B'OR HA'TORAH Volume 15 (2005)

Professor Eliezer (Eduardo) Zeiger is a professor emeritus of plant biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of more than one hundred scientific articles and the coauthor of three editions of the textbook Plant Physiology, published by Sinauer. His research studies the use of light by plant cells as an environmental signal, and the control of gas exchange in leaves. Brought up in an observant Jewish home in Argentina, he lived as a secular Jew in his youth and early adulthood, until he returned to Jewish observance after completing his professional education.
Professor Zeiger is a founder and the CEO of the Torah Science Foundation, an organization devoted to the unification of Divine and secular wisdom. He has written several articles on the relationship between Torah and science and has lectured on the subject throughout the world.

zeiger@biology.ucla.edu

Professor Moshe Carmeli was born in Iraq in 1933 and came to Israel with his family in 1951. Currently the Albert Einstein Professor of Theoretical Physics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Moshe Carmeli is considered one of the five leading authorities in the world on the Theory of Relativity. His books are considered classics in the future development of Einsteinian relativity. He was invited by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Physics for the years 1978, 1988, 1994, and 1999.

Professor Carmeli’s research projects focus on: cosmological-invariant field equations generalizing the equations of Maxwell, Dirac, Klein-Gordon, and others; determining the age of the universe at 12.5 billion years using modern cosmological theory; reformulating cosmological theory in seven dimensions of 3-space, time, and 3-velocity, and solving the appropriate field equations for the three types of universes—closed, curved open, and flat open; and writing field equations using a new kind of spinorial covariant derivative which is a square root of the usual derivative.

Professor Carmeli’s recent publications include:

“Five-Dimensional Cosmological Theory of Unified Space, Time and Velocity,” Nucl. Phys. B—Proc. Suppl., 124 (2003): 258.

“The Line Elements in the Hubble Expansion,” in eds. A. Lobo et al., Gravitation and Cosmology  (Universitat de Barcelona: 2003) 113-130. (Proceedings of the Spanish Relativity Meeting, Menorca, Spain, 22-24 Sep 2002).

“Fundamental Approach to the Cosmological Constant Issue,” Intern. J. Modern Phys. A 17, (2002): 4219 (Proceedings of the Fifth Friedmann Seminar on General Relativity and Cosmology).

With T. Kuzmenko, “Value of the Cosmological Constant in the Cosmological Relativity Theory,” Intern. J. Theor. Phys. 41, (2002): 131.

Cosmological Special Relativity: The Large-Scale Structure of Space, Time and Velocity,  2nd ed. (World Scientific Publishing Co., 2002).

Group Theory and General Relativity (Imperial College Press, 2000). (First published by McGraw-Hill, 1977.)

With S. Malin, Theory of Spinors: An Introduction (World Scientific Publishing Co., 2000).

carmelim@bgumail.bgu.ac.il

Dr. Yaacov Hanoka has a PhD in solid state physics and has worked on solar cells for the past thirty-two years. He has seventy publications and fifty-six patents in this field. He is a founder and vice president of Evergreen Solar. He and his wife Bina, of blessed memory, have five children, three of whom work in Habad Houses in the United States. Active in programs for Jewish college students, Dr. Hanoka writes and lectures on Torah and science.

hanoka@evergreensolar.com

Tsvi Victor Saks, PhD (1944-2005) successfully harmonized his doctoral studies and career in applied mathematics with his Torah observance that he embarked upon as an adult. He remained attached to the Lubavitcher Rebbe as he progressed in his brilliant career as a topologist, specializing in abstract infinite space. He was a professor of mathematics at the University of Costa Rica and Daemen College in Amherst, NY. More recently, he was a researcher in the applications of artificial intelligence at IBM. He always found time to teach classes in Torah and Hasidism.

