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Biographical sketches of the Keynote Speakers of the Fifth Miami International Conference on Torah & Science The Kovens Convention Center, Florida International University, Miami December 16-21, 2003 For information contact Ilana Attia, info@borhatorh.org
Professor Nathan AviezerNathan Aviezer was born in Switzerland, grew up in Detroit, and received his doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago. He then held a research position at the IBM Watson Research Center near New York. In 1967, the Aviezers made aliya to Israel, where he joined Bar-Ilan University as Professor of Physics and Chairman of the Physics Department. The author of more than 100 scientific articles on solid state physics, Professor Aviezer (whose surname was then Wiser) was elected in 1984 as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, in recognition of his important research contributions to the theory of the electrical properties of metals and alloys. In 1992, the Royal Society of London elected Professor Aviezer as a Royal Society Research Professor of Physics. During the last few years, Aviezer has taken an active interest in the relationship between Torah and science and has written a book on this subject entitled In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science (Ktav Publishing House, 1990). The book is in its eighth printing, and has been translated into nine languages. Its Hebrew title is Beresheet Bara. Professor Aviezer’s second book on Torah and science, entitled Fossils and Faith: Understanding Torah and Science, was also published by Ktav.
Pamela Elfenbein, PhDPamela Elfenbein completed an MSW at Barry College in Miami and a PhD in medical sociology at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. Since 1978 she has been involved in social work for the elderly in the Miami area. In 1999 she was appointed director of education and training for the Southeast Florida Center on Aging of Florida International University. Dr. Elfenbein is applying her professional experience and knowledge to initiate a pioneering Torah study and prayer program for the elderly in conjunction with The Shul of Bal Harbour in Miami, where she and her family are active congregants.
Aaron E. Glatt, MD, FACP, FCCP, FIDSADr. Aaron E. Glatt is associate dean and full professor of clinical medicine at New York Medical College. He is also as the director of graduate medical education, chief of the division of infectious diseases, director of the Department of Infection Control and Environmental Health, and director of the HIV/AIDS program at St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers of NYC, Brooklyn/Queens Region (four hospitals). He is also the chairman of the SVCMC Systemwide (eight hospitals) Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, and Systemwide Infection Control Committee. Dr. Glatt earned his BA from Yeshiva University, where he was class valedictorian. He received his medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. After completing his internship, residency, and chief residency in internal medicine at the Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn NY, he completed a fellowship in infectious diseases at the State University of New York Health Sciences Center in Brooklyn. Dr. Glatt is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. The author of over 180 scientific journal articles and presentations at national meetings, and a nationally known lecturer, Dr. Glatt was a guest editor of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of North America and infectious diseases editor of Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary. In addition, he has served on the editorial boards of major publications, is a reviewer for many prestigious journals, and has served on many government, hospital, medical school and local public health committees. His interests include general infectious diseases, Clostridium difficile, tuberculosis, fungal infection, occupational-related HIV seroconversion, HIV infection, and antibiotic utilization. Rabbi Dr. Glatt is the assistant rabbi at Congregation Anshei Chesed (South Shore) in Hewlet. He has given a Daf Yomi daily Talmud lesson for well over a decade, first at the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, and currently at the Young Israel of Woodmere. He also gives a regular in-depth lessons in Talmud and halakhah, and occasional Torah lessons. An international lecturer on medical halakhic issues, Rabbi Dr. Glatt has recently published an anthology Women in the Talmud, published by the Orthodox Union (OU) and distributed by Mesorah Publications, (www.artscroll.com) Brooklyn, NY. aglatt@pol.net
Professor Michael Gordon, MD, MSc, FRCPCProfessor Michael Gordon, MD, MSc, FRCPC serves as vice president of Medical Services and head of Geriatrics and Internal Medicine at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care; Head of the Division of Geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital; and professor of medicine and member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at The University of Toronto, Canada. A regular contributor and commentator on the joys and problems of the elderly for various TV programs and radio shows, Professor Gordon has published numerous articles in both the lay and professional press. His book Old Enough to Feel Better—a Medical Guide for Seniors was published first in Canada, then by Seal/Bantam Books in 1987, and updated by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1989. His second book, An Ounce of Prevention—the Canadian Guide to Healthy and Successful Retirement was published by Prentice-Hall, Canada. He coauthored a new edition of the Encyclopedia of Health & Aging published by Canada’s Key Porter Press. Parenting Your Parents coauthored with Bart Mindszenthy was published by Dundurn Press in the spring of 2002. He has participated on many professional and government committees on aging and related subjects, and is past chair of the Provincial Drug Quality and Therapeutics Committee and an active member of the Coroner’s Committee on Geriatrics and Long Term Care. He is a member of the National Advisory Council on Aging, and recently was elected as a Member of the General Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and completed his masters degree in bioethics at the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.
