This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. privacy policy and terms of use.
B’OR HA’TORAH JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, LIFE AND ART IN THE LIGHT OF THE TORAH
A peer-reviewed journal on the interrelationship of Judaism, science and technology, psychology, the arts, and social issues, B’Or Ha’Torah illuminates a range of topics from the cosmology and ecology of Genesis; the creation ex nihilo vs. evolution and faith vs. reason debates; the views of halakhah (Jewish law) on stem cell research and genetic engineering; and the soul-mind-brain-memory-body connection. Rabbis and religious Jews with no science background as well as professionals in all fields with no Torah background can enjoy this inspiring publication in hardcopy and digital formats.
To receive a free PDF file of an individual article, send the author, title, and volume number to:
bht@jct.ac.il
This offer is limited to three articles.
Rabbi Professor Daniel Hershkowitz
Stability of movement is achieved by stabilizing forces working in the reverse direction. One of the many examples of the use of this principle in technology is the small wings of a rocket. This principle is also widely used in economics. The mathematics of stabilizing forces was developed by Alfred J. Lotka and Vito Volterra, working independently of one another. Studying predator-prey systems in nature helped Lotka to develop his model.
Human nature has a stabilizing force implanted by God. Our rabbis teach us that the evil inclination of every person pushes him or her in the reverse direction, similar to stabilizing forces, demanding intuitive mathematics in order to find the right balance.
Akiva Wolff, PhD
Bal tashhit is the environmental Torah commandment that prohibits the needless destruction of anything useful to human life. It is derived from the prohibition in Deuteronomy 20:19–20 against destroying fruit trees during a wartime siege. “Cornucopians” (also called “anti-Malthusians”) is a name given to those who believe that through human innovation the world can provide a practically limitless abundance of natural resources. “Doomsayers” (also called “Malthusians”) is a name given to those who believe that all or some of humankind are doomed by human population growth and/or high consumption rates and their effects on the environment.
The principle of bal tashḥit can play a useful explanatory role in resolving the debate between these two opposing points of view. Only with the production and maintenance of the full spectrum of knowledge, moral-ethical behavior, and the necessary institutional infrastructure for maintaining them can there be sustainable human progress. I suggest that a Torah-true lifestyle, with an emphasis on the observance of bal tashḥit, is a method par excellence for promoting human progress with sustainability. This article is part of the author’s PhD thesis.
Professor Nathan Aviezer
The CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) accelerator in Geneva is the largest, most sophisticated, and most expensive scientific facility ever constructed. It is situated in a huge underground doughnut-shaped structure, eighteen miles long and fifty feet high, packed with complicated scientific apparatus, and it will cost almost ten billion dollars. An accelerator is an instrument for producing new particles. Particles are the building blocks of all matter in the universe. Why is it so important to produce new particles? What is the connection between this new accelerator and the Torah?
Some of the currently outstanding problems of physics are the elusive Higgs particle, dark matter, and string theory. This paper puts the Geneva venture in the context of a Torah perspective. I shall explain in simple language how the Geneva accelerator is expected to shed important light on these topics and perhaps on other fundamental questions of science, thus deepening our appreciation of God’s Creation.
David B. Medved, PhD
This posthumous paper develops comparisons and analogies between modern astrophysics and the Torah account of the first and second Days of Creation. The approach is similar to the well-known Day-Age model, which posits that each Day of the six days of Genesis corresponds to a specific epoch in the evolution of the Universe from t=0 to the present era. The manuscript was edited by Professor Joseph S. Bodenheimer.
Professor Nathan Katz
The Cochin Jews provide a particularly fine example of how a small religio-ethnic community can acculturate itself within a tolerant, larger society for at least a thousand years. By narrating an appropriate historical legend with motifs from both the origin and host religious cultures; by a periodic ritual enactment of the symbols representing the poles of power in the caste hierarchy of Kerala, and by even adapting the host culture’s caste structure within its own community, a secure place was achieved within India. The Cochin Jews developed Passover customs influenced by Brahmin asceticism and Simhat Torah royalty symbols influenced by the local nobility that fitted nicely into the framework of halakhah (Jewish law).
In the sixteenth century, a question regarding the discrimination practiced by a group of Jews of attestable Jewish origin against an indigenous group of observant Jews considered to be partially descended from slaves was brought in a responsum to the great adjudicator Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (the Radbaz) of Cairo and later to his student Rabbi Jacob Castro. Their replies are models of detailed halakhic analysis steeped in compassion. In the end, though, equal status was achieved by the struggle led by A.B. Salem, a few decades before most of this small community emigrated to Israel after 1948.