In his research papers for the Miami International Conferences on Torah and Science that were published in B’Or Ha’Torah, Tsvi delved into the nature of truth in mathematics. He compared the concepts of infinity used in mathematics and Hasidism. It was always a pleasure to prepare Tsvi’s manuscripts for publication. He presented beautifully organized, rational arguments while finding space for his personal voice and deep faith. He is deeply missed, and may his memory be for a blessing.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman is a senior editor at Chabad.org, the world's busiest faith-based website, with 47 million unique visitors per year. He is the author of two volumes of Bringing Heaven Down To Earth—365 Meditations, along with several other titles on Kabbalah and hasidic thought. His multimedia productions on Jewish meditation can be found at JewishMeditation.com.

TFreeman@chabad.org 

Born in Romania, Professor Vera Schwarcz is a China historian and poet. She earned her BA from Vassar, MA from Yale, and PhD from Stanford. The author of eight books on Chinese and Jewish history, including the prize-winning Bridge Across Broken Time: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory; The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919; Time for Telling Truth Is Running Out: Conversations with Zhang Shenfu; Place and Memory in Singing Crane Garden; and the forthcoming volume: Colors of Veracity: A Quest for Truth in China, and Beyond (Hawaii University Press, 2014). She has also written five books of poetry, among them:  In the Garden of Memory (with paper art by Holocaust survivor Chava Pressburger), Brief Rest in the Garden of Flourishing Grace; Chisel of Remembrance and Ancestral Intelligence: Improvisations and Logographs. Schwarcz holds the Freeman Chair in East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Her work won a Guggenheim fellowship and is featured on the web at between2walls.com.

vschwarcz@wesleyan.edu

Ruvin Ferber was born in Riga and earned his PhD from the University of Latvia in 1979. He received a DSc degree in physics and mathematics from Leningrad State University in 1987. Professor Ferber is head of the Laboratory of Molecular Optics at the Atomic Physics and Spectroscopy Institute at the University of Latvia. His scientific activities are connected with atomic, molecular, and optical physics, in particular, experimental and theoretical studies in optical properties of molecules. He has published over one hundred articles and received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation W. Hanle Prize (1992). His monograph Optical Polarization of Molecules was published by Cambridge University Press (1995, with M. Auzinsh). Another field of interest is the foundations of physics, with particular emphasis on the fundamentals of relativity theory and quantum mechanics.

Since 1989 Professor Ferber has worked to revive the Jewish community in Riga. He was the vice-rector of the Free Jewish University in 1992. He chairs the M. Dubin-SHAMIR Foundation Scientists’ Club of the Riga Jewish religious community. He lectures and publishes on Jewish philosophical thought. Professor Ferber is one of the organizers and chairman of the board of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia (1998). Together with Professor Herman Branover he organizes the International Conferences on Jews in a Changing World held in Riga. His paper, presented with Professor Branover at the 1997 Miami Torah and Science conference, “The Concept of Absolute Time in Science and Jewish Thought,” was published in B’Or Ha’Torah 11E (1999). Their joint 1999 Miami presentation, “The Observer and the System of Reference: A Unified View,” was published in B’Or Ha’Torah 13E (2002).

ferber@latnet.lv

Professor Menachem Kovacs is director of the Jewish Roots Center, an educational and research center on Torah and social science topics based in Baltimore. He is professor emeritus of sociology at Montgomery College in suburban Washington, DC. A graduate with BS honors in political science from Roosevelt University and a master’s degree in political sociology from the London School of Economics, Dr. Kovacs was certified in international relations by the University of Geneva and completed a PhD in sociology at the Union Graduate School. He attended the Rabbinical College of America.

takovacs@comcast.net

Born in the USSR, the son of an erudite Talmudist, Rabbi Berl Haskelevich now lives in the United States. He is the translator and author of many books in Russian, some of them published by SHAMIR. He participated in translating the Torah for SHAMIR and translated the book of Psalms with selected commentary.

