In Memoriam Tomer Ben-Chorin
Tomer Ben-Chorin
(July 20, 1983 – March 15, 2020)
Tomer Ben-Chorin was a doctoral student in the Science, Technology, and Society program at Bar-Ilan University from 2018 to 2020.
Tomer was a prolific and multi-talented individual. He was active in a wide range of fields: painting, art, photography, and acting. His artworks were exhibited, among other places, at the HaMa'ayan Gallery in Kibbutz Ma'ayan Tzvi and at the SoLow Festival. As an actor, he appeared not only in numerous music videos, clips, and commercials but also in various Israeli theater productions and short films. He collaborated with directors including Yisraeli HaMairi, Elad Kidan, Adam Sanderson, Shimon Adaf, and Oded Ruskin.
In his academic journey, Tomer received a series of awards and honors. He began his studies with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the Technion, and then decided to pivot to the humanities, earning a dean's list honors degree in General History from the University of Haifa, where he studied as part of the 'Ofakim' program for outstanding students. Over the years, he won several awards, including the Inbar Foundation Prize for research on terrorism, for a paper on "Art in Times of Terror: Representations of Terror in Comics" (2013), and the Outstanding Thesis Award from the General History Department at the University of Haifa (2014) for a work exploring "The Process of Designing the US National Symbol as a Reflection of the Republic's Design Process." In 2017, Tomer completed his master's degree with dean's honors in General History from the University of Haifa. In 2018, he began his doctoral studies at Bar-Ilan University, focusing on the topic "The Transition from Industrial to Personal Computers" - a research he was not able to complete.
On March 15, 2020, during a private vacation in Mexico, Tomer drowned off the coast of Cancun. He left behind two parents, a brother, and a sister. His family decided to publish a children's book he had written during his final period of life, titled "Mrs. Both-And and Mr. Neither-Nor". The painter Tzvi Geva, from whom Ben-Chorin learned painting principles, decided to establish a memorial exhibition to be displayed in Jaffa in the autumn of 2020.
Tomer was distinguished by his intensity and by walking his own path, not that of others. He maintained a unique internal compass, uncompromising and imbued with his own truth. He was a seeker (in the active sense), a special, creative, and brilliant soul. The community of the Science, Technology, and Society program at Bar-Ilan University mourns his loss.
