A world renowned physicist, a brilliant bio-tech founder, and a celebrated science biographer walk into a Hillel house… and raise the bar.

The recent TEDx ‘Talpiot’ event in Jerusalem (read more about the TED organization here and TEDx events here), in a word, made me feel late.

Actually, I got there on the early side, in time to watch the promising young faces file in to the Hillel house at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Participants were mostly students and graduate students, with a bunch of professionals in various fields thrown in, I believe, to make me feel less old.

By late, I mean to the Do Something Huge for Humanity Party that so few get to attend, although said party is admittedly governed largely by self-invitation. Each talk – which, in the tradition of TED events, was about 18 minutes long – drove home the point that Truly Excellent Developments (not really what TED stands for, at least not till now) are taking place all around us, mostly by people who had made up their minds to make them happen in their early twenties, if not before. The event’s hardworking and visionary organizer, Yoni Litt, is himself a graduate student, and the event’s sponsors, among them Hillel, ROI Community, and Leadel.net, are about encouraging Jewish humanitarian innovation at the grass-roots, often college-age level.

We are talking about celebrating start-up people, devouring their passion for their respective missions, and inspiring a new generation hungry to make their own ideas happen… perhaps even over coffee during the break, in the case at hand. At least half of the Jerusalem TEDx speakers use their ingenious ideas and entrepreneurial spirit to contribute to humanity in ways that can easily be defined as good ol’ good deeds.

Prof. Zvia Agur is a Brussels-trained mathematician who has pioneered the field of biomathematics and developed a virtual patient model to aid in the optimization of chemotherapy. Based on a mathematical model of an organism’s reproductive pattern in nature during crisis, Agur hypothesized that both cancer cells and healthy cells, faced with chemo, might act like those animals. She founded a bio-tech start-up, Optimata, to develop patient-personalized cancer treatments based on this model.

Dr. Maurit Be’eri, Deputy Director of the Alyn Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Hospital, is an activist for early intervention in pediatric development; Eti Katz is an artist and education pioneer, translating the world and its words and numbers into visual symbols for kids who learn differently. Both dream of a world that is more easily digested by an ever-expanding population of kids who defy conventional development, and are realizing those dreams, on the ground, every day.

Avshalom Elitzur is a quantum physics rock star, and to be honest, I understood only his jokes (most of them); if the professor ever runs out of time and space to collapse, he can move on to stand up. Joseph Dadon is a video artist / architect – he filmed Israeli actress Ronit Alkabetz as “Zion,” flitting through the various exhibit areas of the Louvre with a Bible to denote that book’s place at the epicenter of Western culture – who made me LOL with his observation that, “The French Revolution opened the chakras of Europe.” Both of these men made it clear that humanity and genius were completely compatible in advancing each.

My favorite talk, though, was the one which seemed to be exploring why we were all sitting there in the first place; noted biology historian and Bar Ilan University Science, Technology, and Society Department Chair, Dr. Oren Harman, spoke about the origins of altruism. Why do members of a species take of their own precious resources to advance causes that may not necessarily advance them individually? Isn’t that decidedly anti-evolutionary? What are we missing when we reason through altruism, and who is kindness really for?

This was not only the topic of his latest book on oddball ground-breaking biologist George Price, but perhaps the meta-topic of the entire evening, and its sponsors, and maybe even of TED, of the internet’s talks and lectures and its millions of free how-to videos, and of much of Israeli enterprise in general.

For that matter, why do so many want to attend this global Geniuses Do Something Huge for the World Party that the organizers at every international TED and TEDx event, this one included, have to turn people away? And what will people DO with that instinct?

Are we bearing witness to the final stages of the evolution of brilliance into a generous phenomenon? Are the days of the intense, reclusive genius over, paving the way for true virtuosity to require, by necessity, it being shared with humanity? Is that what technology has wrought – the popular demand that the gifted share broadly…or be rendered irrelevant?

As artistic, scientific and business entrepreneurship and human / social entrepreneurship grow ever more enmeshed, these are THE questions of our age. However old we are.

The crazy thing is, I never wanted to be a “Jewish blogger,” or a political one for that matter. I have never been a single issue kind of girl, and I fear a “niche” as much as other, smarter, more marketing- savvy people often seek it.

I started writing that last blog post merely as a Facebook status. Blogging was not on my To Do list that day, as I had a copywriting deadline. But seeing as the history of the Jews is rather long, and maybe I was a little agitated once I wrote the first sentence, it became what it became. These are visceral times, where I guess passion, and only passion, is what makes its way into people’s consciousness.

And by the way: I am SO relieved that the written word still has power, even in the Age of Video. Every web-related conference I’ve been to in the last two years has indicated that I am rolling Paleolithic by not integrating video. (I prefer to see it as “classic”…) But anyway, I love words, and for at least this week, I’ve been vindicated.

I think the stunning, instant, viral response (views of the post are well into the 6 digits and my inbox is fuller than Carrie Bradshaw’s closet) has much less to do with the quality of the rant and more to do with global mood. It strikes me very plainly that political correctness on one hand, and a real sense of baseless shame among Westerners, especially Jews, on the other, has created a space where righteousness (He hit me first!!!), truth (…After she took my toy, spit, and called me an idiot!…), justice (…Now nobody gets a treat since you can’t get along), and kindness (…but maybe both of you want to sit with me and hug for a bit since it seems you need to remember you are siblings) are frequently confused with one another. Could the average reader (not you, of course) have easily defined the difference without the parentheses?

Of course, they are not the same at all, and the consequences of this conceptual tangle are potentially disastrous for a society. Unweaving these notions from each other and clarifying each on its own is a good project for writers, or for parents, since the political and (highly politicized) academic establishments seem to have largely forgotten how, and the mainstream media is the worst offender of all. Viva les Blogs!

Luckily, however, I learned this week how – despite all of the chasms news outlets attempts to dig, in order to fill the spaces between people with a story – humanity is essentially dying to connect. The success of the social web lies in the human need to hear and be heard, see and be seen, learn and teach…lurk and be stalked. (I wanted to see if you were still paying attention.) (Also, you know who you are.) Facebook, especially, floored me in its global reach, and in its contagion quotient.

That some of us feel that others of us are occupying too much space here or there; essentially wrong in everything we stand for; or absolutely fabulous and can do no wrong, is not as important as the fact that WE CARE TO TELL EACH OTHER ALL THESE THINGS. If nobody wanted to share – criticism, recipes, life stories, opinions, medical information, news as it happens, or details of our intimate lives – the internet would have shriveled up and died along with Ask Jeeves. (Yes. I am THAT old.)

At its core, the internet is an altruistic institution. People volunteer hours and days and years of their time posting things – like how to install memory in an HP mini or how to change a filter on a Mr. Coffee or play Sweet Child of Mine using tabs – without any agenda other than to help the next guy. Do not underestimate the power this gives us as a human race, and the wonderful thing it says about our species.

I am deeply encouraged by the fact that people today from the four corners of the earth can find each other online. I welcome all my new readers and virtual friends, and am thrilled to have you here. You are my birthday gift!! (Today!)

Just 15 years ago, most of us would never have met. I am hopeful that the open, empathic, and multi-cultural space inside our little screens provides us with the inspiration to reach out in real life, too.

Watch out for the non-connectors. They are the ones I am worried about.