Since 1984 he has been researching the correlation between Jewish/biblical and conventional histories. This paper is taken from Rabbi Haskelevich’s work in progress, Biblical Antiquities, which addresses the discrepancies between biblical history and ancient records and archeology, beginning with the time of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus.

rabbi@noahide.net

Solomon Dinkevich is a scientist from the former Soviet Union who has lived in the United States for over twenty-five years. He has a PhD in mechanics and applied mathematics. For several years, Dr. Dinkevich worked for an engineering company and at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at the New York University in New York. During the last ten years before his retirement in 1996, he worked at the Princeton Plasma Laboratory in Princeton, NJ, where he supervised a team of analysts performing structural and thermal analysis of vacuum vessels of several fusion devices. Since retirement, Dr. Dinkevich has published a series of articles on Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Russian-language press, including the Jewish World (NY) and Jewish Life (Philadelphia). He lives with his wife in New Jersey, and they have two sons and seven grandchildren.

Aaron Leib Dukes holds degrees in computer science and statistics from the University of Manitoba and has done postgraduate studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Case Western Reserve University, and Rutgers University. He studied Jewish law and philosophy at the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, NJ, and the Yeshiva Gedola of Seattle, Washington. For twenty-five years, he has worked as a consultant statistician and applications designer. He has published ten articles in professional journals on a wide range of subjects. Along with his teaching experience at the University of Manitoba and Rutgers and at various yeshivot, Dukes founded e-Cheder, teaching Talmud via video conferencing on the Internet. He currently consults for BSD, Breakthru Systems Development, throughout North America.

bsd@vif.com

After receiving a BA Magnum cum Laude in physics from Brandeis University, Elliot Pines joined Hughes Aircraft Company (HAC) in 1978. HAC awarded him fellowships to complete an MS in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and engineer’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a PhD in electrical engineering from the Solid State Structures Laboratory of UCLA. In 1984, he was elected to the electrical engineering honor society, Eta Kappa Nu.

Dr. Pines has worked in modeling, characterization, and special analyses for twenty-nine years. He was awarded an HAC Employee Recognition Award for Outstanding Achievement and Demonstration of Technical Excellence, and a Radar Systems Group Superior Performance Award, as well as a HAC SEED research grant to design a novel light-controlled transistor mechanism. He has served in senior scientist/engineer positions at HAC, Raytheon Company, Telasic Communications, and Geologics Corporation (consulting to Boeing Company).

Dr. Pines and his family are active members of the Anshe Emes Synagogue of Los Angeles. He is in his third cycle of Daf Ha’Yomi daily Talmud study, and writes a column for The Messenger of Southern California. He frequently lectures and has an online Torah and science talk at www.613.org/pines~htm.

EPines7186@aol.com

Professor Zecharia Dor-Shav (Dershowitz) was ordained by the Rabbinical Seminary of America-Mesivta Rabbi Chaim Berlin and earned a doctorate from New York University. He is now partially retired from Bar Ilan University, where he taught in the School of Education for twenty-five years, serving as its chair and as the director of the Stern Institute for Research and Advancement in Religious Education. Prior to his university teaching, he served as principal of Hebrew day schools.

Professor Dor-Shav is a registered psychologist and a member of the Israel Psychological Association as well as the Israel Education Association. His doctoral dissertation, “Influences of Cultural Patterns on the Thinking of Children in Certain Ethnic Groups: A Study of the Effect of Jewish Sub-culture on the Field-Dependence-Independence Dimension of Cognition,” was directed by Professors Herman Witkin and Margaret Mead. His primary publications are in the areas of cognitive processes and cultural differences, Jewish self-identity, and the development of empathy (particularly, empathy with the Jewish people). He has also created several original instruments for use in some of these studies: Verbal Disembedding Test, Jewishness Rating Test (with Yaakov Rand), and the Piagean Scale: Test of Jewish Empathy (with Hana Yaoz).

dorshav@mail.biu.ac.il

Professor Yaakov Yavin was born in Haifa, Israel. He served in the IDF and received a BSc from Tel Aviv University and a MSc from the Weizmann Institute in applied mathematics. Before completing a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Technion, he worked for Israel Aircraft Industries. Professor Yavin’s teaching and research career has included the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Twente University of Technology in Holland, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria, and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Since 2000 he has been a professor emeritus there, doing research.

