Hot answers tagged science
17
As an observant astrophysicist (pun intended; I'm actually a theorist), I get this question a lot. Personally, most answers I have heard seem rather contrived and do little justice to either the science or the Torah. The study of physics and the study of Torah are both wonderful pursuits of a "higher truth," but they consist of very different methods and ...
16
The Gemara (Chagigah 12a) records a debate about this. One opinion (R' Elazar and R' Yaakov) is that the light referred to here is an intense light with special powers; G-d afterwards concealed it, realizing that there would be unworthy people who wouldn't deserve to make use of such light, and set it aside as part of the future reward of the righteous.
The ...
16
The short answer is no. Waiting between consuming meat and consuming dairy has nothing to do with how much time we perceive to have elapsed but with the experience of the person who consumed it. Spaceman Ploni, who decided to eat meat immediately prior to takeoff (a revolting thought), can still taste it when he returns to earth, despite the fact that his ...
13
I suspect that its a combination of some superset of the following factors:
Intermarriage and conversion bringing in genetic material from the host population.
Diet affecting people's hardiness, skin color, etc.
Standard of dental care affecting people's facial structure and whether they like to open their mouths.
Environmental factors, including sun ...
12
According to the Rambam in the Guide of the Perplexed "Whenever it is possible to interpret the words of an individual in such a manner that they confirm to a being whose existence has been demonstrated, this is the conduct that is more fitting and most suitable for an equitable man of exellent nature."
Even though I'm certain this will be controversial, ...
11
I would say the biggest explanation ahead of its time was not by the rabbis, but by the Torah, steadfastly defended by even the most rational rabbis in the face of prevailing secular thought. Up until 1929 (and perhaps even as late as 1949), the leading view in astronomy was that we lived in a steady-state universe with no beginning and no end. People often ...
11
This is from the Babylonian Talmud. Shabbat 135b says that we don't break Shabbas to save the life of a baby born in its eighth month of gestation. The idea was that there are 7-month babies and 9-month babies, and an 8-month baby was either an early 9-monther or a late 7-monther and if it were an early 9-monther, it probably wasn't going to make it.
...
10
It is important to bear in mind that a lot of the techniques that science (specifically, archeology) uses to derive information about ancient cultures and religions can't be validly applied to Judaism. Consider, for example:
One source of such information is the arts, such as statuary, vase paintings, and the like. The Torah outlaws the making or ...
10
Ralbag (Gersonidies) has the earliest known use of a proof by mathematical induction in his mathematical work Maase Hoshev (1321 CE).
Source: Rabinovich, N. L. (1970). Rabbi Levi Ben Gershon and the Origins of Mathematical Induction. Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 6(3), 237-248. Available in JSTOR here.
(For comparison, the prevalent thought ...
10
First, you should remember how bad infant mortality was in those days. So what it says about how some infants were considered not viable (and thus could not be touched on Shabbos), no longer applies today when infant mortality is much lower. You should talk about the change in infant mortality with your students.
The way you phrased your question implies ...
9
The answer is, at the heart, there is broad consensus among the Rishonim that when necessary one may depart from the "literal" meaning (apparent intent, peshat) of the Torah text (though even then there are limits).
We are left with a few things to work out:
How do we define necessary?
Does our difficulty rise to the level of "necessary"?
Does departing ...
9
Shivchei HaBesht records an episode where the Baal Shem Tov wrote a letter to his brother-in-law R' Gershon of Kitov, telling him how he had been taken to task by the Heavenly Court for excommunicating a Torah scholar without sufficient cause. R' Gershon wrote back to say that this indeed had happened, but only after the date of the Baal Shem Tov's letter - ...
8
That it is not intended literally, but rather the numbers have allegorical significance. (For example, Chanoch lived precisely 365 years, the number of days in a solar year.)
That it referred to dynasties started by the individual person, rather than just to the lifespan of that person.
Or that "shana" does not mean what we think it means. I tried to ...
8
The article says that the this meat is created using stem cells from slaughtered animals:
Using stem cells harvested from leftover animal material from slaughterhouses, Post nurtures them with a feed concocted of sugars, amino acids, lipids, minerals and all other nutrients they need to grow in the right way.
When it comes to nullifying something ...
8
Khan is echoing Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who wrote ~150 years ago about this new theory called evolution:
... if [evolution] were ever to gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, ... Judaism would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal ...
8
Rambam, Hilchos Yesodei Hatorah Chapter 3. From Chabad.org
Halacha 1
The spheres are called the heavens, the firmament, the habitation, the skies.
