Congratulations to the winners.  I was very moved by all of you.  And you've made clear one simple truth – that creativity comes from passion and originality.  Mental prowess is not enough and neither is a talent for creating things.  You need passion to connect between them and light a spark.

When I saw the range of topics represented here, I wondered about the secret behind the spark of genius that our people has demonstrated over so many years.  I thought about this question when I heard the story of Alberto Moscona Nissim.  Virtually penniless, he arrived in Mexico in the 1920s.  He came from Bulgaria, but spoke Ladino, being descended from a family that had been exiled from Spain.  Despite his poverty, Nissim succeeded in building an economic empire in Mexico.  This sort of resourcefulness is the legacy of our people.

What is the secret of Jewish genius?  Many writers have pondered this question, but I don’t think there is one simple explanation.  The first foundation must be that we are the People of the Book – and what a book it is!  The Bible was written here, on these very hilltops.  Just look at what happened after it was translated into Greek, how profoundly it rocked the world, which grew to respect the power of its poetry, prophecy, morals and magnificent literature.

The second foundation lies in the literacy of the Jewish people.  Considering that the people of the ancient world were largely illiterate, it was by no means a given that we became the People of the Book.  It was extraordinary.  But our thirst for learning and teaching, our desire to pass our knowledge and culture from generation to generation was something deeply instilled among our nation.  And it wasn’t just limited to a small group of people – the poor and the rich were all literate.  The Biblical imperative to teach your children meant that we had to read to them, so everyone had to be literate in order to pass on this knowledge.  Such a tradition of learning had not existed previously.  Our remarkable legacy of learning extends from the Second Temple era, having endured throughout our exile from the Land of Israel.

And there is also a third foundation – nurturing excellence.  This quality has also sustained our people for thousands of years.  Our history is replete with great thinkers.  Great thinkers have not always been considered important figures in history, but this has certainly been true for the Jewish people.

There is a theory that excellence was cultivated by the Jewish people because, during the Middle Ages and the various exiles, the best scholars were well taken care of – advantageous marriages were arranged for them and all their needs were looked after.  So says one  researcher who has tried to explain the abundance of Jewish Nobel Prize winners.

I don’t know about this explanation, but one thing is certain: this tradition of nurturing the exceptional and talented, those with amazing abilities, had been limited to only one field but expanded into the arts, culture and science as soon as the walls of the Jewish ghettos fell.  These fields were once closed to us, are now open.  And so the EMET Foundation is preserving our ancient heritage of achievement, excellence and genius. 

Our real test is to maintain these two main pillars here in the Jewish state –  passing on knowledge and educating our children, while also nurturing excellence.  There is no contradiction between them; in fact, they complement each other.  Mr. Vardi mentioned the problem of superficiality.  He was right to say that there can be no real progress without excellence, without original thinkers, visionaries, people who propose something new or something old in a new way.  Without them,  there can be no progress.  They are particularly important and valuable to us all.

All this is critical and the EMET Foundation makes its greatest contribution by pointing out the direction we should take.  It is amazing that, in its short existence, the Foundation has honored so many Nobel Prize winners even before they won their Nobel Prizes.  This is a tremendous accomplishment, and I feel safe telling this year’s winners that their odds are very good.

Congratulations on all you have achieved and thank you for the original and excellent work you still have yet to do on behalf of the Jewish people and all humanity.

Thank you.