Israel

‘A New Judaica’: Meet The Israeli Entrepreneurs Putting The Bible On The Blockchain

By Shira Hanau

Yonatan Bendahan and Yuval Meyraz are the founders of CryptoVerses, a company selling nonfungible tokens of verses from the Bible. (CryptoVerses)

(JTA) — A Bible in printed form: about $20.

A Bible on the blockchain: priceless — or at least that’s the hope of two Israeli entrepreneurs who are turning verses from the Torah into NFTs.

Nonfungible tokens, otherwise known as NFTs, have become a hot commodity among art collectors and blockchain enthusiasts in the last year. Everyone from Grimes to The New York Times has gotten in on the game, selling everything from art to a newspaper column to clip-art pet rocks, in a new industry that can sometimes feel like a scam.

Now CryptoVerses, a company founded by two secular Israelis, is hoping to make NFTs composed of verses from the Bible encrypted in Hebrew and English into the next big blockchain collectible.

CryptoVerses organizes its verses into small groups, arranged by story, and has already sold 30 of them for an average price of 0.91 Ethereum, or approximately $4,150. While others have created NFTs of artwork connected to chapters of the Torah, CryptoVerses appears to be the first company to encrypt the actual biblical text.

“It’s like an evolution of the printing press,” Yonatan Bendahan, a software developer and one of the cofounders of CryptoVerses, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He likened the Bible verse NFTs to “a kind of a new Judaica.”

Yuval Meyraz, Bendahan’s cofounder, recalled carrying a Bible with him on hikes as a youth group counselor. He would read stories from the Bible that were relevant to wherever they were hiking in Israel as a way of connecting his campers to the text.

“It was a great way to deliver the story to the next generation, but these days I’m working on a bit more of a technology way to connect young people … with the stories we love and grew up on,” Meyraz said.

JTA spoke to Meyraz and Bendahan about why someone would want to own an encrypted Bible verse and how the idea has been received. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

JTA: First of all, can you explain what an NFT is for those of us who still don’t get it?

Meyraz: Sure. So, NFT stands for nonfungible token, A token is a piece of digital asset that you can own, just like Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. When it comes to NFT, it’s a different type of digital asset that you can own. But it’s not a coin; it’s something that represents something unique that you can own and transfer, buy and sell. It started mostly with digital art: people created digital images, and created a token, which represented those images and started to transfer ownership over those images.

So why would someone want to buy an NFT of a Bible verse?

Bendahan: We see it as kind of a new Judaica, some piece of something that you can collect that you have some personal connection to, and you want to give it to yourself or to one of your family members. Our second objective is to encrypt the Bible text on the blockchain. So we want to take the Bible text, which was started from writing on a piece of paper or something which was before even paper, and then transfer into digital copies over the internet. And now the next phase which we are leading is putting in on the blockchain. And what’s so unique about it is that we put this text on a distributed network, and in this way we can make sure that no one can delete it, and it can be available to anyone. So, by owning an NFT that encrypts a Bible verse, you can participate in preserving the text on the blockchain.

How can you even make the Bible into NFTs when no individual person can really own the Bible?

Meyraz: So as you said, no one can own the Torah, it’s totally public domain. And we don’t really claim that anyone is going to own it, of course. But we see it more like a piece of art that we made for the first time. For example, let’s say that I took 5,884 candlesticks from gold, and on each one of them I minted a different verse. And we have each candlestick with a specific verse only once. It’s unique. Now, I’m going out there and selling my art with the specific verse, and it’s not that I’m selling the Bible, but we own the unique canvas, because you have only one. So it’s the same when we created this NFT: It’s a piece of art, we sell the encrypted verse and it’s the first time in history of the Jewish people and it’s what we sell. So the NFT is something that you can own — but no one owns the Bible itself.

Who are the people buying these NFTs? And has there been any backlash?

Meyraz: Religious people, some

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Continued from Page 6 of them, we were surprised. They found it super interesting. We were afraid that we would get some backlash on the project. We didn’t know how it would be accepted, especially with religious [Jewish] people. And what surprised us was that it was mostly religious people who are more excited about the project. So we have some investors who are religious, studying in yeshiva even now. One of them actually even helps us with the text, with analyzing the text — you’d be surprised how many versions of the Torah there are, so we had to choose which version is the right one. It’s really surprising how our intuition that we hope that everyone will connect to the story to preserve the story, how it really connects to everyone in the real world. This was really surprising, I think it’s very beautiful that people see texts as something precious, especially in the digital age.ì

In Coalition Agreement, German Parties Vow To Defend Jewish Life And Israel’s Security

By Cnaan Liphshiz

Olaf Scholz, waving his hand, and politicians present the joint coalition agreement of the new ruling parties of the German federal government at a press conference in Berlin on Nov. 24, 2021. (Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images)

MUNICH (JTA) — Three political parties in Germany presented a coalition agreement which reiterated commitments to ensure Israel’s security and fight antisemitism and, for the first time, also pledged to promote Jewish life.

