after which, in 1980, he went to a doctorate at Stanford.
Towards the end of his stay at Stanford, Professor Rafi Sivan, then Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, approached him and invited him to join the Technion faculty. Brockstein returned in 1984, and began teaching courses in the field of computer graphics. "It was of course a wonderful connection between the world of science and the love of painting," he says, "and I am grateful to Professor Boaz Porat who offered to enroll me in courses in this field." From this field he gradually migrated to research in image processing and computer vision.
Ant work in research
In 1991, during the first Gulf War, Professor Brookstein read the book "You must be joking Mr. Feynman" by the great physicist Richard Feynman. Feynman, a Nobel laureate, was a curious and unusual person, who loved to perform original and crazy experiments in all areas of his life. Once, when ants attacked his house he began to investigate their behavior. Feynman placed a lump of sugar at one end of the tub and waited. An ant that recognized the lump hurried back to the nest to tell her friends about the feast that awaited them, and Feynman followed her and marked the spoiled path with a colored pencil. When the rest of the ants came he found that they did not stick closely to the original path, but "cut corners" until the column of ants was remarkably straight. In his book he compared this process to making a drawing: at first we write a sloppy line, then we gradually correct it to a precise line.
Professor Brockstein was "turned on" by the subject and decided to crack the ant puzzle, and more precisely - to anchor it in precise mathematical models. Professor Brockstein's "ants" are nothing but small and very simple robots, and his philosophical conclusion from the models he developed in this regard, and a series of works that followed, is that relatively simple robots can achieve better results than a large, complicated and sophisticated robot, when they act together as a swarm of agents identical, utilizing simple interaction rules. He links his argument to the well-known biblical quote, "Go to the ant, be lazy, see its ways and be wise," and emphasizes its continuation, which is not so well known: "...which has no officer, policeman, and ruler." (Proverbs, XNUMX). What makes the ant colony such an effective community is not a chief leader or navigator, nor the individual intelligence of each of them, but the collective effect of their separate actions. "There is no central control and super-coordination here," explains Professor Brockstein, "because each ant only sees those near it. It is more correct to say that it is a global action, based on local reactions of simple agents. The effectiveness we saw in straightening the winding line also occurs in a variety of other tasks."
Indeed, Professor Brockstein has so far presented, together with a series of talented students, a wide variety of complex operations that can be successfully performed using a "cast" of relatively simple agent-ants (a(ge)nts) instead of using one large and extremely smart robot.
At the same time as his research work, Professor Brockstein served, between 2002-6, as the dean of the School of Graduate Studies, and he is very proud of the fact that he was the last dean of the Technion elected by the senate in its original format (a senate in which all full professors are members). He is also very proud of the changes he introduced in the school for accredited studies: complete transparency in management and reporting; Stimulating a process of collaborations with foreign universities, which led to the possibility of a two-institution doctorate; The lecture series "There is something new under the sun"; and writing a code of ethics in studies for higher degrees at the Technion using quotes, poems and anecdotes from the great researchers and philosophers.
An offer that cannot be refused
Shortly after the end of his term, he was again "called to the flag" - this time to his current position as head of the excellent program. "I actually thought that I would finally be able to devote all my time to research again, but the Technion made me an offer that I couldn't refuse."
Personal title
The excellent program
The excellent program was founded about twenty years ago, with the support of the late Stanley Chase. Before the opening of the program, a special committee was appointed - Professor Uri Cerbero (mathematics), Professor Gad Elam (physics) and Professor Nimrod Moiseyev (chemistry), which determined the nature of the program. Professor Zeev Tadmor, the president of the Technion at the time, was enthusiastic about the idea and agreed to invest the necessary resources. Professor Moiseev headed the program for about 15 years. Today, the program is accompanied by about a hundred faculty members, who assist in the selection of candidates and guide the students during their studies.
The program allows the students participating in it to build a personal study system and enjoy a variety of options for expanding knowledge and deepening in advanced courses, from various disciplines, as early as possible in their studies. The students receive financial support in order to relieve them of financial worries.
The program logo, designed by Freddy Brookstein
exhibition
A bit of order in the mess: an exhibition of drawings
Don Quixote - Illustration by Professor Brookstein
An exhibition with Professor Brookstein's drawings opened in October in the Human Resources Department, on the third floor of the Technion's Saint building. The exhibition will close on April 26.
"Before Freddy's trip to Singapore, we talked about the possibility of presenting an exhibition of his works, and Freddy told me: now or never," says Anat Har-Gil, the exhibition's curator. "He gave me the key to his room at the faculty - and went to Singapore. I entered the room, got scared and left. The room was filled with thousands of drawings, which were placed in piles on chairs, on tables and in boxes. The records are documented starting in 1972 and are scattered in record books, notebooks, fine papers, sketch papers, notes and meeting summaries. After the initial shock of the quantity, the quality and the variety of topics passed, I had to focus and formulate a direction. I chose to focus on drawings, which excelled in minimalism and humor.
"I chose, sorted, scanned, processed on the computer and printed the selected records. To Freddie's credit, he did not interfere in the elections and decisions, and he saw the exhibition for the first time only after the drawings were hung on the wall."
Communist and follower
The life of Leib Brookstein
In 1964, Joseph Leib (Arie) Bruckstein, a writer and playwright, a resident of the city of Siget in Transylvania, received a phone call from the French-American journalist Elie Wiesel, who asked to visit his hometown. Brookstein agreed to his request, but warned him: "I will have to report our meeting to the authorities." This is what Wiesel says in his autobiographical book "All streams go to the sea". These were the days of the government of the Skoritat - the Department of State Security - and the Jewish journalist knew very well that if he wanted to meet Brookstein without endangering him, he had to comply with the dictates of the government.
