The Mesillas Yesharim / Path of the Just was the masterpiece of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, the great mystic, philosopher, sage, and saint. For centuries, this classic text for better living has been every man's primer for ideal life. Wherever there were Jews there was a well-thumbed Mesillas Yesharim. In this book, Rabbi Twerski applies the text and themes of Mesillas Yesharim to the everyday challenges of the 90s. He shows us how we can succeed in the quest for (...) a better life and in bettering ourselves. (shrink)

ArgumentUntil the fifteenth century, celibacy was the rule among Christian scholars of northwestern Europe. Celibacy was a major element of the codified cultural representation of the scholar and his specific way of life, sustained by peculiar institutional arrangements and daily routines. Founding family households implied therefore a major reorganization of the scholar’s way of life. Broadly speaking, this involved refashioning the scholarly habitus, redefining social relations, and developing the necessary material infrastructure. The paper focuses on three aspects of this process (...) during a period characterized by uncertainty and experimentation. It discusses the structure of scholars’ families, arguing that at least until the middle of the sixteenth century, received models still persisted, while new viable models for articulating family reproduction with the transmission of scholarly dispositions had not yet crystallized. It then turns to the reorganization of domestic space, focusing on the different uses of the study to manage social distance and regulate domestic relations. Finally, among the different manifestations of the scholarly habitus, it argues that the emotional detachment of learned men was itself a learned habit. The well-documented discussion of competing options for organizing scholars’ family households and cultivating an acquired nature in academic settings provides an exceptional occasion to examine the way a group habitus is reshaped and, explore the cultural work involved in this process. (shrink)

In a sense Maimonides identifies his views on the subject of divine providence with those of Epicurus. He does so by implying an analogy between this Greek philosopher’s atheistic opinions and those put forth by Elihu in the Book of Job. Despite the fact that commentators have discussed Maimonides’ views on providence for eight hundred years the only one to refer to the connection between Elihu and Epicurus was Joseph Ibn Kaspi in the fourteenth century. One of the consequences of (...) this analogy is a modification of our understanding of Maimonides’ concept of “providence according to the intellect.” Whereas Moshe Narboni and other commentators have understood Maimonides’ concept of providence to involve a unification of the human intellect with the Active Intellect, the association with Epicurus suggests an emphasis on the human individual’s material faculties such as the imagination. Indeed, it is possible that, following Al-Fārābī, Maimonides rejected the possibility of conjunction with the Active Intellect altogether, and that “providence according to the intellect” consists of nothing more than the activity of the human individual’s material faculties. (shrink)

Kepler’s intricate trajectory, his self-reflective comments about the conditions of production of knowledge in his time, and the wealth of materials preserved make it possible to reconstruct a whole set of regimes of scholarly work around 1600, each with its typical mode of control, forms of subordination, temporal economy, and means of remuneration. Kepler’s maneuvering in this landscape was shaped by his attempts to carve out spaces for the kind of work he considered his very own – his “speculations” or (...) “private studies” – within work relationships involving service and subordination. Thus, we find nonalienated, self-directed scholarly work embedded, constrained, and enabled by heteronomous regimes of work, a field of tensions that I seek to capture in the formula “work within work.” A labor history of science could thus offer us an opportunity for exploring historically documented, nonincidental and partly institutionalized forms of less alienated work, and trace the ways in which they related to and interacted with dominant relations of production. (shrink)

Jewish parables from the Hasidic masters and their lessons are illustrated by the interactions of Fishel the beggar, the slick thief, the rich businessman, the fat governor, the Russian soldiers, and other village characters.

Biobanks and biospecimen collections are becoming a primary means of delivering personalized diagnostics and tailoring individualized therapeutics. This shift towards precision medicine requires interactions among a variety of stakeholders, including the public, patients, healthcare providers, government, and donors. Very few studies have investigated the role of healthcare students in biobanking and biospecimen donations. The main aims of this study were to evaluate the knowledge of senior healthcare students about biobanks and to assess the students’ willingness to donate biospecimens and the (...) factors influencing their attitudes. A cross-sectional study was conducted among senior healthcare students at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The data were obtained using a self-administered questionnaire in English. In addition to the respondents’ biographical data section, the questionnaire assessed the respondents’ general knowledge about biobanking, the factors influencing their willingness to donate biospecimens to biobanks and their general attitudes towards biomedical research. A total of 597 senior healthcare students were included in the study. The general knowledge score was 3.2 out of 7. Only approximately 44% and 27% of students were aware of the terms “Human Genome Project” and “biobank,” respectively. The majority of the students were willing to donate biospecimens to biobanks. Multiple factors were significantly associated with their willingness to donate, including their perceived general health, past experience with both tissue testing and tissue donation, biobanking knowledge score and biomedical research attitude score. The main reasons for students’ willingness to donate were advancement of medical research and societal benefits, whereas misuse of biospecimens and confidentiality breaches were the main reasons for a reluctance to donate. Despite their strong willingness to donate biospecimens, students exhibited a notable lack of knowledge about biobanking and the HGP. To expedite the transition towards PM, it is highly recommended to enhance healthcare curricula by including more educational and awareness programmes to familiarize students with OMICs technologies in addition to the scope of research and clinical applications. (shrink)

AI-based algorithms are used extensively by public institutions. Thus, for instance, AI algorithms have been used in making decisions concerning punishment providing welfare payments, making decisions concerning parole, and many other tasks which have traditionally been assigned to public officials and/or public entities. We develop a novel argument against the use of AI algorithms, in particular with respect to decisions made by public officials and public entities. We argue that decisions made by AI algorithms cannot count as public decisions, namely (...) decisions that are made in the name of citizens and that this fact should be taken into consideration when utilizing AI to replace public officials. (shrink)

Studying Mesilat Yesharim with Hadar Goldin.