Professor Roald HoffmannRoald Hoffmann was born (as Roald Safran) in 1937 in Złoczów, Poland, the great grandson of a rabbi. Having survived the Nazi occupation, he came to the US in 1949, grew up in Williamsburg, and studied chemistry at Columbia University and Harvard University (PhD 1962). Since 1965 he is at Cornell University, now as the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters. Hoffmann has received many of the honors of his profession, including the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (with Kenichi Fukui). Hoffmann also is a writer. The latest of his four poetry collections is Soliton, published by Truman State University Press in 2002. A play, Oxygen, by Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann, has had several productions since 2001. His non-fiction books include Chemistry Imagined, with artist Vivian Torrence, The Same and Not the Same, and Old Wine, New Flasks; Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition, by Roald Hoffmann and Shira Leibowitz Schmidt. His Jewish education was minimal until he worked on this last book.
Yakir Kaufman, MDYakir Kaufman was born in Haifa and received his MD from the Hebrew University Hadassah Faculty of Medicine in 1994. In 1995 he become a resident doctor at the department of neurology of the Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. Dr. Kaufman is a member of the Israeli Neurological Society and a junior member of the American Academy of Neurology. With his wife and children, he is currently in Toronto, Canada, where he has been appointed a Fellow in the Behavioural Neurology Program at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and the Rotman Institute. His areas of research include psychoneuroimmunology and the link between spirituality and health.
Brian L. Lancaster, PhDLes Lancaster is director of the Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology Research Unit at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, where he runs a masters program in consciousness studies that attracts students worldwide. He is chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, and an Honorary Research Fellow at Manchester University’s Centre for Jewish Studies. He is author of the award-winning Mind, Brain and Human Potential and Elements of Judaism. His latest book, Approaches to Consciousness: A Transpersonal Synthesis is due for publication in late 2003. His recent academic articles have explored the relations between neuroscientific and mystical approaches to consciousness, drawing especially on his knowledge of Jewish mysticism. He is a trustee of the Jewish Community Centre in Manchester, where he is active in the Torah-observant community. He frequently runs workshops at Jewish educational conferences, and has taught Jewish mediation for more than twenty years. His educational and research background is in neuroscience, and he has done yeshivah study in Jerusalem. He is married with two daughters, the elder of whom has recently made aliyah. Dr. Lancaster was awarded the prestigious Curriculum Innovation Award for Higher Education in 2003.