The agreement, whose main focus is addressing climate change, was presented Wednesday by the coalition parties, which include the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Free Democratic Party and the Greens, in Berlin. The coalition agreement determines the division of ministerial positions and major policy themes and marks a milestone toward establishing a government after the departure from politics of outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A center-left politician for the Christian Democrats who had served four terms since 2005, Merkel is to be replaced by Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany released a statement welcoming the agreement.

“We are confident about the plans of the future federal government. A successful fight against right-wing extremism and antisemitism are of crucial importance for the future of Germany,” the statement read.

Charlotte Knobloch, a previous president of the organization and current leader of the Jewish Community of Munich, was more reserved in commenting about the agreement.

“I think it sounds good, it has some positive declarations, but I will form my opinion on the new government not based on these words, but on action. So I’m suspending any judgment and waiting for those actions,” Knobloch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The agreement will help Germany become a “pioneer on climate protection,” the main focus of the agreement, and its government “will invest massively to maintain Germany’s status as a world leader,” Scholz said, according to the Financial Times.

The parties agreed to end dependency on coal “ideally” by 2030 (the previous deadline was 2038) and switch to 80% renewable energy by 2030 (the previous target was 45%.)

On Jewish issues, the new agreement states: “We will protect Jews and their institutions together with the federal states. It is a shameful and painful state of affairs in Germany that they must be permanently guarded.”

The government “will strengthen initiatives that promote Jewish life and promote its diversity, and combat all forms of antisemitism.”

The previous coalition agreement, signed in 2019, mentioned the fight against antisemitism but not the promotion of Jewish life.

The new agreement also states that “Israel’s security is a national interest” of Germany, and vows to block “antisemitic attempts to condemn Israel, also at the UN.” It states Germany will continue to support the twostate solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it welcomes normalization of ties between Israel and Arab countries.

The Greens and the future ruling party of Germany, the Social Democrats, or SPD, have criticized Israel frequently. Former SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel in 2012 said the situation in the West Bank city of Hebron was “apartheid,” sparking condemnations that eventually prompted his party to apologize for that remark.ì

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This Young US Immigrant In Jerusalem Is Telling Israel’s Story To The World

By Renee Ghert-Zand

Tamar Schwarzbard is grateful for getting to tell Israel’s story to the world every day—not through lectures or opinion columns, but via social platforms like TikTok, Twitter,

Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Tamar Schwarzbard is grateful for getting to tell Israel’s story to the world every day—not through lectures or opinion columns, but via social platforms like TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

A U.S. native who immigrated to Israel eight years ago, Schwarzbard isn’t just any online advocate for Israel. As head of new media at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it’s her job to communicate with global audiences about her adopted home.

Depending on the day, Schwarzbard oversees between 20 and 30 employees at the Foreign Ministry’s headquarters in Jerusalem. She is in charge of the ministry’s branding and digital ecosystem, which operates in six languages. Schwarzbard works primarily in English, but she supervises work carried out in Hebrew, Farsi, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. The Jerusalem-based ministry team works with over 100 Israeli missions and embassies worldwide.

“For me, the excitement is less about the social media and more about the worldwide reach and the opportunity to shape hearts and minds,” she said.

This 31-year-old Jerusalemite is one of a growing number of American immigrants to Israel playing increasingly prominent and important roles in Israeli government or business. Schwarzbard sees her success as a combination of luck and good timing — and an example of how Israel is capitalizing on the value and unique contributions of new immigrants who come with university degrees or professional track records.

“My potential as an olah is appreciated. I’ve been truly welcomed,” Schwarzbard said. “I don’t take it for granted.”

Growing up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn as the youngest of four children in a modern Orthodox family, Schwarzbard always imagined herself making aliyah — immigrating and living her adult life in Israel. Her family was Zionist, including her four Holocaust survivor grandparents. Her paternal grandparents and one of her older sisters immigrated ahead of her. Another sister made aliyah after her.

As with all American olim nowadays, their immigration was facilitated by Nefesh B’Nefesh, which assists with immigration from North America in partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael and JNF-USA.

When Schwarzbard moved to Israel from New York in August 2013 after graduating from Yeshiva University’s Stern College with a history degree, she was unsure where she was going professionally. She had secured a recruitment position with Yeshiva University’s Israel office so she could hit the ground running, but she didn’t view the post as a career-making job.

Tamar Schwarzbard is one of a growing number of American immigrants to Israel playing increasingly prominent and important roles in Israeli government or business. (Courtesy of Tamar Schwarzbard)

She ended up going back to school, getting a master’s degree in communications and journalism at the Hebrew University (free or heavily discounted university tuition is one of the benefits Israel offers new immigrants). While still in school, Schwarzbard took a student position in the Foreign Ministry’s digital diplomacy department,

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