Man claims key to winning Nobel Prize

If you were casually flipping through Tuesday’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, you might have missed it, but a small ad and the right connections may lead to another Israeli Nobel laureate.

Yossi Keren, a 70-year-old taxi driver, took out a small ad in one of Israel’s leading daily newspaper entitled “What are the chances that I will be nominated for the Nobel Prize?”

In the ad, Keren explains that he has thought long and hard for 50 years about “the entity known as awareness,” and unlike any of the generations of thinkers who preceded him, Keren claims that in a “flash of brilliance” he solved this incredible mystery with which humanity has long grappled.

Now, all Keren needs before he submits his name to the Nobel committee is reassurance from those in the proverbial know that his ideas are good, original and sane.

“I ask that anyone with a connection to this subject contact me,” wrote Keren in his ad, “so that I can send you the relevant material to read.” At the bottom of the ad, Keren published his email address and cellphone number.

In an interview with Channel 2, Keren insisted that this is neither a practical joke nor a marketing ploy.

“For 50 years, I have thought about this,” said Keren, “focusing on the realm of ‘me’ and I believe that I am the only one in the world who knows what it is.”  He refused to reveal even a hint of his ground-breaking insight, but said that he did receive a phone call Tuesday morning from a professor at Bar-Ilan University, to whom he will send his materials. He said he’s looking forward to receiving the first reaction to his idea.

Without providing specifics, Keren said that he worked in the security apparatus for 40 years. When he retired, “rather than sitting at home and arguing with my wife, I decided to drive a cab.” It was during this period, that his revelation that began back when Keren was a high school student, took its final form which he believes is worthy of a Nobel nomination.

“I am just an amateur,” he confesses. “The professional will decide if I am right in my line of thinking and if I really do have a chance to win the Nobel Prize.”

He even turned to Israeli best-selling author Ram Oren with his material, but Oren said that the 15 pages of Keren’s thoughts “are not enough for a book. It is a booklet.”

The NIS 7,000 (approximately US$ 1,900) that Keren spent on the ad in Yedioth was not easy for him, “but I think that when they read all of my material in an organized manner, they will understand that I am not a delusional man, but rather someone who is really onto something.”