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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 Avraham Steinberg, MD
There is much debate today about the ethical repercussions of research on cells taken from the earliest stages of human development. I shall review the science behind the issues and explain why halakhah (Jewish law) clearly permits stem cell research for medical purposes.
Leah Poltorak, MS
A well-known passage in the Talmud states that parents can pray for the gender of their unborn child only during the first forty days of pregnancy. Another passage states that the female identity of an embryo takes eighty days to be formed. At first blush, this appears to be contradictory to the basic facts of reproductive biology. Isn’t the gender of the embryo determined at the moment of conception? A more careful analysis reveals that the chromosomal makeup of the fertilized egg: XX or XY is not the only factor determining the embryo’s gender. The successful expression of the SRY gene located on the short arm of the Y chromosome is another crucial factor.
In fact, it takes approximately forty days from the time of conception for male gender to become irreversibly determined and about eighty days for female gender to be determined.
One can only wonder at the prophetic insight of the Talmud Sages, who pinpointed the precise timeframe for the formation of gender—long before the science of genetics was developed.
Rabbi Gideon Weitzman
In most cases, male or female gender is a culmination of both genetics and external features. However, in rare cases, children are born with external reproductive organs different from their genetic type. For halakhah (Jewish law) these unfortunate individuals raise questions that go to the core of sex determination. For instance, does halakhah sanction surgery to give the child a clearer sexual identity?
Halakhah is based on the decisions of the Talmud Sages. Lacking the technology to check genetic identity, our Sages determined gender on the basis of external organs only.
I shall discuss the medical background of a few cases that are different from the classic androgynous case discussed in talmudic literature. I shall raise a number of halakhic questions and suggest that the gender of each rare case of ambiguous identity be determined by halakhic authorities by examining the individual genetic and physiological features of the particular child as early as possible.
Moshe Kuhr, MD, MPH, FAAP
Deuteronomy 28:9 commands us to walk in G-d’s ways, or in other words to emulate God. The closest emulation to G-d that a human can reach is when a woman gives birth, helping the Creator create new life.
The first created human emulated G-d by being both male and female (until s/he was split into Adam and Eve). The Zohar says that every new soul is created both male and female until it is split before descending into our world. When the two parts find each other, they unite in a holy union that reconstitutes the image of G-d.
How can the marriage union result in such a lofty spiritual attainment? The matter is discussed at length by Raavad’s treatise on the laws of family purity, Baaley Ha’Nefesh, in the section entitled “The Holy Gate,” and by the author of “The Holy Letter.” These two works agree that the mechanism for reaching holiness is the intent during the act. Raavad takes a halakhic attitude, while “The Holy Letter” takes a spiritually transcending attitude. Both of them differ from Maimonides’ Aristotelian attitude.
Professor Fred Rosner, MD, MACP
Jewish Medical Ethics is a vast subject of many topics and issues. The classic Jewish sources—the Torah, Talmud, Codes of Jewish laws, and the responsa literature of the last four hundred years—are full of material relating to the ethical dilemmas that medical students and physicians face today and provide the basis for case-by-case rabbinic adjudication. In particular, new technological developments in medicine pose new problems for rabbinic adjudicators to answer for the Torah observant student and practitioner.
Gilles-Avraham Morali, MD
The concepts of disease and healing appear in the Torah in relation to spiritual imperfection and prayer respectively. Indeed, recent biopsychosocial studies have demonstrated that religious involvement and spirituality have beneficial effects on health, such as prolonged life, with less cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and depression. I propose a model in which prevention of several disorders may be attained by appropriate speech, through hypnotherapy and prayer.
Several studies have shown the positive effect of remote, intercessory prayer on acute and chronic disorders, such as prevention of complications after acute myocardial infarction or sepsis. Hypnosis has proven to be effective in pain reduction or psychosomatic disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome. Based on the sayings of the Jewish Sages, I have constructed a model in which primary and secondary prevention of many diseases is possible through implementation of positive thinking and elimination of negative habits.
Amiel Levin, MD
The science of medicine during the twentieth century focused on research, diagnoses and treatment of the biological etiology of illness. Only recently has medicine begun to understand the psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of illness.
Dr. George Engle’s Biopsychosocial Model (BPS) was a pioneer effort in recognizing that mental state and spiritual well being affect the biological body. This article gives the example of the relations of heart disease and psychological stress, social status, and spiritual feelings. To understand why this effect works, we turn to the letters and talks of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson, who maintained that a healthy soul is essential for the healing process of the body. The roles, responsibilities and duties of both patient and physician are explained.
Rabbi Mois Navon
The Talmud Sage Rav teaches that when tying tsitsit (ritual tassels) there is both an upper limit and a lower limit for the amount of braiding, as well as an ideal—“beautiful”—amount given in the form of a ratio of braided to unbraided sections. Embedded within these dry details lies the key to understanding the profound nature of aesthetics within Jewish thought. To what extent does Jewish law demand this ratio to be met and why? If the sole reason is simply “beauty,” of what concern is aesthetics to halakhic imperative?
