B'OR HA'TORAH Volume 11 (1999)

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Yitzchok Block holds a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University. Professor Block is Professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, where he taught in the Department of Philosophy for 36 years. Block’s professional areas of interest are Aristotle and Wittgenstein. Professor Block has published numerous papers and edited a book, Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein. oHis article “G-d and Rationality” appeared in B’Or Ha’Torah 2; and “God and Rationality Revisited,” in B’Or Ha’Torah 6E. A revision of “God and Rationality” appears in Science in the Light of the Torah published by Jason Aronson.

Herman Branover was born in Riga, Latvia, earned his PhD from the Moscow Institute of Aviation in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), and completed a DSc degree in physics and mathematics at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. While a leading scientist at the Latvian Academy of Science, Professor Branover discovered G-d and the Torah, became a Lubavitcher Hasid, and then struggled for the right for Jews to immigrate to Israel. During this difficult period and up until the present, he has led the cultural and spiritual revival of Russian Jewry.

After settling in Beersheba with his wife and son, in 1977 Professor Branover created the Center for Magnetohydrodynamics Studies at Ben-Gurion University. The Center engages in teaching, research, and the development of a novel MHD electricity generator. He has authored over twenty scientific books and textbooks, thirty technological patents, hundreds of professional articles, and an autobiography, Return (published by Jason Aronson).

As honorary president of SHAMIR, the Israel Association of Religious Professionals from the Former USSR, Professor Branover continues encouraging Russian Jews to observe the Torah and live in Israel. He is the initiator and editor-in-chief of B’Or Ha’Torah, published by SHAMIR. A recipient of the S.D. Bergman Prize for the development of new technology in Israel, he also received the Knesset Speaker’s Award in 1991 for his work with Russian immigrant absorption. He chairs the prime minister’s committee for solving immigrants’ professional employment problems. He is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences in Moscow and the Latvian Academy of Sciences, a member of the Moscow International Energy Club, and has received honorary doctorates from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Technical University of St. Petersburg, and Yeshiva University. In 2001 he won the Award of Honor of the Menachem Begin Prize for his outstanding contribution to the State of Israel and the Jewish People.

Papers by Professor Branover have been published in B’Or Ha’Torah volumes 7E, 9E, 10E, 11E, and 12E.

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

Gerald Schroeder earned his BSc, MSc and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctorate is in the Earth Sciences and Nuclear Physics. Professor Schroeder’s yeshiva studies were guided by Rabbi Chaim Brovender at ITRI, and before that by the late Rabbi Herman Pollack. He is the author of Genesis and the Big Bang, the Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Torah, published by Bantam Doubleday (now in six languages). His second book, The Science of God, published by Free Press of Simon & Schuster, was on the Barnes & Noble bestseller list for three months. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife (the author Barbara Sofer) and their five children. Professor Schroeder served in the IDF, as do his two sons, who are officers. His e-mail address is

 schoerde@netvision.net.il.

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

Rabbi Dr. Naftali Berg was an outstanding Jew. As a physicist he was a prominent award-winning researcher on the board of fame of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

A tribute to Naftali Berg by Professor Herman Branover appears in B’Or Ha’Torah 9E (1995), prefacing Naftali’s discussion of quantum physics, “Preparing for Mashiah: Understanding the Hasidic Concepts of Divine Providence and Free Will through the Laws of Physics.” His “The Creator in the Creation” appeared in B’Or Ha’Torah 2 (1982) and was reprinted in Science in the Light of the Torah, published by Jason Aronson in 1994.

Naftali is deeply missed by B’Or Ha’Torah and by countless others to whom he gave of himself unsparingly.

Yanki Tauber was born in 1965 in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in this community of Lubavitcher Hasidim. His education in the Habad school system included three years as lecturer and outreach worker in remote Jewish communities in Seattle, Washington; several towns in Montana; Berlin, Germany; and many places in the Soviet Union.

Ordained by Yeshivat Tomkhey Temimim in 1987, Rabbi Tauber has been editing Week in Review since 1989. This is a digest of hasidic thought based on the works of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson.

The author of Once upon a Hasid (a collection of hasidic stories and sayings), Beyond the Letter of the Law (a hasidic companion to Mishna Avot—The Ethics of the Fathers), and The Inside Story (a hasidic perspective on biblical events, encounters, and personalities), Yanki Tauber lives in Rishon L’Tsion, Israel, with his wife and two daughters.

yanki@actcom.co.il.

Dr. Ephraim Nissan is a research fellow at the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Greenwich, in London. Born in Tel Aviv, he grew up in Milan, Italy, where he attended Jewish day school and then the Milan Institute of Technology. He then returned to Israel, where he earned a PhD in computer science, won an IPA Award in computer science, and taught in three different faculties at Bar Ilan University. Dr. Nissan is the author of over 100 papers (mostly in engineering or computing, but some in linguistics or Judaica) and the guest editor for several journals. He is listed in Who’s Who in Science and Engineering.