There are nine spheres. The closest sphere is the sphere of the moon. The second sphere, which is above it, is the sphere which contains the planet Kochav (Mercury). The third sphere, which is above ...
8
A simple explanation is that the when G-d created the world 5772 years ago, He did not create it as a "brand-new" world, but rather created the world in a state as if it had been existing for many years previously.
This is quite evident from the fact that the sin of the Tree of Knowledge occurred on the same day Adam was created. He was obviously "born" ...
8
This article from Dr J Menczer indicates that although there is a significantly lower incidence of cervical cancer amongst Jews it is not due to family purity laws, as even Jews who do not observe these laws have a lower incidence of cervical cancer.
7
Some of it may indeed be based on the attempt to claim that (G-d forbid) the Torah is not true at all.
The early Bible critics did exactly that - nearly everything described in Tanach was dismissed as a fable. But then, when archeology began to turn up evidence that meshes with the Torah narratives, that approach became untenable.
So the next logical thing ...
7
At least some people who "half-believe" the torah are in transition. Not everybody is a rock-solid believer from birth; for the rest of us, there will be some period during which you are trying to figure out what torah you accept from scientific validation ("yeah, it would be possible for the Sea of Reeds to do that"), what you accept because of publicity ...
7
Aviezer doesn't concern himself with creation except where the shoresh "bara" appears. The rest are the "big events" that brought the earth to its current state. So acc. to Aviezer-
Day 3= The Permian Ice Age where the waters of the flooded earth glaciated in the South Pole causing the oceans to recede. Later during this period was the proliferation of ...
7
The Seder Olam Rabbah added up all of the generations in the Torah and those in the rest of Biblical history to determine how many years had passed since the Creation of Adam. By that reckoning, 5770 years have now elapsed since that Creation. Genesis 1 describes Six Days between the initial Creation of "the Heavens and the Earth" and the Creation of Adam. ...
7
In Menachot 29B, the following story is told (English taken from page 112 of here):
Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One,
blessed be He, engaged in affixing coronets to the letters. Said Moses, ‘Lord of the Universe, Who
stays Thy hand?’ He answered, ‘There will arise a man, at the end of many ...
7
I vaguely recall seeing some discussion about the whole "heat adding" thing years ago (maybe an old AOJS article?), but unfortunately don't have the details. Honestly, I'm still not certain how to understand the mishna. But off the top of my head ...
Leo Levi's The Science in Torah suggests that something like manure worked by fermenting, and fermentation ...
7
Zohar (Bereishis 18b and in other places) states that the rainbow has three colors, חוור סומק וירוק - white (or pale), red and green.
In Bereishis it associates these three colors with Gavriel, Michael and Raphael. Elsewhere (Bamidbar 215a) it associates them with the three Avos. In one of the maamarim (chassidic discourses) of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, he ...
7
Torah Shleimah (BeReishis 1:1 note 30) quotes the Rama in Toras HaOlah who says that Chazal (Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 3:1, BaMidbar Rabbah 13, Zohar VaYikra 10, Zohar Chadash 15) knew the earth was round before the non-Jews (he gives the date that they knew as 5252, i.e. 1492, whereas Wikipedia claims that it was already known by that time that the world was ...
6
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan quotes Kabbalistic sources that he was using meditation "to direct spiritual energy and actually to change the genetic structure of the sheep ... manipulating some of the highest spiritual forces that exist." Okay, as I'm neither a Kabbalist nor a bioengineer, I'll take his word for it ...
The simplest way to read the whole story (as I ...
6
One of the answers the Mizrachi to Rashi on Bereshit 30:39 brings is that the sticks were just used to cover up the miracle. The angel appeared to Yaakov and showed him that all the animals would be born with the pattern that would benefit Yaakov. Yaakov then used to sticks to hide the miracle.
(The Mizrachi is addressing another issue, which is how could ...
6
This answer is going to need some background knowledge of bittul (nullification). This will be very much oversimplified, but enough for our purposes, I think.
Two Types of Bittul
Min BeMino - a mixture of the same types of food. In this case the prohibited substance (the 'issur') is batel if it is in the minority (rov). The rabbis enacted a restriction ...
6
Waiting six hours is not based on the scientific definition of digestion. The Talmud (Chullin 105a) says that one must wait from one meal to the next. There is a disagreement among the Rishonim if that actually means from one meal to the next, or if it means the amount of time between the morning and evening meals, which would mean approximately six hours. ...
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