Prisms
scientific ideas refracted through Jewish learning

Kosher cow brains help pioneer CT-scan technology (1997)

http://www.jewishsf.com/~~/displaystory.html

Library in a Book

by Jennifer Hall and Rachel Greenblatt, ISBN 1-56871-336-3, contains under the heading of Science and Torah the following three essays:

• The Solar Year in the Judaic Calendar, by Dr. Julian Schamroth
  .. discusses the Mar Shmuel Year, the Rav Adda Year, the Julian and Gregorian Calendars.
• The Spiritual Significance of the Ketoret, by Avraham Sutton
  .. discusses the pitum ketoret, i.e. the incense mixture which was burned in the Temple.
• Stargazing, Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair
  .. an astrological view of human destiny.

From Nextbook.org, 22 September 2005:

The Birth of a Language
Written in Hebrew characters, Judeo-Persian developed in the 7th century after the Arab conquest of a region now encompassing Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and parts of India. In California, Nahid Pirnazar is collecting manuscripts of biblical commentary, poetry, dictionaries and medical and scientific texts for a foundation that plans to translate the works, including the oldest known text — a merchant's letter that dates to 750.

Science-Fiction ..

.. is not the subject of this web-site but in case you enjoy the genre then do visit www.magicdragon.com where you will learn that "Science Fiction was born in what is now Israel, in the 3rd Century B.C.E., with the Apocryphal Books of Enoch." There are also lists of Jewish sci-fi writers and some descriptive texts.

A selection of Torah/Science articles at Chabad.org:

Torah and Science: http://www.chabad.org/search/keyword.asp?kid=1361
Space exploration: http://www.chabad.org/search/keyword.asp?kid=2653

3.141592 [Pi]

King Solomon, according to Kings I, 7-23, "He made the sea of cast [metal] ten cubits from its one lip to its [other] lip, circular all around, five cubits its height; a thirty-cubit line could encircle it all around." [Sea: ... a copper tank that was filled with water which was used by the Kohanim for ritual immersion. Either the given numbers are approximations, or the ten-cubit diameter is measured outer lip to outer lip, while the thirty-cubit circumference is measured on the inner surface (Ralbag). SOURCE: Stone Tanach, Artscroll-Mesorah, 1998] [more-1, more-2].
TRIVIA: In the field of mechanised printing, in descriptions of the Linotype™ compositing machine invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in about 1886, the term "pi" refers to a category of printing type specific to that machine. SOURCE:The Biography of Ottmar Mergenthaler - Inventor of the Linotype, page 88, 89, by Carl Schlesinger © 1989. Oak Knoll Books. ISBN: 0-938768-12-3. [more].

KosherLamp™ - a controllable Shabbat lamp

Jewish Sabbath observance proscribes the switching on or off of electricity. Here is an invention which provides a halachically-compliant mains-electricity-powered light source (a moveable shutter graduated between on and off controls the light level) which may be used on Shabbat for reading and general lighting. The base and fixed body of the lamp are muktza, i.e. objects which may not be moved on Shabbat. The base has rubber feet which reduce the likelihood of movement and the shutter, which is not muktza and thus moveable on Shabbat, is mounted on a ball-bearing which permits easy movement. There is currently no means of anchoring the lamp firmly on a table or shelf. [The Halachos of Muktza by Rabbi Yisroel Bodner, Feldheim Publishers, deals comprehensively with muktza.]
http://www.kosherlamp.com/index.html

Hebrew calendar

Web: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1584/
Web: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar/

The Glassmakers - An Odyssey of the Jews. The First Three Thousand Years

A review of the book written by Samuel Kurinsky
http://www.hebrewhistory.info/glassmakers.html
• An article covering similar ground, Jewish Glassmakers by Zoë Josephs, was published in the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of Great Britain. A copy of the book will shortly be offered for sale on this web-site.

Earthquakes in Israel, by Rabbi Berel Wein

http://www.rabbiwein.com/column-721.html

Immunisation

An intriguing glimpse into immunisation and Dr. Pasteur is provided at http://ohr.edu/. It is based upon the Talmudic reference in Tractate Yoma, 84: "If someone was bitten by a mad dog [affected with rabies], one should feed him the lobe of that dog's liver."

