Word: hebrews
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this enormous task Sharansky brought uncommon intellectual resources. In the mid-1970s he was best known as a spokesman for Soviet dissidents, especially Jews seeking to emigrate to Israel. But Anatoli Shcharansky (he later adopted his great-grandfather's Hebrew first name and simplified the English spelling of his surname) was also a mathematician, a computer scientist and a chess whiz who had devised a computer program for playing the end game. When he was arrested in 1977, he sought to use the same logic to defeat his KGB opponents, who were preparing to try him as an anti-Soviet...
...warm water. He used various intellectual exercises to hold on. He solved in his head math puzzles he had read in a book by the American science writer Martin Gardner. Soaking up the water in his toilet with rags, then leaning deep into the bowl, he took lessons in Hebrew from a fellow prisoner stationed at his own bowl in an adjacent cell, who called out to him through the lavatory pipe...
Sharansky's spiritual resources were even more remarkable. For comfort and guidance he memorized the Psalms in Hebrew and chanted them often. He composed a prayer that he repeated to himself before confronting every new ordeal. It ended, "Grant me the strength, the power, the intelligence, the good fortune, and the patience to leave this jail and to reach the land of Israel in an honest and worthy way." His wife Avital, who indefatigably campaigned around the globe for his release, symbolized for him the one "fixed point" he could absolutely rely upon. Like another mathematician before him, Archimedes...
Following her studies this summer, Rodriguez plans to move on to Argentina to work with a consulting firm. A year from now, she will enter the masters program at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem...
...began with an electronic Christmas card that mysteriously materialized last December on terminals connected to one of IBM's research computer networks. Soon after came news that some desktop computers at Hebrew University in Israel were growing more and more lethargic, as if a hidden organism were sapping their strength. Then, one day last month, thousands of Macintosh users were greeted with an unexpected "message of peace" from the publisher of a Canadian computer magazine, which flashed briefly on their screens and disappeared without a trace...