By answering these questions, an appreciation of the depth of Rav’s teaching can be obtained—an appreciation that touches upon the very essence of the human quest to encounter the Divine. This excursion into aesthetics delves into the number phi, known as the Divine Proportion, as well as the positions of Immanuel Kant, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
Rabbi Professor Yossef Zukin
In both science and business systems there is a trend towards increasing complexity, the need for flexibility, and compliance with multiple demands. On the other hand, however, the user wants increasingly simpler interfaces.
A complex adaptive system using fuzzy logic can face this challenge because it provides a formal basis for the manipulation and computation of complexity, imprecision, and vagueness. At the same time, it is presented in language that can be understood by non-specialist users. An automobile can be a complex machine for a mechanical engineer, while being a simple device for the user who drives it.
Torah can be considered the main reference point for a complex system being contracted and conveyed through a simple channel. Torah is the most complex system we have because it encompasses the entire universe. Nevertheless, there are simple ways to learn it. Torah also presents clear and simple objectives, even though its inherent complexity remains. Jewish law is based on six hundred and thirteen commandments summarized in the Torah, usually in just a few simple words, that are later discussed at length in the Talmud and halakhic literature. The considerations presented here are based on the international theoretical literature, a cognitive model using fuzzy logic, and my professional work and Torah knowledge. The conclusion is reached that science and corporate businesses are evolving toward the Torah method of handling complexity and simplicity.
Rabbi Carmi Wisemon, MSW
After the Industrial Revolution, governments and corporate businesses started encouraging the public to consume more. The Torah commandment not to place stumbling blocks before the morally blind is being violated when the objects of consumption harm the consumers and when the production, use, and disposal of the manufactured products destroy the environment. As Torah-observant Jews we should reverse this dangerous trend and reduce our levels of consumption.
Professor Vera Schwarcz
Both Jewish and Chinese traditions center on a truth-consciousness that presupposes an individual mind capable of examining and overcoming its own prejudice. In both cultures, there is great emphasis on the practical consequence of truth-consciousness, on how one redefines moral action and the authentic personality. In the Torah world view as well as in Confucianism, truth is something that is hard won, difficult to name and to attain.
Key differences between the concept of Jewish emet and of Chinese zhen will be explored. The Jewish view of “truth” for example, affects the totality of human consciousness, moving from alef through tav. It demands that a person consider truly all angles and then risk a further connection to God’s own perspective, where the “lip of truth” finds its ultimate guarantee. In the non-theological world view of Confucianism, which centers on concepts of nature and an organicist view of the dao, there is nonetheless a strong emphasis upon the moral prerequisites for genuine knowledge. The seeker for zhen has to examine the inner landscape of the mind along with the reality of the world beyond. Only where there is a harmonious, hard-won accord between these two realms does genuine truth prevail.
In both Jewish and Chinese culture there are extensive debates about the locus of truth consciousness: Is it innate? Acquired? Both? By looking at Jewish and Chinese views of embodied veracity, the aim is to illuminate both emet and zhen and show how they provide a much needed corrective to the corrosive relativism of our times.
Professor Dan Vogel
Whether Franz Kafka, who died in 1924, prophesied, predicted, or intuited the coming of the Holocaust has been discussed and disputed. I uphold that he did. As testimony to his foreboding of a coming catastrophe for European Jewry, this article will offer his insights into their bleak future as expressed in his non-fiction—diaries, letters, and remarks by contemporaries. This later metamorphosed into fiction as characters, scenes, and symbols of astonishing prescience of aspects of that monumental crime. We can see this in his literary use of misguided technology, dehumanization of victims, Führer-veneration, and sanctified injustice. “Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and The Trial, written in the period 1912-1915, are major works in which Kafka portrayed his foreboding, although there is nothing ostensibly Jewish in these stories. A deepening consciousness of his Jewish heritage was a concomitant manifestation of Kafka’s sensitivity to the “Jewish problem.” Kafka’s passionate study of Hebrew and Torah at the end of his short life gives a more positive prognosis for the future of the Jewish people.
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
Leah (Valeria) Poltorak earned an MS in biophysics from Tbilisi State University, Georgia. She also completed her PhD coursework in molecular biology at the Moscow Institute of Virology. She works now as the Executive Vice President of Ryogen, a genetic company in Suffern, New York. Leah and her husband Alex live in Monsey, New York. They have five children.
Rabbi Gideon Weitzman, Director of the Puah Institute, heads the organization’s English-Speaking Section for Fertility and Medicine in Accordance with Halakhah (Jewish law).
Born in Britain, Rabbi Weitzman studied at the Beit El Rabbinic Seminary and earned his rabbinic ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Upon completion of his studies, he founded and chaired the Kansas City Community Kollel (Center of Adult Learning). Subsequently, he returned to Israel and was invited to join the staff of the Puah Institute.