Perhaps the earliest reference to a sundial is that in Isaiah XXXVIII, 8:

____"Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward." This has been attributed by one authority to about 700 BCE. Source: The Grandfather Clock - An Archæological and Descriptive Essay on the Long-Case Clock, by Ernest L. Edwardes, 1949, 165pp, page 13.
____[In] 600 BCE ca. The [invention of the] 'Shadow Clock' of Hezekiah, or the 'Steps of Ahaz' (II Kings 20, 10-11; Isaiah 38,8), which was considered by Christopher Schissler in Augsburg in 1578 as a refraction sun-dial (Sachsen, Horologium Achaz, Christopherus Schissler, Artifex, Philadelphia 1895). According to Borchardt (Altaegyptische Zeitmessung, p.41), this was not a time-measuring device. Source: The Book of Old Clocks and Watches by Ernst Von Bassermann-Jordan, 1964, George Allen & Unwin, London, page 351.

Hebrew numbers

in arithmetic:

Web: http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/hebrew-numbers.html
Web: http://people.netscape.com/smontagu/writings/HebrewNumbers.html

in gematria and kabala:

http://www.qsm.co.il/Hebrew/Gimatria.htm
http://www.crowndiamond.org/cd/numerals.html

miscellany:

Dream interpretation: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1606/82337
Numerology: http://www.numerologyforlife.us/page3.html

Astronomy in Israel: From Og's Circle to the Wise Observatory

http://wise-obs.tau.ac.il/judaism/jewish_astro.html

Hebrew History

Web: http://www.hebrewhistory.info/
--------http://www.hebrewhistory.info/paperlist.html
A non-profit organization dedicated to research into and education about the technological and artistic contributions which Jews have made to civilization.

Book: Jewish Thought And Scientific Discovery In Early Modern Europe,
by David B. Ruderman.

http://yalepress.yale.edu/YupBooks/viewbook.asp?isbn=0300061129

Evolutionary Creationism - Torah Solves the Problem of Missing Links,
by Susan Schneider

http://www.orot.com/ec.html

Rabbi Moshe Yess' web-site: Dr. Arnie Gotfryd on Jewish attitudes to science

http://www.rabbiyess.com/scientists.html

Derivation of the Shabbat Times, by Mottel Gutnick

http://www.join.org.au/shabbat/derivati.htm

A Jewish perspective on Genetic Engineering, by Rabbi Akiva Wolff

http://www.besr.org/library/engineering.html

Cloning and stem cell research

http://www.darchenoam.org/ethics/bioethics/index.htm

The Torah-Science Debates

http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=2827
Prof. Velvl Greene, author of this essay, is a former Fulbright scholar and pioneer in Exobiology who spent many years working for NASA searching for life on Mars.

Excerpts from The Book of Old Clocks and Watches by Ernst Von Bassermann-Jordan, 1964, translated from the German by H. Alan Lloyd. George Allen & Unwin, London:
____PAGE 27: Following the example of the ancient Orient (Babylon) and of the whole of classic antiquity, until the fourteenth century, the day was divided into the hours of light and the hours of darkness, each of twelve hours; and this is still the case even today in most of the Mohammedan countries. These hours were counted from sunset to sunrise and from sunrise to sunset. These hours, known as temporal hours, are sometimes called Horae Antiquae, or unequal hours, or Jewish, or planetary hours (horae planetariae).
____PAGE 53: At the Council of Nicaea (CE 325), when the method of calculating Easter was laid down, it was assumed that the vernal equinox could never fall before March 21st. As a result it was decreed that March 21st should be the vernal equinox. In making this decree it was intended that Easter Day should never coincide with the Jewish Passover; as a matter of fact, during the past 1600 years, this has occurred only twice (on 14.IV.743 and on 23.III.783).
____PAGE 85: [Illustration caption] Fig. 59. Multiple sun-dial in the shape of a cube. Wood, with tempera painting. Florence, ca. 1560. The south and north sides show Italian hours, the horizontal face Babylonian hours, and the east and west sides the old Jewish temporal hours. All dials for lat. 46º.