New Issue!

B'Or Ha'Torah 20

(5771/2010)

(176 pages in English, including cumulative index)

Is population growth a blessing or a curse? Israeli Minister of Science and Technology, Daniel Hershkowitz, who is also a Technion professor of mathematics and community rabbi, shows us that the balancing forces of nature controlling animal populations are mirrored in the human soul. Surveying the history of "doomsayer" and "cornucopian" views on human overpopulation, ecologist Akiva Wolff, PhD, suggests that a wise application of the Torah principle of bal tashhit can bridge the two positions.

In an exclusive report to BHT, Rabbi Professor Avraham Steinberg, MD, describes how and why he steered the public committees that drafted the halakhically compatible laws in the Knesset regarding Rights of the Patient, Stem Cell Research, the Dying Patient, and Brain Death. Another international authority on Jewish medical ethics, Professor Fred Rosner, MD, examines the types of emergency treatments that Jewish doctors and dentists are permitted to perform on Shabbat. The permissibility of using computers, microphones, and chemical cooking kits on Shabbat is explored by Bar-Ilan university graduate students in three poster papers, a new format for BHT.

The Jews in south-western India enjoyed about a thousand years of tolerance. Comfortably fitting into the caste system there enabled them to retain a strong Jewish identity, yet the attitudes among different groups of Jews created a contradiction with halakhah. Professor Nathan Katz analyzes a brilliant and compassionate sixteenth-century responsum by the Radbaz to the Jews of Cochin concerning the acceptance of converts.

Call for Papers

The Ninth Miami International Conference on Torah and Science
22-25 December 2011

The Shul of Bal Harbour (Surfside, Florida), B’Or Ha’Torah Journal of Science, Life and Art in the Light of the Torah (Jerusalem College of Technology), and the Program in the Study of Spirituality at Florida International University are organizing the Ninth Miami International Conference on Torah and Science, 22-25 December 2011. The conference will take place at The Shul of Bal Harbour and will include a Shabbaton.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Memory, Soul and Brain: The Meeting Point of Torah, Gerontology and Neuroscience.” There will be three panels on this theme:

Scientific aspects of memory, aging and the end of life

Pastoral and psychological issues in helping families with aging and dying members

Philosophical-ethical insights on aging

We also plan to have one open panel in which any topic on the intersection of Torah with science may be addressed.

All presentations will be rooted in a Torah perspective.

Most of the lectures will be by invitation.

Abstracts will be accepted for a limited number of contributing lectures.

Please send a 200-word abstract and CV by July 1, 2011 to:
Professor Nathan Katz
Director of the Program in the Study of Spirituality
Florida International University
spirituality@fiu.edu

THE JERUSALEM COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY: A NEW HOME FOR B’OR HA’TORAH

B’OR HA’TORAH has moved to the Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT, also known as Machon Lev). This was done with the blessing of former Editor-in-Chief and publisher Professor Herman Branover, to whom we wish good health. In the words of the new Editor-in-Chief, Professor Joseph S. Bodenheimer, BHT 20—the first volume published under the new management—embodies “transition with continuity.”

One of Professor Bodenheimer’s plans for retirement after serving as President of JCT for sixteen years was to devote more time to Torah and science. BHT is fortunate to benefit from his enthusiasm and expertise. A physicist who has published more than eighty professional papers and holds eleven patents, Bodenheimer directed the electro-optics department of JCT before becoming its rector and then president. Bodenheimer continues teaching Torah and science courses at the main JCT campus and at Machon Tal, its women’s branch in Jerusalem.

Founded by physicist and Israel Prize laureate Rabbi Professor Ze’ev Lev in 1969, JCT is the first and only institution in Israel to offer an integrated curriculum of advanced Jewish studies and technical academic studies. Most of the faculty and all of the student body are Torah observant. Thousands of JCT graduates hold key economic, industrial, and security positions in Israel; they excel in their service to the Israel Defense Forces; and 95 percent of them continue to live in Israel. JCT reaches out to include in its student body new immigrants from the East and West. It has special programs for hareidi yeshivah students and married Talmud scholars, and two schools for women. Advances in medical physics, solar energy, and micro-optics; prize-winning hi-tech incubators; road safety research; an MBA program; a nursing school; and a Master of Science Degree in Communication Systems Engineering are among the college’s innovative developments.

Shai Solomon, the Director of the Department for Development and External Affairs of JCT, is the new administrator of BHT. He is assisted by Batsheva Binyamin and Melanie Steiner. Ilana Attia remains the managing editor, looking forward to many new pages.

B’OR HA’TORAH Signed Library Database Contracts with EBSCO and GALE

EBSCO Publishing has selected B’OR HA’TORAH to be included in its library database. The most prolific aggregator of full text materials, offering a growing suite of more than 250 bibliographic and full text databases, EBSCO has served the library and research communities for more than 60 years.

GALE Cengage Learning has also signed a contract to include all the articles from BHT in its library database.