Current Edition About Subscribe The Jerusalem Center

Daily Alert Archive

Every Daily Alert Since 2002

Search

Search more than 90,000 news items by topic, author, or source.
Use " " to search for multiple words and phrases.

Trending Topics

March 25, 2011       Share:    

Source: http://www.jewishjournal.com/israel/article/milken_institute_brainstorms_funding_for_israel_heritage_sites_20110322/

Milken Institute Brainstorms Funding for Israel Heritage Sites

(Los Angeles Jewish Journal) Michele Chabin - Israel's 30,000 archaeological and other heritage sites far outnumber the financial means to support them. The Milken Institute, an economic think tank, has come up with a plan to alleviate the problem through start-up financing models used in the private economic sphere. The entire 2008 budget for the Israel Antiquities Authority was a mere $36 million. Even worse, Israel's Nature and Parks Authority, which maintains the sites once they are excavated, received just $4 million in 2009 for site development. Glenn Yago, Milken's director of capital studies and the report's co-author, said a handful of Israeli archeological sites and attractions, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and Masada, are already self-sustaining, even profitable. "Archaeology created an enormous amount of value," Yago said. "Intellectual property became commercialized into an array of products that became income-producing properties." Yago gave especially high marks to the city of Rome's award-winning Rome Reborn project, a three-dimensional virtual tour of ancient Rome. Just as the Rome Reborn project has generated "a tremendous amount" of income via tourism, video game development, movies, education, and related products, a Jerusalem Reborn project, which would depict the city in the time of the Second Temple, is being developed. (Los Angeles Jewish Journal)

View the full edition of Daily Alert

Back to Archive

Subscribe to Daily Alert: