{"id":174484,"date":"2018-05-04T07:00:43","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T10:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=174484"},"modified":"2019-06-30T16:33:57","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T19:33:57","slug":"dean-lebanese-university-launches-project-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/dean-lebanese-university-launches-project-brazil\/","title":{"rendered":"President of Lebanese university launches project in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 The president of the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK), from Lebanon, priest and professor Georges Hobeika, officially launched this Thursday (03) the Memory Project of the Syrian-Lebanese Immigration in Brazil, at the headquarters of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce<\/strong> in S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n

The project resulted from a cooperation agreement signed in February by the university and the Arab Chamber and aims to digitize documents that hold the history of the immigration, such as photos, certificates, letters, newspapers and magazines.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Georges Hobeika (L) and Roberto Khatlab in a lecture at the Arab Chamber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe will gather the documents, dated from the 19th<\/sup> century until today, to retell the memory of the immigration in Latin America,\u201d said Hobeika in his speech. \u201cIt would be a crime to allow this memory to fade away,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

USEK has all the infrastructure needed for the digitization and has been doing this type of work for years with documents from Lebanon and has an agreement with families of Syrian and Lebanese origins to preserve the memory of immigration in Argentina. \u201cIt\u2019s a continuous work,\u201d the president told ANBA, explaining that other agreements could be signed with other countries after the one with Brazil.<\/p>\n

Since it has the equipment and expertise in this sector, USEK will supply the machinery and training for a professional to perform the work in Brazil. The Arab Chamber, in turn, will hire this professional and will be responsible to gather and later return the documents to their owners.<\/p>\n

The vice president of Marketing at the Arab Chamber, Riad Younes \u2013 who went to Lebanon in February to visit the university and sign the agreement \u2013, added that one of the project\u2019s goal, besides the preservation, is to \u201ccreate an extensive database with full academic access,\u201d that is, that it can be researched by college students and researchers that are studying the topic. \u201cMany documents are being ruined throughout time,\u201d he said. According to him, Usek has a high tech digitization infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Hobeika also said the digitized archive is \u201ca library that can be consulted from a distance.\u201d The project on immigration is an initiative from the USEK\u2019s Latin America Studies and Cultures Center (LASCC), whose director, the Brazilian professor Roberto Khatlab, was also at the event this Thursday. He initiated talks on the subject about two years ago, with the Arab Chamber\u2019s cultural director S\u00edlvia Antibas. Antibas was also in attendance.<\/p>\n

Continuous project<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arab Chamber president Rubens Hannun said it is a \u201cgreat pleasure\u201d to be part of this initiative. \u201cThis is a continuous project of the Arab Chamber, over its 65 years of work, to spread Arab culture in Brazil,\u201d he asserted. He also said the partnership with USEK is \u201cextremely important\u201d and has already suggested that it be expanded in the future to encompass all Arab immigration to Brazil.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Rubens Hannun: the Chamber promotes the Arab culture in Brazil<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hannun noted that Brazil has and still welcomes Arab immigrants well, and that these foreigners and their descendants have contributed greatly to the country\u2019s development. He said it is important to let this be known to Brazilians of all origins. \u201cWe are taking a great step for this memory to last into the next generations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Along similar lines, Hobeika said Syrian and Lebanese migrants began setting out to the Americas in the late 19th<\/sup> century, at first to escape the Ottoman Empire\u2019s rule, and later to flee other foreign powers. \u201cWe have come seeking refuge,\u201d he declared. \u201cWe arrived in complete poverty, but through the iron will to accomplish something, we built empires in a number of different fields,\u201d he added. As a case in point, he cited the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, in S\u00e3o Paulo, which he visited this week, a nationwide cutting-edge healthcare facility.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0president pointed out that Syrian and Lebanese people contributed to the socioeconomic development of the countries they settled in, and he also mentioned the Lebanese-born, United States-based engineer and professor Charles Elachi, who directed NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 2001 to 2016.<\/p>\n

Hobeika also said USEK is a founding member of the League of Arab Universities and that he hopes the Arab diaspora memory digitization project will encourage other Middle East and North Africa countries to do the same.<\/p>\n

Music<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Younes went to Lebanon to sign an agreement<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In introducing the president, Riad Younes said Hobeika has one vocation and three passions. The vocation is priesthood \u2013 he is a Maronite priest \u2013 and the passions are teaching, research and music. According to him, priest anda professor Hobeika is a scholar at the head of Usek.<\/p>\n

To wrap things up, the Lebanese professor gave a sample of one said passion and sang a song he wrote, set to an Eastern rhythm, with Arabic lyrics by Saint Ephrem, the Syrian, a 4th<\/sup> century theologist and poet. One excerpt goes as follows, in a loose translation from Arabic into English: \u201cFrom one single table, You (God) donate every day to every being everything with absolute Wisdom”.<\/p>\n

Over the next few weeks, the Arab Chamber and ANBA will make available the contact information and address for interested parties to submit documents for digitization.<\/p>\n

Translated by S\u00e9rgio Kakitani & Gabriel Pomerancblum<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandre Rocha\/ANBA<\/div>\n
Alexandre Rocha\/ANBA<\/div>\n
Alexandre Rocha\/ANBA<\/div>\n
Alexandre Rocha\/ANBA<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Georges Hobeika, from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, spoke at the Arab Chamber to launch a program of digitization of documents from the Syrian-Lebanese immigration. \u2018It would be a crime to allow this memory to fade away,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1454,"featured_media":174476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[439,339,2266,41523,2472,220,2267,2473,2474,182],"class_list":{"0":"post-174484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-arab-chamber","9":"tag-lebanon","10":"tag-digitization","11":"tag-documentos-en","12":"tag-documents","13":"tag-imigracao","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-memory","16":"tag-preservation","17":"tag-usek"},"wps_subtitle":"Georges Hobeika, from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, spoke at the Arab Chamber to launch a program of digitization of documents from the Syrian-Lebanese immigration. \u2018It would be a crime to allow this memory to fade away,\u2019 he said. ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}