Scientific Confirmation of the Reason for Issur Yichud

For this post, I get off easy, since FKM posted a nice post on the topic.

Check it out here:

http://fkmaniac.blogspot.com/2008/07/research-that-vindicates-issur-yichud.html

Basically, researchers found that when a man was alone with a woman, for a few min., his testosterone levels rose about 8% even if he did not find the woman attractive...

Cool Torah and Science Movie

I found this movie on YouTube. It is a computer animated movie that deals with Torah and Science issues in an entertaining way (I think meant for children). It is made by Nathan Aviezer, author of "In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science", and "Fossils & Faith: Understanding Torah and Science" (both available at Amazon). "In the Beginning" is highly recommended by me, as it goes step by step through the Creation narrative and gives a possible scientific explanation of the events that are going on each "day". (He is of the opinion that each "day" was a "phase" of variable length). Anyways, that book is now an entertaining movie, where RamBam, Einstein, and Darwin fly through time in a space ship, so here it is (in 5 parts):

PART 1 of 5:


PART 2 of 5:


PART 3 of 5:


PART 4 of 5:


PART 5 of 5:


They can be found in Hebrew as well at: faithship's Videos

Where Does Rain Come From?

As part of a "double dare" I have to start posting more frequently, so here is a quick post to get things rolling again.

The Midrash Tanchumah on Parashas Mikeitz states the following:

"And from where do the rains descend? Rabbi Eliezer says: All the world drinks from the waters of the Ocean. Rabbi Yehoshua said to him: But are not the waters of the Ocean salty? He said to him: They are sweetened by the clouds of the sky (rakia); for Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said: Why are they [the heavens] called shechokim? Because they grind [shochakin] the waters and sweeten them, and after that, they descend."

There are a few interesting things to note in this passage:

1) Chazal seems to have known that the water in the Oceans rises up in vapor to form clouds, which in the process filter out the salt, and then the clouds blow onto land to give rain (I don't know if this knowledge was prevalent then or not, but it seems to me to be pretty advanced knowledge for that time).

2) The rakia includes the sky which contains the clouds, meaning that it cannot refer only to the "dome" or to space, etc. but is more inclusive.

3) Rabbi Eliezer says that ALL the world drinks from the Ocean [ok'yanos]. What about underwater springs, rivers, lakes, wells, etc? Some possible answers I can think of off the top of my head (i.e. may be totally wrong) are that for rivers, they flow due to the rain, for lakes, they formed from rain, or from when the land was gathered during creation, and hence from the same body of water as the Oceans (before they complained and became salty), and underwater springs and wells could be formed from absorbed rain.

Very Cool Movie/Music-SlideShow about the Convergance of Torah and Science

I came accross this and thought it was pretty cool. One must excuse the "quote" of Rashi which is given, as I think it is a stretch of what Rashi actually says, however the rest of the quotes are very interesting indeed!

Stars, Angels, Space, and the Firmament

According to the Abarbanel quoted by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, stars are in a way the "bodies" of angels. Not that the star-angel relationship is exactly comparable to the body-soul relationship, but there is a strong connection between the stars and angels.

This idea helps to show a Torah-Science parallel in the Midrash Tanchuma on Parasha Vayigash, sif 6.

The Midrash writes: "Rabbi Shimon said: The entire firmament (rakiah) is of water, and the angels of fire, and those ministering to Him of burning fire (lohait), and the water does not extinguish the fire, and the fire does not burn/consume the water."

Now, the definition of the rakiah is something that I have never gotten a definitive answer to.

According to this Midrash, it is completely made of water. However, as on the 2nd day of Bereishis, "water" may have multiple meanings. I have never heard a definitive explanation of the separating of water and water, etc.

Perhaps, the "water" that is being described is the fabric of space-time or the vacuum of space. Like the water we know here on Earth, the vacuum of space extinguishes fire almost immediately (since fire requires oxygen to burn). Thus, one (who is ignorant of current Science) would expect that all the stars should burn out and vanish immediately!

On the other hand, perhaps space is like a small amount of water, which here on Earth can be consumed (i.e. evaporated) by fire, in which case one (who is ignorant of current Science) could expect that the stars would consume all of space!

The truth as it now appears to be, is that the "fire" that stars run on is based on fusion reactions and hydrostatic equilibrium, and is not the sort of fire that requires Oxygen to burn. Thus, the stars shine away, and everything is fine.

This could parallel what this Midrash is saying. The firmament/water (space) does not extinguish the angels/stars, and the stars do not consume the space.

I don't have any idea at the moment what the difference in physical representation between the angels of fire and the "ministers" of burning fire are. Perhaps, "those who minister Him", are those objects in space that are immensely more powerful than stars, such as gamma-ray bursts, black hole flares, quasars, AGNs, etc.