Rabbi Sholom Lipskar Since receiving ordination from the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva in Brooklyn in 1968, Rabbi Sholom Lipskar has worked as an emissary for the Lubavitcher Rebbe. In 1969 he founded the Landow Yeshiva Center in Miami Beach, Florida. He has served as its principal and dean of its elementary, academy, and high school studies, and was directly responsible for training its rabbinical students. He formulated a school-wide curriculum and managed a multi-million-dollar budget. In 1981, he founded The Shul of Bal Harbour in Surfside, Florida. As its head rabbi he is both the spiritual leader and educational programmer for all ages. Also in 1981, Rabbi Lipskar founded the Aleph Institute and the Educational Academy for the Elderly, both based in Surfside. The Aleph Institute is a non-profit national humanitarian organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for both prisoners and military personnel and their families. Rabbi Lipskar has created alternative punishment philosophies and developed unique educational opportunities for the general public in the field of treatment of closed populations. He directs the pioneering Educational Academy for the Elderly. Rabbi Lipskar is the founder of and chief organizer of the Miami International Conferences on Torah and Science.
Professor Fred Rosner, MD, FACPFred Rosner, MD, FACP, is director of the Department of Medicine of the Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica, New York, a major teaching campus of New York’s Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, where he serves as professor of medicine. He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He is also visiting professor of medicine at his alma mater, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Dr. Rosner is the recipient of the American Medical Association’s Isaac Hays, MD and John Bell, MD Award for Leadership in Ethics and Professionalism; the Maimonides Award from the Michael Reese Medical Center and Chicago College of Jewish Studies for Notable Contributions to the Field of Medicine and Judaica; the Bernard Revel Memorial Award from the Yeshiva College Alumni Association for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts & Sciences; the Maimonides Award of Wisconsin for Distinguished and Extraordinary Service to Learning & Science; a medal from the Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba; 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 is an international authority and lecturer on medical ethics. He has helped found and serves on a number of bioethics committees; he reviews manuscripts for and serves on the editorial board of a number of professional medical journals. He has published thirty-six books, written chapters by invitation in several dozen books; his bibliography has nearly nine hundred items. He is author of six widely acclaimed books on Jewish medical ethics, including Modern Medicine and Jewish Ethics (Ktav, 1991), Medicine and Jewish Law I and II (Jason Aronson, 1990 and 1993), and Pioneers in Jewish Medical Ethics (Jason Aronson, 1997). Other books include: an English translation of Julius Preuss’s classical reference work Biblical and Talmudic Medicine (reprinted in 1993); the Encyclopedia of Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud (Jason Aronson, 1999); and many books on the great Torah authority and physician Moses Maimonides, including a Medical Encyclopedia of Moses Maimonides (Jason Aronson, 1998)
Professor Oren Baruch Stier Oren Baruch Stier is an assistant professor of religious studies at Florida International University and associate director of its Judaic Studies Program. He received his AB from Princeton University, and his MA and PhD from the University of California at Santa Barbara, specializing in modern and contemporary Jewish religion, thought, and culture. Dr. Stier’s primary research focuses on the contemporary culture of Holocaust remembrance, and his book, Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust, will be published this summer by the University of Massachusetts Press. Currently he is working on a co-edited volume of essays titled Recovering Memory: Exposing Religion, Violence, and the Remembrance of Place, as well as a second monograph entitled Holocaust Symbols: The Icons of Memory. Stier’s other research interests include contemporary Hasidism and Jewish life, and South African Jewry, with a focus on the associations made between the Holocaust and apartheid in South Africa. The latter interest arose from his three years teaching Judaic Studies at the University of Cape Town. In Miami, Stier teaches a wide range of courses related to modern and contemporary Judaism. In addition to numerous national and international academic conference presentations, Stier has lectured locally at the Young Israel of Miami Beach, the Miami Art Museum, FAU’s Schmidt Center Gallery, and the Jewish Museum of Florida.