This was Wiesel and Brockstein's first meeting - even though they both grew up in Sigt. Before the war, more than 13,000 Jews lived there, but only about 2,500 survived the Holocaust. When Wiesel visited Brookstein's home, he also met his 10-year-old son, Freddy, there for the first time.
The writer Y.L. Brookstein died in Israel in 1988 from cancer, but 18 more years later - in 2006 - the circle was closed: his son, Professor Freddy Brookstein, presented Elie Wiesel with an honorary doctorate degree from the Technion, for his tireless activity in documenting the horrors of the Holocaust - activity which won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
between the camps
Leib Brookstein grew up in Siget in northern Transylvania and his family's story is told in his book, "The Fate of Jacob Magid" (translated by Idov Cohen, Poalim Library 1977). His father, Mordechai, was the owner of a small workshop for the production of walking sticks, and also earned a living by exporting medicinal plants that grew in the area. Mordechai was the scion of a long and distinguished lineage of Hasidic rabbis. His grandfather, Haim Yosef Brockstein, was a follower of the Baal Shem Tov. The family adopted the last name "Brockstein" (broken stones) following the authorities' demand that the Jews add special last names to themselves.
Leib himself planned to study law in Switzerland, but World War II interrupted his plans and he joined his father's business. In May 1944, after a long period of anti-Semitic persecution, the ghetto of Sighet was liquidated and most of the city's Jews were taken to Auschwitz. A short time later, Leib was transferred from Auschwitz and put to hard labor in several labor camps. When he was released by the Soviets in May 1945, Leib discovered that his parents and two sisters were murdered in Auschwitz, and only he and his younger brother Israel survived.
The Holocaust completely undermined Leib's faith, and he became a communist - and a Zionist. After his marriage in 1947 to the 17-year-old Charlotte Chick, the two planned to immigrate to Palestine together with their brother Israel, but Charlotte contracted tuberculosis and Israel immigrated alone, not knowing that he was separated from his brother for a period of 22 years.
In Siget, Leib began to edit a newspaper in Yiddish called "Hainou", and bought its publication in the play "Night Watch" (see frame). The play, which deals with the Sonder-Commando rebellion in Auschwitz, made waves and was performed in Romania and many other countries for a decade. Following the recognition of his talent, Leib was invited to study literature at the University of Bucharest, where he met the greatest writers of post-war Romania. After graduating, he was offered senior positions in the capital as the monthly editor of the Romanian Writers' Association and as a lecturer in aesthetics at the university. However, when bad and anti-Zionist winds began to blow in Bucharest, Leib felt that the authorities were restricting his steps. He returned to a "comfortable exile" in Siget, where he was the director of the school of arts in the city. He continued to write plays and stories, and his plays were performed in theaters in Romania and Hungary, the Soviet Union and even in South America. One of the actresses who participated in his plays was the young Lea Koenig.
The events of the 1969s - the revelation of the truth about the Stalin regime and other regimes in Eastern Europe, the Six Day War and the deterioration of the political situation in the communist countries, and especially the concern for the future of his son, who had already started studying in high school - all of these breathed life into Leib's Zionist tendencies. In 1947 he was allowed to visit Israel, and here he met his brother Israel for the first time since 1971. In 1972 he applied for a visa together with his wife, son and mother-in-law. In XNUMX, after a year and a half of refusals - a period during which he endured much bullying, dismissal and accusations of treason in the "socialist homeland" - the Romanian authorities allowed the family to immigrate to Israel.
In Israel, Leib continued to write, mainly short stories - most of them were translated into Hebrew by Yotam Reuveni. He established the "Romanian Wing" in the Writers' Association, but slowly reduced his activities in the organization. In 1988 he was diagnosed with cancer, and a few months later he died.
Leib's works deal with the fate of ordinary people, usually types living on the fringes of society.
Many of the stories bring to life the Jewish life in his homeland of Aramoresh. The novel "The Trap", for example, deals with a Jewish student who runs away from the Germans and hides in the forests of Aramuresh; At the center of the novel "Rag Doll" is a woman who hid her Jewish identity; Whereas "The Armor" is the story of a 413-year-old turtle.
Night shift, the first play about the Holocaust
The play "Night Shift" (1948)
Leib Brukstein, a survivor of Auschwitz and the camps, returned to his city shocked and did not understand how this could have happened. The "Jewish passivity" towards the guards and SS men in the camps was a phenomenon that in retrospect was difficult for him to come to terms with. He believed that despite the impossible power relations, and despite the poor physical condition of the prisoners in the camp, it was appropriate to show resistance to the Nazis. Therefore, when he learned after the war about the Sonder-Commando uprising in Auschwitz, the event aroused great excitement in him. Thus was born, in 1948, the play "Night Shift" (Nacht-Schicht).
The Sonder-Commando uprising took place on October 6, 1944, at the end of the extermination campaign of the Hungarian Jews. The Sonder-Commando workers, who knew full well that their end was near, collected for a long time explosive material originating from the munitions factory that operated on the camp grounds. The material was smuggled out by girls who worked in the factory, and one of the Sonder-Commandos made mines out of it. When the signal was given, the rebels acted in impressive coordination, and managed to blow up one crematorium and other facilities and kill several SS men. The details of the preparations for the uprising were later revealed thanks to the rebels' diaries, which they buried in the ground before the uprising, and from about three survivors who managed to escape and join the partisans who were already operating near the camp.
