Dīn as Torah: “Jewish Religion” in the Kuzari?

A Computational Investigation of Melodic Contour Stability in Jewish Torah Trope Performance Traditions

The cantillation signs of the Jewish Torah trope are of particular interest to chant scholars interested in the gradual transformation of oral music performance into notation. Each sign, placed above or below the text, acts as a “melodic idea” which either connects or divides words in order to clarify the syntax, punctuation and, in some cases, meaning of the text. Unlike standard music notatio...

Eye on religion: a Jewish view on miracles of healing.

Jewish tradition understands a miracle as a wonder that manifests God’s beneficent power. A miracle (nes in Hebrew) could be supernatural, but it need not be. While God has the ability to act in a manner that goes against the “orders of creation” (sidrei breishit) that He has established, the regularity of this order itself wondrously manifests God’s beneficent power. A central goal of Judaism ...

Religion and Nationality: The Transformation of Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union

Who Wrote the Torah

The issue of the authorship of the Torah is important for at least this one reason: since the book claims to have been written by a certain writer, it is simply a matter of integrity that that claim is verified. If this claim to authorship is not substantiated, then why should we trust what that book says? In short, if the Torah claims to be written by Moshe, and we find that it is, in fact, no...

The Torah code controversy

In this paper we briefly explain what a Torah code is and give an example of one. We show how to calculate the probability of its occurrence in a suitably defined population of texts. We explain how it is possible to misadvertise the computed probabilities, making it seem that the probability of a Torah code is very small. We briefly discuss the controversy and suggest that new more carefully c...