E.Nissan@greenwich.ac.uk

http://www.gre.ac.uk/~E.Nissan

Yitshak Yehuda Rozen was born in 1974 in Petah Tikva, where he and his wife live now. After completing the Bnei Akiva yeshiva high school Or Etsion in Merkaz Shapiro, he studied at Yeshivat Tomkhey Tmimim in Migdal Ha’Emek and at Kfar Habad, where he completed his rabbinical studies. In 1995 he worked on the editorial board of the encyclopedia Mamlekhet Ha’Torah, which documents the interaction between leading rabbis of the past two generations and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. In 1997 he worked with his brother revising Tvoah V’Hakhen, a book on the laws of kosher slaughter and inspection. Rabbi Rozen speaks and writes on Talmud, Jewish law, Hasidism, Jewish thought, art and science, and the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

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

Rabbi Dr. Shimon Cowen lives in Melbourne with his wife and children. He has a doctorate in social philosophy and received rabbinic ordination in Israel and in the Kollel Menachem Lubavitch, Melbourne (where he served as its program director for a number of years). In 1977 he published an annotated translation of the Seder Bircas Hanehenin (Laws of Blessing) of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi.

Rabbi Cowen is the director of the recently established Institute for Judaism and Civilization, and he lectures at Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization. Through seminars, conferences, and a scholarly journal entitled Judaism and Civilization, as well as through formal teaching, Rabbi Cowen explores “interfaces” between traditional Judaism and the arts, sciences and values of general civilization. The Institute for Judaism and Civilization is located at 88 Hotham Street, East S. Kilda, Victoria 3183, Australia. Fax 61-3-9522-8266.

At age nine, Avraham Kushelevsky emigrated with his family from the United States to Israel, where his father, Rabbi Eliyahu Kushelevsky, became the head of the rabbinical court of Beersheba. After studying at the Slobodka Yeshiva in Bnei Brak and the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Kushelevsky went to England to study physics and received his doctorate from Salford University. Returning to Israel, he taught and conducted research in Medical Physics at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba. He chaired the Technological Incubator in Ofakim and represented the Ministry of Environment in the Interministerial Committee on Ionizing Radiation.

Three articles by Professor Kushelevsky—“The Religious Foundations of Science,” “The War between Religion and Science in the Nineteenth Century and the Change in the Twentieth Century,” and “Halacha and the Preservation of the Text of the Holy Scriptures”—were translated into English from the Hebrew in B’Or Ha’Torah issues 1 and 2 and published in B’Or Ha’Torah 7E. They were reprinted in the anthology edited by Herman Branover and Ilana Attia, Science in the Light of the Torah, published by Jason Aronson in 1994.

Professor Kushelevsky was an active member of the B’Or Ha’Torah International Advisory Board. His guidelines were always clear; his criticism constructive; his attitude modest, cheerful, and optimistic. His untimely death over a year ago deprived us of a great friend and a true man of Torah and science.

Dr. Yoseph Udelson is a specialist in modern Jewish and European intellectual history, as well as the history of television technology. Udelson’s study of Israel Zangwill explores the challenges modernity poses for Jewish identity, while his book on the history of American television technology is considered the authoritative history in this field. He has recently retired from Tennessee State University and now lives in Tsfat.

“Worlds of Difference” (an intellectual history of the West) appeared in B’Or Ha’Torah 5E in 1986.

Professor Avraham M. Hasofer held the chair of mathematical statistics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney from 1969 until 1991, when he moved to Melbourne. There he was a professor of statistics at LaTrobe University until he retired a year ago.

In his more than 80 scientific papers Professor Hasofer’s main interest is the application of statistics to civil engineering. He is the co-inventor of the Hasofer-Lind Reliability Index, which is widely used in civil engineering design.

The founding president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists in Australia, Hasofer maintains a close connection with the Habad movement and lectures widely on Jewish subjects.

In B’Or Ha’Torah 3 Professor Hasofer published “A Statistician Looks at Neo-Darwinism.” In 8E he published “Codes in the Torah: A Rejoinder.” This rejoinder was followed by further discussion in issue 9E.

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

Susan Schneider is the writer and director of A Still Small Voice, a correspondence school that provides weekly teachings in classic Jewish wisdom to subscribers around the world. She also teaches individuals or small groups wanting to work with text in depth.

Holding a BA in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from the University of Colorado, Susan Schneider has also studied in the advanced program of Neve Yerushalayim. Working as a biologist, she pioneered an on-site respiratory program at Celestial Seasonings herb tea company in Colorado.

“Evolution—Form and Consciousness” by her appeared in B’Or Ha’Torah 4; and “The Underside of Creative Expression,” in B’Or Ha’Torah 7E.

Her fax is 972-2-628-8302

Baruch Sterman was born and raised in New Jersey. He studied at Yeshivat Har Etsion, completed his undergraduate degree in physics from Yeshiva University, and received a Masters in electrical engineering from Columbia University. He made aliya in 1987 and earned a PhD in physics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He, his wife Judy, and their five children live in Efrat.

Dr. Sterman holds a number of patents in laser design and has published extensively in the field of laser physics. He has also published articles on issues relating to religion and science.

In 1991 Dr. Sterman founded the P’Til Tekhelet Association with Rabbi Eliyahu Tavger, Joel Guberman, and Ari Greenspan. The organization produces tekhelet dye from the Murex trunculus snail and promotes research and other activities relating to tekhelet.