Professor Yavin’s research focuses on: optimal control of distributed parameter systems, optimal control of stochastic systems, estimation and nonlinear filtering; stochastic differential games, and control of nonlinear systems. He has published two research monographs with Springer-Verlag and 214 papers in peer-reviewed journals. The Yavins have four children and nine grandchildren.

yavin@e250.ee.up.ac.za

Judith Bendheim Guedalia, PhD was born and educated in the United States and came to Israel in 1980. Since 1990 she has been the director of the Neuropsychology Unit, a senior medical psychologist, and member of the Trauma Team (MCE) Emergency Room of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. She is a licensed psychologist, a supervisor and specialist in medical, rehabilitation, and developmental psychology, and an EMDR Level II therapist. Dr. Guedalia was on the founding staff of the first haredi hostel for abused girls and boys. As cochair of Nefesh-Israel (a networking organization for Torah-observant mental health professionals), she has cochaired and organized four international conferences in Israel and many day-long workshops. She was elected to the board of the Medical Psychology Division of the Israel Association of Psychologists. She frequently lectures on developmental neuropsychology, acute stress and posttraumatic stress interventions, and the synthesis of psychology and Jewish thought. Dr. Guedalia and her husband live in Jerusalem, where they brought up their children.

guedalia@szmc.org.il

Yocheved Domb Debow holds a BA in psychology and education, and an MA in child and clinical psychology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has studied Torah at the Michlala College for Women, Midreshet Lindenbaum, and other institutions of higher learning in Jerusalem. She taught Judaic studies at Fuchs Mizrachi School in Cleveland, Ohio, for eight years and directed the Women’s Beit Midrash of Torat Tzion Kollel in Cleveland for six years. She returned with her family to Israel, where they live in Gush Etsion.

ydmnhm@aol.com

Mikhail M. Agrest received an MS in mathematics and mechanics from the Leningrad State University and a PhD in physics and mathematics from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He conducted research at the Institute for Analytical Instrumentation of the Academy of Sciences for almost twenty years. In 1992, he joined the physics and astronomy department of the College of Charleston in South Carolina. A member of the South Carolina Science Council, South Carolina Academy of Science, the North American Membrane Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), President of the Southern Atlantic Coast Section of AAPT, he is writing a biography of his father, Matest Agrest. Mikhail absorbed love of physics and mathematics, philosophy and religion, as well as humanism in its positive sense from age two, when he would bounce on the knees of Andrei Sakharov, deep in discussion on these issues with Matest Agrest.

http://www.cofc.edu/~agrestm

Agrestm@cofc.edu

After studying at the Lubavitch Yeshiva Tomkhey Tmimim before it was outlawed, Matest Agrest completed an MS in mathematics and astronomy from the Leningrad State University in Leningrad in 1929 and then a PhD in astronomy and mathematics from Moscow State University and a doctor of sciences from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He fought in the Red Army during the Second World War and was awarded the Order of the Red Star and nine medals, including the Medal for Defense of Moscow.

From 1945 to 1992, Agrest worked on the most prestigious, highly classified science projects in Russia, while not compromising his Torah observance or faith. He is the author of the Theory of Incomplete Cylindrical Functions, 120 scientific papers and six books, including Band 160 of the series Die Gruhitlehren der Mathematischien Wisenshaften. The author of the Paleocontact Hypothesis, he is a member of the Planetary Society and an honorary member of the Ancient Astronaut Society.

In 1992 he immigrated to the USA with his family.