Professor Fred Rosner MD, FACP
It is axiomatic in Judaism that all but three biblical and rabbinic commandments are waived for pikuah nefesh (preserving and saving a human life). How do Jewish physicians, dentists, and other health professionals apply this principle when confronted with a medical or dental emergency or potential emergency on the Sabbath? What constitutes a medical emergency? How should serious but not life-threatening conditions be treated on Shabbat?
Professor Kenneth Collins, MD
Evidence-based medicine is the contemporary expression for the integration of the best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values, enabling the physician and the patient to form a diagnostic and therapeutic alliance optimizing clinical outcomes and the quality of life. The distinguished medieval Jewish sage, physician, and philosopher, Moses Maimonides (1138–1204, also known as Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon or Rambam), who practiced in the Sultan’s palace and in Fostat, Old Cairo, Egypt, in the twelfth century, after his early years in Spain and Morocco, left an extensive legacy of medical writings which indicate his understanding of patient values and the importance of the therapeutic alliance.
Rabbi Professor Avraham Steinberg, MD
During the past fifty years, medical ethics has been challenged by hitherto unimaginable questions brought about by unprecedented advances in science. Dramatic developments in the practice of medicine, such as organ transplantation and ivf and pgd procedures, have taken place. Secular medical ethics today tries to solve the myriad of new questions by applying four absolute principles. In contrast, Jewish medical ethics is based on the more flexible case-by-case (casuistry approach) halakhah (Jewish law).
In the first four to five decades of the State of Israel, medical ethics laws were enacted by the Knesset through a process of political fighting between the religious and non-religious parties. The Autopsy Law and Abortion Law are examples of this unsuccessful way of legislating medical ethics issues.
For over a decade now, a new, more successful approach has been used by convening a public committee of experts to discuss the issues and draft a proposal that the Knesset then debates and votes on. The author discusses four such laws that he helped to formulate: the Patient’s Rights Act of 1996, the Genetic Intervention Act of 1999 (stem cell research law), the Dying Patient Act of 2005, and the Brain Death Respiratory Law of 2008. These laws are unique to Israel because they are based on careful halakhic analysis.
Professor Shimon Glick, MD Robert Finaly, MD
Robert Finaly, md comes from a large family in Hungary, dating back many generations. After World War II, the daughter of a surviving aunt returned to Hungary to explore family roots. The search turned up a small diary, published in 1873, by an ancestor physician, Dr. Sigismund Finaly (1808-1876). The following excerpt from that diary brings to life contemporary issues in medical education and medical ethics such as patient autonomy, cultural sensitivity, and mind-body interaction. Dr. Finaly’s colleague, Professor Shimon Glick, MD brought about the publication of this account of the extraordinary recovery of a “simple” rural Jew whose faith in God defied medical logic when he refused to have his tefillin arm amputated.
Daniel Hershkowitz was born in Haifa, where he was ordained by its two chief rabbis. He received the degrees of BSc, MSc, and DSc in mathematics at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. He has taught mathematics there from 1971 to the present, with the exception of 1983-1986 and 1988-1989, when he was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. His main professional field is linear algebra and matrix analysis, including inverse eigenvalue problems, combinatorial spectral theory, matrix stability, and nonnegative matrices and their applications. In 2002 and again in 2005 he was elected president of the International Linear Algebra Society. In addition, he heads and participates in many academic committees and forums in Israel. He is the editor-in-chief of the Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra and a senior editor of the journal Linear Algebra and Its Applications. In 1982 he was awarded the Landau Research Prize in Mathematics; in 1990, the New England Academic Award for excellence in research; in 1990, the Technion’s Award for Excellence in Teaching; and in 1991, the Henri Gutwirth Award for Promotion of Research. The recipient of numerous national and international research grants, Professor Hershkowitz has published over eighty articles in professional mathematics journals.
Parallel to his academic career, Daniel Hershkowitz serves as the rabbi of the Ahuzah neighborhood of Haifa and is active in many areas of religious life in Israel. Elected to head the Jewish Home political party in 2008, Rabbi Professor Hershkowitz was appointed Minister of Science and Technology in the current Netanyahu government. As a member of the Knesset he is active in the lobby to increase tolerance between the religious and secular sectors of Israeli society. He and his wife Shimonah, a principal of a special education high school, have five children.
hershkow@technion.ac.il
Akiva Wolff received a BS in soil science from the University of Florida and an MA in Energy and Environmental Studies from Boston University. He is currently a PhD candidate, completing a thesis on how bal tashhit, the Torah prohibition on unnecessary destruction, can be applied to contemporary issues in resource conservation. He has worked as an environmental consultant for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Quality Engineering, and as the director of processing of recyclable materials for New York City.
Wolff has studied at a number of yeshivot in Jerusalem, where he lives with his family and works as the director of the Environmental Responsibility Unit of the Jerusalem Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at the Jerusalem College of Technology-Machon Lev.