Rabbi Professor Moshe D. TendlerRabbi Professor Moshe D. Tendler, noted authority on medical ethics and the relationship of medicine and science to Jewish law, is the rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Yeshiva University-affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), professor of biology at Yeshiva College, and the Rabbi Isaac and Bella Tendler Chair in Jewish Medical Ethics at Yeshiva University. Rabbi Tendler was ordained at RIETS in 1949 and earned a PhD in biology from Columbia University in 1957. Since 1969, he has served on the Medical Ethics Task Force of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, for which he edited Medical Ethics and Halakhah. For six years he served as its chairman. He is also chairman of the Bioethical Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America. He has been a member of the board of directors of Americans for Medical Progress, Inc. and is a member of number of ethics commissions. A former president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, Rabbi Tendler is author of Pardes Rimonim (a text on Jewish family life); Practical Medical Halakhah; Care of the Critically Ill—Responsa of Rav Moshe Feinstein; as well as many articles on science and religion in leading publications. He is frequently consulted by the media and public officials on ethical issues.
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, MDRabbi Abraham J. Twerski, MD is the founder and medical director emeritus of Gateway Rehabilitation Center, a not-for-profit drug and alcolhol treatment system in western Pennsylvania. Gateway was cited as one of the twelve best drug and alcohol treatment centers by Forbes magazine and as one of the top one-hundred rehab centers in the guide The 100 Best Treatment Centers for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.Rabbi Twerski held a pulpit until 1959, when he graduated from Marquette University Medical School and then completed psychiatric residency at the University of Pittsburgh Western Psychiatric Institute. For twenty years, he served as clinical director of the Department of Psychiatry at St. Francis Hospital, Pittsburgh. Currently, he is associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. A frequent guest on international radio and television, Dr. Twerski also lectures broadly on topics ranging from stress, self-esteem, and spirituality, as well as chemical dependency. Among the over thirty-five books that Dr. Twerski has written are: Substance Abusing High Achievers; Life’s too Short; I’d Like to Call for Help, but I Don’t Know the Number; Do unto Others; and in collaboration with Peanuts comic strip creator Charles Schultz When Do the Good Things Start?; Waking Up Just in Time; I Didn’t Ask to Be in this Family; and That’s not a Fault…It’s a Character Trait. Eight videotapes have been made of Dr. Twerski. In 1995, Dr. Twerski opened the Shaar Hatikvah rehabilitation center in Jerusalem, a project of the American Jewish community in conjunction with Gateway Rehabilitation Center. Scientific contributions and community efforts have earned him honorary degrees from St. Vincent’s College, Duquesne University, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Twerski was awarded the 1998 Caritas Award for Service by Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh. In 1997, he received the Pennsylvania Medical Society’s greatest honor, the Distinguished Service Award, for his dedication in his work in the chemical dependency field. He has also received the Martin Luther King Citizen’s Award and a Citation for his contribution to the Integration of Religion and the Behavioral Sciences.
Professor Miryam Z. Wahrman After graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College, Miryam Z. Wahrman completed a PhD in biochemistry at Cornell University in 1981. She worked as an associate researcher at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research; in a joint appointment as postdoctoral associate in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy of Cornell University and guest investigator at the Rockefeller University; and as an instructor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. In 1984 she became an assistant professor of biology at William Paterson College where she served as director of the biology and biotechnology graduate programs (1986-91) and chair of the Biology Department (1993 to 1996). From 1995 to today she has been professor of biology at William Paterson University of New Jersey (WPUNJ), where since 1997 she has also been the university's Director of General Education. For the past five years she has also served as Co-Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at WPUNJ. Professor Wahrman has published many articles on various aspects of cell biology and genetics in professional journals and participated in the publication of four books on biology and genetics. She has published more than a hundred articles on topics related to the interface of science and medical ethics with Jewish life and halakhah (law) for the Jewish press throughout North America and Germany. Professor Wahrman's book, Brave New Judaism: When Science and Scripture Collide, published by Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England (2002), explores issues in Jewish bioethics and cutting-edge biotechnology.
Professor Eduardo Zeiger Eliezer (Eduardo) Zeiger is a professor 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 a plant physiology textbook. 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 be became a baal tshuvah, returning 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. Part One of “Torah and Science: From Elokim to Havaya” appeared in B'Or Ha'Torah 9E; Part Two appeared in B'Or Ha'Torah 10E.
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