The Weak Scale from BBN

The measured values of the weak scale, $v$, and the first generation masses, $m_{u,d,e}$, are simultaneously explained in the multiverse, with all these parameters scanning independently. At the same time, several remarkable coincidences are understood. Small variations in these parameters away from their measured values lead to the instability of hydrogen, the instability of heavy nuclei, and either a hydrogen or a helium dominated universe from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. In the 4d parameter space of $(m_u,m_d,m_e,v)$, catastrophic boundaries are reached by separately increasing each parameter above its measured value by a factor of $(1.4,1.3,2.5,\sim5)$, respectively. The fine-tuning problem of the weak scale in the Standard Model is solved: as $v$ is increased beyond the observed value, it is impossible to maintain a significant cosmological hydrogen abundance for any values of $m_{u,d,e}$ that yield both hydrogen and heavy nuclei stability. For very large values of $v$ a new regime is entered where weak interactions freeze out before the QCD phase transition. The helium abundance becomes independent of $v$ and is determined by the cosmic baryon and lepton asymmetries. To maintain our explanation of $v$ from the anthropic cost of helium dominance then requires universes with such large $v$ to be rare in the multiverse. Implications of this are explored, including the possibility that new physics below 10 TeV cuts off the fine-tuning in $v$.Comment: 26 pages plus appendix, 13 figure

Jewish Medicine and Science

It is difficult to speak about Jewish involvement in the medicine and science during the Renaissance and beyond without reference to Jewish traditions of medical and scientific activity in the ancient and medieval periods. Perceiving themselves as proud heirs of such medieval luminaries as the physician Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), the astrologer Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-1164), and the astronomer Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides; 1288-1344), as well as the biblical Abraham, Solomon, and the ancient rabbis, Jewish thinkers living in early modern Europe continued to believe that the study of nature was a supreme religious ideal and that the roots of magic and medicine, astrology and astronomy, were ultimately located in ancient Jewish sources

Cecil Roth, Historian of Italian Jewry: A Reassessment

I have a confession to make. I have long been a fan of Cecil Roth (1899-1970) and his histories of Italian Jewry. My copy of Roth\u27s The Jews in the Renaissance, published in 1959, was one of the first books in Jewish history I acquired as a youth, years before I became interested in the profession of history. This relatively worn copy still adorns my shelf and dates quite accurately my fascination with this engaging popularizer of the Jewish historical experience from my high school years

Review of Adam Sutcliffe, \u3cem\u3eJudaism and Enlightenment\u3c/em\u3e

Adam Sutcliffe\u27s book represents an important new synthesis, offering novel and insightful readings of both familiar and less-known thinkers. Since no one before him has attempted to examine so broadly European intellectual life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the perspective of attitudes toward Jews and Judaism, Sutcliffe\u27s monograph represents a major contribution to Jewish and Enlightenment studies alike. What is especially remarkable is the range of erudition and mastery of sources on the part of a youthful author of a first book. Based on his doctoral dissertation written at University College London, the work shows immense learning, elegant prose, and a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the Enlightenment project as well as the place of Judaism in the consciousness of its primary and less primary exponents

Three Reviewers and the Academic Style of the \u3cem\u3eJewish Quarterly Review\u3c/em\u3e at Midcentury

A hundred years is a remarkable lifetime for any journal, especially a scholarly one in English focusing exclusively on Jewish civilization. During this impressive time span a dramatic and radical shift in the character and place of academic Jewish studies in the United States and throughout the world took place. JQR is surely a primary historical source for charting the history of higher Jewish learning in North America and its ultimate entrance and integration into the university

Towards a Preliminary Portrait of an Evangelical Missionary to the Jews: The Many Faces of Alexander McCaul (1799-1863)

We live in a time of prolific scholarly output on the history of Jews and Judaism where most inhibitions about what are appropriate subjects for study and what are not have disappeared. This is especially apparent with regard to the study of converts who opted to leave the Jewish faith and community both in the pre-modern and modern eras. Labelled disparagingly in the Jewish tradition as meshumadim (apostates), many earlier Jewish scholars treated them in a negative light or generally ignored them as not properly belonging any longer to the community and its historical legacy. When they were mentioned in historical accounts, they were often seen as self-hating Jews who had become adversaries of their former co-religionists or simply as dishonorable individuals who were notorious in attempting to escape the burden of their Jewish particularity. This situation has radically changed in recent years with an outpouring of new studies on converts in a variety of times and places, culminating perhaps in the most recent synthesis of Todd Endelman, one of the pioneers in the study of converts in the modern era.

Was There an English Parallel to the German \u3cem\u3eHaskalah\u3c/em\u3e?

Judging from recent work by Jewish historians of both Germany and England, the unequivocal response to the heuristic question posed in the title of my essay should be emphatically negative. If indeed the Haskalah was a socio-cultural movement powerful enough to effect a major shift in consciousness 1 or a new ideology to shape a new community … a public social world informed with a new ideal of man ,2 it could only have emerged within the particular political and cultural ambience of Germany. Despite Cecil Roth\u27s relatively feeble attempt more than three decades ago to describe what he ambiguously called an English Haskalah ,3 such a notion has been generally dismissed. Michael Graetz, for example, echoes the strongly held views of Todd Endelman when he claims that a true Haskalah must be more than a fleeting flare-up of ideas supported by a few isolated individuals .

The Academic Study of Judaism: A Challenge to the Reform Rabbi

Any discussion of the Reform rabbinate and the academic study of Judaism presupposes some distinct notion of the primary function of a rabbi, as well as a clear definition of what Torah means in the context of our contemporary community and the new settings in which Jewish learning are presently located. Admittedly, both definitions that I offer are subjective and incomplete and arise from my own unique situation of being both an academic scholar and a Reform rabbi, as well as the son of a Reform rabbi

Looking Backward and Forward: Rethinking Modernity in the Light of Early Modernity

Given its composite nature, The Cambridge History of Early Modern Judaism cannot easily stake out a single authoritative position on what early modern Jewish culture and society means in its totality. Taking as a whole the variegated perspectives presented elsewhere in this volume, and despite the strong hands of the editors in organizing a coherent exposition of the period, it is virtually impossible to expect one unified viewpoint to emerge. Without some notion of what the whole representes, however, one is hard pressed to suggest in what ways this epoch is continuous or discontinuous with the period that follows it — that is, the modern period itself