March 19, 2013

JERUSALEM (JTA) — President Obama is set to receive some unique gifts during his visit to Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday at the start of the leaders’ working meeting will present Obama with a gold-coated nano-chip with the Israeli and U.S. declarations of independence etched side by side.

The gift, developed at the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, was etched on a chip affixed to a Jerusalem stone dating to the late Second Temple period. The stone was used to seal clay vessels that held liquids and spices.

At the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial, Obama will receive a copy of a unique manuscript that survived the Holocaust — the sheet music with an original composition for the Passover liturgical poem “Had Gadya” written by Cantor Israel Eljasz Maroko in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam in 1941. It is the only one of his many original cantorial works to have survived the Holocaust.

Obama also will receive photos and Maroko’s Page of Testimony from Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev at the end of his visit on Friday to the Hall of Names, the Museum of Holocaust Art, the Children’s Memorial and a memorial ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance.

Sara Netanyahu, the wife of the prime minister, will send to Michelle Obama a silver Passover seder plate with the hope that it will be used at the annual White House seder. She will give the president’s children, Sasha and Malia, chains with silver medallions in the shape of David’s harp set with Roman glass, and send a rubber hamburger toy home for the family dog, Bo.

The presents were selected after querying the public on the Facebook page of the Prime Minister’s Office. 

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