By contrast, roughly half or more of agnostics (49%) say that UFOs reported by people in the military are definitely or probably evidence that intelligent life exists beyond Earth.
The new technology, enabling the storage of information in the thinnest unit known to science, is expected to improve future electronic devices in terms of density, speed, and efficiency.
For too long, people have thought that religion and science are destined to be in conflict.
A BGU scientist says that a critical eye can have advantages, but too much self-criticism can lead to devastating consequences.
By JNi.Media
“Why don’t we give them the benefit of our own experience? We all wished we had such a course when we were in that situation."
Scientific exchange has begun with a laser-plasma accelerator lab.
One of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other’s odors.
US teachers are learning "3-D printing" from the Dept. of Defense.
The school removed evolution related questions from 52 standardized tests.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Could we understand the history of Israel without its prehistory, the stories of Abraham and Sarah and their children?
Research teams headed by a Hebrew University graduate and Tel Aviv University researchers have suggested that an experiment on rats showed that blocking their memory of alcohol use helped them break the habit. Memories of addiction often cause drinkers to return to their habit when they are aroused by the smell of alcohol, creating pattern […]
Technion University researchers have announced they are developing a new process that might be able to restore vision to the blind by using a special projector that works around the damaged retina. In an article in Nature Communications this week, the researchers explained they have developed a light-sensitive protein that is injected into the eyes […]
Inspiring the unaffiliated can be done through inspirational stories or through our own behavior as role models.
Making money on the internet is not just a science fiction fantasy.
At age 99, Isaac Volinsky was given the opportunity to put on tefillin for the first time in his life, the Australian J-Wire reported. He did it at the “120 Club” for elderly expatriate Soviets in Sydney. With more than 50 club members looking on, Lubavitch Rabbi Eli Schlanger helped Volinsky put on the tefillin. […]
Computer giant Intel has announced that it will invest five million dollars (NIS 20 million) into Israeli high schools over the next four years, to provide advanced science, technology, engineering and math education to students in the “startup nation”.
One of the biggest issues that has arisen as a result of the Slifkin controversy is the question of whether Chazal, the sages of the Talmud knew the actuality of nature. There are those who say that they did. They say that every statement recorded in the Gemarah with respect to science is an accurate reflection of nature itself. The science redacted in the Talmud is as valid as the Halacha - both being Mesorah.
The US State Department has created an award program for "female Palestinian scientists." Candidates are required to "be a citizen and resident of West Bank, Gaza, or Jerusalem." What does it mean by "citizen"? Is the US State Department creating, again, a Palestinian state, when there is none existing?
It seems that two very prominent rabbinic figures have come on board with Rabbi Slifkin’s views with respect to reconciling science and the Torah. According to a post on Hirhurim by Rabbi Gil Student, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, and a man of great intellect who I respect and admire greatly is one of them. The other is Rabbi Yaakov Ariel - one of the chief Poskim of Religious Zionists in Israel. These two people are not just your average rabbis. They are both highly respected not only by me but by Jews all over the world.
Touro College Los Angeles (TCLA) offers a full array of prerequisite science courses for those interested in continuing their education and/or working in the health science fields. TCLA has recently increased their offerings due to popular demand.
In its September newsletter, the New Israel Fund (NIF) urged Israelis to examine their behavior (“cheshbon nefesh”), declaring “We have been telling you for some time about the upsurge in hatred and incitement in Israel…”
At this point in Israel’s problematic diplomatic agenda, there is really only one overriding policy question: Can any form of negotiation with the Palestinians, Fatah and/or Hamas, ever prove reasonable and productive? From the very beginning, even before formal statehood in 1948, Israel has sought courageously and reasonably to negotiate with its many unreasonable enemies. […]
By Shiraz Maher
It needs to be clearly understood America's civil space program is just as much an instrument of national power as the US Navy or the State Department. It is to be hoped that the President and Congress will in the future recognize this fact.
But it is even more foolish in my view to not teach the science in the first place. Ignorance is our worst enemy. Because the minute one finds a contradiction to the insistence that only the most literal interpretation of the Torah is acceptable, believers can and often will sadly go the way or Mrs. Brown.
Israeli scientific breakthroughs are restoring freedom and ease to the lives of millions of patients throughout the world. The latest: a smartphone to measure your vital signs and help manage chronic diseases, a discovery which may restore speech to the paralyzed and disabled, and a possible cure for severe depression for those with no options left.
Some might call this Emunah Peshuta – simple belief. Perhaps. But it is not blind belief. I am not a blind believer. However, I can understand why someone would call my belief in the truth of Judaism blind.
By Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
Over 300 young science geniuses from across Asia and the Pacific participated in the sixth Asian Science Camp (ASC) in Jerusalem this past week. It was Israel’s first time hosting the science camp, which is typically held in Asia. Students arrived from 23 different countries-- including nations which don't have diplomatic relations with Israel.
By JTA
An eighth-grader from the San Diego Jewish Academy won a science prize at the second annual Google Science Fair competition. Jonah Kohn, 14, won a $25,000 scholarship for his device that uses tactile sound to enhance music for people with hearing loss. "In essence they said that it has given them the best perception of […]
What kind of investor are you? Do you try to time the market and jump in at the right minute? Or are you a more cautious kind of person who spends hours researching market performance before you consider buying or selling anything?