Rabbi Weitzman has developed and taught online courses pertaining to fertility treatments and their interface with halakhah. These courses were sponsored by the Center for the Jewish Future of Yeshiva University and by Habad rabbis. While currently teaching in the Gruss Kollel and the Midrasha College for Women in Jerusalem, he also serves as rabbi of the Merkaz Modiin Synagogue. Rabbi Weitzman has published three books on the philosophy of former Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. His latest book, His Words, Their Voices — Essays on the Haftarot, was recently published by Urim Publications.
questions@puah.org.il
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Moshe Kuhr received his MD from the University of Chicago in 1965. A member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Ambulatory Pediatric Association, and the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, Dr. Kuhr has published nineteen articles in professional medical journals and presented at seven medical conferences. He practiced pediatrics in Rockland County, New York, for thirty-one years. In 2008 he made aliyah, and he now lives in Jerusalem learning, teaching, and writing, particularly on the Maharal of Prague. His first book, The Lion Cub of Prague (a rendition of the Gur Aryeh on the Book of Genesis) was published in 2008 by Devorah Press.
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).
Gilles-Avraham Morali, MD, PhD, was born in Algeria. At the age of nine months his family moved to Paris, where he grew up to study medicine. Upon completing his studies he made aliyah and settled in Jerusalem. There he did his internship and fellowship in Internal Medicine at Hadassah Hospital, and specialized in Gastroenterology at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. After a research fellowship in hepatology at Toronto General Hospital, in 1991 he became a senior gastroenterologist-hepatologist at Shaare Zedek. Having published more than forty scientific articles in international medical journals, Dr. Morali also practices hypnotherapy.
In parallel, he studied philosophy at La Sorbonne, Paris and wrote a thesis on the concept of the body in the writings of Emmanuel Levinas. Dr. Morali also studies Kabbalah in Jerusalem and has written two books (in French): one a kabbalistic commentary of the Pentateuch (L’Essence de la Torah); the second a study of the concept of the body in philosophy, science and Kabbalah (Kabbale: Corps et Ame).
Amiel Levin, MD, is a geriatrician, internist, and ethicist, who has been working at Mount Sinai Medical Center of Florida since 2004. His interests are in medical education, the biopsychosocial model of illness, ethics, and palliative care. He is well versed in Jewish ethics and serves as the primary consultant on this subject at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
He moved from Israel to the US in 1991 after completing his military service in the Israeli Defense Force. He obtained his BA and MD degrees from Boston University, completed a three-year residency at Rush Medical Center in Chicago, and then a two-year geriatric-fellowship at Cornell University. He moved to Miami in order to assume the role of teaching geriatric medicine and working in private practice.
Mois Navon is a computer design engineer with more than twenty years of professional experience in research and development of digital hardware. Navon has worked for IBM, NASA’s JPL, and News Corporation’s NDS. He is currently developing image-processing ASICs for Mobileye Vision Technologies to improve automotive safety. Navon received his degree in computer engineering with a minor in art history from UCLA in 1985. He received rabbinic ordination through the Rav Aharon Soloveitchik semikhah program at the Merkaz Ha’Rav Yeshivah in Jerusalem, which enables working professionals to learn towards rabbinic ordination. Navon is a member of the Ptil Tekhelet Association, where he lectures extensively on the topic of the ritual tekhelet dye and manages the association’s question and answer forum. He has published articles in the Torah u-Madda Journal, Jewish Thought, B’Or Ha’Torah, Jewish Bible Quarterly, Alei Etzion, and Chidushei Torah. He also maintains an outreach class on Jewish thought, and lectures on biblical commentary.
Carmi Wisemon is the executive director of Sviva Israel, a global environmental educational organization based in Israel. A graduate of the Merets Kollel, he was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and received an MSW from the Wurzweiler School of Social Work of Yeshiva University. He is editor of the annual journal The Environment in Jewish Thought and Law.
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
Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1927, reared in Jersey City, NJ in the days when a scant Jewish community supported an inadequate after-school Talmud Torah, Dan Vogel moved back to Brooklyn in time to join the Young Israel of Boro Park and attend Brooklyn College. The first inspired him to remain Torah observant; the second to become an instructor of college English. He was appointed instructor of English at Yeshiva College, and taught there for 24 years. He earned a PhD from New York University in 1956.
At Yeshiva University he became a full professor of English and also served as dean of Stern College from 1957-1967. He has published three books, The Three Masks of American Tragedy, Emma Lazarus, and Mark Twain’s Jews, as well as numerous articles on American literature, the theory of literature, and American-Jewish literature in professional journals.
After making aliyah in 1973, he was appointed professor of English and chairman of the department at the Michlalah-Jerusalem College for Women. Partial retirement came in 1988 and final retirement in 1995. He volunteers at the Yad Sarah organization and as associate editor of the Jewish Bible Quarterly. His current research and writing has a definite Jewish dimension to it. A period of inspiration produced more than a dozen delightful original stories under the title of Bikurim: Stories of the Shtetl, which are posted at http://jewishstoryteller.blogspot.com