Nathan Aviezer is professor of physics and former chairman of the Physics Department of Bar-Ilan University. The author of more than 140 scientific articles on solid state physics, Aviezer was honored by his colleagues by being elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and Research Professor of the Royal Society of London.
In addition to his scientific research, Aviezer has a long-standing interest in the relationship between Torah and science. He is the author of three books: In the Beginning (translated into nine languages); Fossils and Faith (translated into four languages); and Modern Science and Ancient Faith (recently published). Aviezer teaches a course at Bar-Ilan University on Torah and science, which was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize. Aviezer is one of the organizers of an annual Torah and science conference which attracts hundreds of participants from all over Israel.
Born in Switzerland and raised in the United States, Professor Aviezer received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and subsequently held a senior research position at the IBM Watson Research Center in New York. In 1967, Nathan and his wife, Dvora, made aliyah. Living in Petah Tikvah, the Aviezers have four children and many grandchildren.
aviezen@mail.biu.ac.il
David Medved worked as a control chemist in a defense plant while attending Central High School of Philadelphia. After serving as a radar technician for the US Navy, he did undergraduate work in chemistry and completed an MA and PhD in physics at the University of Pennsylvania while working as a research engineer at Philco and publishing papers in professional journals on his work on optics.
When the first Sputnik was launched, he transferred to work at a new division at General Dynamics, where he was appointed a group leader in physics research on ballistic missiles. The unclassified publications of the work of this small team appeared in the Physical Review, Advances in Electronics, and the Journal of Applied Physics. During this time, Dr. Medved taught solid state physics and physical electronics at ucla Extension and San Diego College. Later, he was a Visiting Associate Professor at ucla and Chief Scientist at the eos division of Xerox Corporation. The research of his group at Xerox on formation of p-n junctions by low energy ion implantation was published in Applied Physics Letters.
Nasa selected him to serve as Principal Investigator on the Gemini Project, responsible for the design of the ion and electron particle detectors for the Agena satellite and the plan of the trajectory of the Gemini spacecraft’s dress rehearsal for the Apollo moon mission. Dr. Medved was accepted as one of the final twenty out of five thousand applicants for the Scientist-as-Astronaut program. Disqualified by his periodontal history, he left nasa to become a scientist-entrepreneur. He established meret Inc, a pioneer in the design, fabrication, and installation of short-range fiber optic communications systems, which operated for twenty years until it was sold to amoco.
After he immigrated to Israel, Dr. Medved founded the Jerusalem Optical Link Technologies (jolt) on the campus of the Jerusalem College of Technology. Specializing in recondite wireless optical communications, jolt was acquired by mrv Communications in 2000. Dr. Medved served as Chief Technical Officer of mrv alongside his service with the Jerusalem College of Technology. His book, Hidden Light: Secrets of the Bible, was published by Toby Press in 2008.
David Medved passed away on 15 Adar 5769 (2008). He is survived by his sons Michael, Jonathan, Benjamin, and Harry. May his memory be for a blessing.
Nathan Katz, PhD, the Bhagwan Mahavir Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Program in the Study of Spirituality, is the founder-director of the Program in the Study of Spirituality at Florida International University. Arguably the world’s leading authority on Jewish communities in India, his work has focused on the cultural interactions between Judaic and Indian civilizations. He is co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies. One of eight invited Jewish delegates at the historical 1990 Tibetan-Jewish dialogue hosted by the Dalai Lama, he recently keynoted the third Hindu-Jewish summit in New York. Of his fifteen books, his latest is a memoir, Spiritual Journey Home—Eastern Mysticism to the Western Wall, published by Ktav in 2009. His 2000 book, Who Are the Jews of India? was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Studies. Professor Katz is a co-organizer of the Miami International Torah and Science Conferences.
Professor Fred Rosner, MD, MACP is the former director of the Department of Medicine of Mount Sinai’s Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica, New York, and professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He was also visiting professor of medicine at his alma mater, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and is board certified in his specialty of hematology. Among his many awards are the American Medical Association’s Isaac Hays, MD, and John Bell, MD, Award for “Leadership in Ethics and Professionalism;” the Bernard Revel Memorial Award from the Yeshiva College Alumni Association for “Distinguished Achievement in the Arts & Sciences;” and the Lawrence D. Redway Award for Excellence in Medical Writing from the Medical Society of New York.
Listed in a number of prestigious Who’s Who publications, Dr. Rosner has been an international authority, visiting professor, and lecturer on medical ethics. He is a member of the professional advisory board of the Kennedy Institute for Ethics of Georgetown University. He is the founding and former chairman of the Medical Ethics Committee of the Medical Society of the State of New York, and former cochairman of the Medical Ethics Committee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York as well as coeditor of its popular Compendium on Medical Ethics.
