[Avodah] torah u_mada conference

[Eli Turkel]

yesterday was the annual Torah u_madda conference in JCT in Jerusalem.

As short synopsis

1. R Zoldan spoke about ethics in selling and advertisements. In particular
he
discussed pressuring to buy or sell. He discussed a modern machloket whether
pressuring someone to buy (as distinct from the usual sell) is considered as
prohibited under "lo tachmod" as one wants the other person's money rather
than a specific object

He mentioned that in advertising that terms as mehadrin are very meaningless
and
advocated more transparency where the facts are given and it is up to the
consumer to
decide if he agrees with those stringencies..

2. Prof. Rosenberg discussed free will and claimed that the greatest
challeneges these
days comes from Brain science. In particular from observations that the time
between
the brain receiving information and acting is frequently less than 500
milliseconds leaving
no time for a rational decision.

3. Prof. Rabbi Dror Fixler discussed recent technological advances in
medicine and
brain science. The "easy" one being using a bionic arm using brain waves and
finally
a you-tube first demonstration of driving a car just using brain waves. He
mentioned
that he consulted with R. Rabinowitz of Maale Adumum who answered that he
could
not see any technical prohibition in driving on shabbat using brain waves.
When R. Fixler
objected that such advancements would destry shabbat R Rabinowitz answered
that
obviously society would have to set up restrictions that limited the use of
such technology to extreme cases (a similar situation exists according to
RSZA
with regard to electricity when no light/heat is generated).
A summary of this talk appeared in this weekend's Jerusalem post

Some of the afternoon contributed talks included a discussion of
writing/storing on a hard
disk on shabbat, rye flour for matzot on pesach, the change in the weight of
the shekel
over the generations (present halacha has about twice the weight of the
times of
Moshe Rabbenu). An interesting discussion of what low IQ (religious)
children think
about G-d and other religion related questions.

The panel discussion started with Prof. Weiss-Halivni presenting the
standard
discussion on academic learning and distinguishing between studies and
halacha le-maaseh.
The next speaker harshly attached Judaic sciences (translation from Hebrew)
as being neither
yahadut nor science and claimed that it was destroying much of Judaism.
The final speaker was R. Gutel who didn't agree. He pointed out that the
speakers
objection to the science part would apply to all of humanities and social
sciences and
one would need to close half the departments in all universities. He defined
judaic studies
as providing important tools that in fact should be studied in yeshivot. In
fact R. Kook
had advocated introducing much of this into his yeshiva (note the break-away
of R. Tau
from merkaz ha-rav over the introduction of modern attitudes in learning
Tanakh)
He brought a story that R. Hai Gaon asked a catholic priest for help in
translating words
in Tanakh..

shabbat shalom

-- 
Eli Turkel
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