The Genocide Convention criminalizes not only various acts of genocide, but also (Article III) conspiracy to commit genocide and direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Articles II, III and IV of the Genocide Convention are fully applicable in all cases of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. For the Convention to be invoked, it is sufficient that any one of the state parties call for a meeting, through the United Nations, of all the state parties (Article VIII).
Speaking at a discussion of the Knesset Education Committee on the changing status-quo of religious and ultra-Orthodox education, committee member and chairman of the National Union MK Ya'akov Katz (Ketzaleh) said: It's all about the numbers. The change in the status-quo stems from demographic change. When I was in an officer training course 40 years […]
Over the past several months President Obama has generally focused his attention away from the Middle East “peace process.” It is fair to ask, therefore, whether his core preferences for a settlement – carving a Palestinian state out of the still-living body of Israel and “a world free of nuclear weapons” (a world in which Israel would no longer be able to deter certain existential attacks) – still remain a matter of reasonable concern.
Sculptor Alberto Giacometti's “Man Pointing” gesticulates ominously. Emaciated, skeletal, and tormented, the iconic sculpture is an artistic expression of humankind's stalwart march toward suffering and recurring annihilation. Resembling the Swiss creator’s gaunt and unnaturally elongated figure, each of us has now become both a potential observer and a prospective casualty.
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” wrote the poet W.B. Yeats, “and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Now, assembled in almost two hundred armed tribal camps politely called nation-states, all peoples – not only the people of Israel – coexist insecurely on a plainly anarchic planet. The core origins of this anarchy lie in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which put a codified end to the Thirty Years War.
In the past few years, on these pages of The Jewish Press, I have written several times about critical strategic implications of “chaos” and also of “irrationality” and “madness.” Still, I have never written about the fusion or juxtaposition of these seemingly distinct issues. However, because there are increasingly obvious and important potential interactions between them (military strategists would call such interactions “synergies,” or sometimes “force-multipliers”), I shall now examine these utterly core security matters with a view toward acknowledging their possible ways of coming together.
A new Health Ministry reports shows that a whopping 25 percent of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)treatments resulted in pregnancies, with 20% of attempts resulting in live births. The number represents the doubling of success in the last decade, partly thanks to Israeli law supporting free IVF for two live babies.
A "bolt-from-the-blue" CBN (chemical, biological or even nuclear) attack on Israel launched with the expectation of city-busting reprisals might not necessarily exhibit irrationality or madness. Within such an attacking state's particular ordering of preferences, any presumed religious obligation to annihilate the "Zionist Entity" could represent the overriding value.
For Israel's Anglo olim (immigrants), the name Givat Shmuel conjures up a marriage scene to rival that of New York's Stern University for Women. Home to hundreds of young English-speakers studying at the adjacent Bar-Ilan University, Givat Shmuel has produced a vibrant, growing community of overseas students – and a reputation for their enthusiastic coupling. Each year, the community watches as many new couples are formed, engagements are announced and weddings are celebrated.
It is time to look behind the news. Operation Iraqi Freedom is officially concluded; U.S. operations in Afghanistan are reportedly moving in a similar direction. More generically, however, debate about combat operations, strategy and tactics remains ongoing.
In strategy and law, war, terrorism and genocide are not mutually exclusive. Now, following the “Arab Spring,” even as the usual suspects maintain their explicitly genocidal threats against Israel, certain “progressive” Jews proudly lead various rallies and publications for "peace” and “democracy” in the Middle East. Such “progress,” we might learn from Roman Polanski’s film “The Pianist,” could only be fashioned upon yet another generation of Jewish corpses.
On the surface, “The Pianist” is “merely” the true tale of a talented Jewish musician, Wladyslaw Szpilman, caught up in the unfathomable depths of Nazi occupation and terror. More profoundly, of course, it is a disturbing visual microcosm of the generic human struggle between good and evil, a titanic contest that is sometimes utterly clear but at other times distressingly “gray."
President Obama continues to favor the creation of a "nuclear weapons-free world." This explicit preference is more than naive; it is also undesirable in principle. For Israel, in particular, Obama's solution could likely open the doors to unendurable enemy aggressions. However unintended, therefore, it could become an utterly Final Solution.
It would be unreasonable for Israel to draw any comfort from an argument that Iranian intentions are effectively harmless. Rather, such intentions could impact capabilities decisively over time. Backed by appropriate nuclear weapons, preemption options must somehow remain open and viable to Israel, augmented, of course, by appropriate and complementary plans for cyber-defense and cyber-warfare.
For forty years I have studied the stunningly complex problem of enemy rationality, especially in certain earlier published writings concerning the particular nuclear threat from Iran.
As only a distinctly last resort, Israel needs nuclear weapons for nuclear war fighting.
Jorge Luis Borges, the very special Argentine writer and philosopher, sometimes identified himself as a Jew. Although lacking any apparent basis in halacha, he clearly felt himself to be a kindred spirit: “Many a time I think of myself as a Jew,” he is quoted in Willis Barnstone’s, Borges at Eighty: Conversations (1982), “but I wonder whether I have the right to think so. It may be wishful thinking.”
“Everything in this world exudes crime,” says Baudelaire, “the newspapers, the walls, and the face of man.” But this “face” does not belong solely to what classic seventeenth-century international law scholar Hugo Grotius called “men of deplorable wickedness.”
According to ancient Jewish tradition, one that certain Talmudists trace back to the time of Isaiah, the world rests upon thirty-six just men, the Lamed-Vav tzaddikim.