Dr. Rosner reviews manuscripts for nineteen professional medical journals and serves on the editorial board of three of them. He has published thirty-eight books, written chapters by invitation in several dozen books, and is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Judaica and the Encyclopedia of Bioethics. His bibliography has nearly one thousand items. He is author of eight widely acclaimed books on Jewish medical ethics, including Modern Medicine and Jewish Ethics (Ktav, 1991); Medicine and Jewish Law I, II and III (Jason Aronson, 1990 and 1993); Pioneers in Jewish Medical Ethics (Jason Aronson, 1997); and Biomedical Ethics and Jewish Law (Ktav, 2001). Other books include: an English translation of Julius Preuss’s classical reference work, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine (reprinted in 1993); and the Encyclopedia of Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud (Jason Aronson, 2000). Dr. Rosner translated Avraham Steinberg’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, published by Feldheim in 2003. A world authority on Maimonides, Dr. Rosner is the translator and editor of Moses Maimonides’ Medical Writings (seven volumes, published by the Maimonides Research Institute, Haifa); A Medical Encyclopedia of Moses Maimonides (Jason Aronson, 1998); and The Medical Legacy of Moses Maimonides (Ktav, 1998).
Rabbi Professor Avraham Steinberg, MD, is an associate clinical professor of medical ethics at the Hebrew University–Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. He is the author of The Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, published in seven volumes in Hebrew (two editions) and three volumes in English (translated by Dr. Fred Rosner), for which he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1999. Professor Steinberg is a senior pediatric neurologist at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. He directs the Medical Ethics Unit at Shaare Zedek. Head of the editorial board of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, and Editor-in-Chief of the Talmudic Micropedia, he is also director of Yad Harav Herzog, and a member of national and international societies of child neurology, medical ethics, and Jewish medical ethics.
In Israel, Professor Steinberg is the co-chairman of the National Bioethics Council, chairman of the Dying Patient Committee, chairman of the Organ Transplantation Committee, chairman of the Altruistic Live-Organ Donations Committee, member of the Brain-Death Criteria Committee, member of the Status of the Fetus and Pre-Embryo Committee, and chairman of the Pathological Specimens Committee.
He is the author and editor of 40 books and public reports in 59 volumes, and over 280 articles and chapters in scientific journals and books on Jewish medical ethics, general medical ethics, the history of medicine, medicine and law, and pediatric neurology. He has given over 4,000 expert witness opinions in court cases on pediatric neurology and medical ethics.
steinberg@szmc.org.il
A native of New Jersey and graduate of both a Brooklyn yeshivah and the Downstate Medical Center, Shimon Glick trained in internal medicine at Yale University Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital. He subsequently was a research fellow in the laboratory of Berson and Yalow (Nobel laureate) at the Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital.
From 1965 to 1967 Dr. Glick served as president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists of the US. He also cochaired the Medical Science Section of the Committee of Concerned Citizens for Soviet Jewry. Before his emigration to Israel in 1974, he was Chief of Medical Services at the Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn and Clinical Professor of Medicine at Downstate Medical Center.
In 1974, Dr. Glick became professor of medicine and chair of the Division of Medicine at the new Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Faculty of Health Sciences in Beersheba, where he subsequently became dean. He later served as head of the Center for Medical Education and the Lord Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits Center for Jewish Medical Ethics at that school. For over a decade he was ombudsman for the Ministry of Health of the state of Israel.
Robert Finaly, MD was born (and circumcised by a rabbi, under peril, because his parents wanted him to be a Jew) in 1941 near Grenoble, France, where his parents secured a temporary haven from the Nazis. His father, Fritz Finaly, had studied medicine in Vienna and managed to work as a physician in France. After their parents were deported to their deaths in Auschwitz, Robert and his brother were given over to the care of Antoinette Brun and Catholic boarding institutions in Grenoble. At the end of the war, in 1945 the three surviving aunts started searching for the boys and trying to gain custody of them. The reaction of Mademoiselle Brun and the Church was to baptize the boys in 1948. The family’s attempt to release the Finaly brothers led to five years of lawsuits. While the Church moved the young children from one hiding place to another in France, Spain, and Italy, the case gained great attention in France and throughout the world. Moshe Keller (a chemical engineer living in Grenoble), Chief Rabbi Yaakov Kaplan of France, Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Israel, and many Jewish organizations were involved in the family’s struggle, which reached the Supreme Court of France. In 1953 the court ordered that the brothers be released and raised by their aunt Yehudit Rosner and her family in Gedera, Israel.
Robert Finaly studied medicine in Switzerland and at the Hebrew University Hadassah School of Medicine and worked as a children’s surgeon at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba. He became the vice-chairman of the department of children’s surgery there and taught at the Faculty of Health Sciences of Ben-Gurion University until his retirement.
