Maimonides for the Masses? Chaim Kruger, Yiddish Journalism, and Medieval Jewish Philosophy

In the early twentieth century, the Jewish community in Montreal created its own religious, cultural and intellectual spaces, including synagogues, schools, a library, and a Yiddish language daily, the Keneder Adler. Behind these varied but complementary institutions was a group of remarkable people who collectively built a Jewish community with considerable cultural creativity. One of the most interesting among them was Chaim Kruger (1877–1933). He was a shoḥet [kosher slaughterer], rabbi, teacher, and journalist on the staff of the Keneder Adler. He was also a serious scholar of Jewish philosophy. In the Keneder Adler, Kruger shared the results of his deep and extensive reading and study. He wrote series of articles on widely-ranging subjects such as Philo Judaeus, Saadia Gaon, Moses Maimonides, Isaac Luria, and Ḥayyim of Volozhin. His columns on Maimonides were collected into a book, Der Rambam, zayn leben un shafn [Maimonides: His Life and Works], published in 1933. The Maimonides book forms the basis of our analysis of Kruger’s thought. This article examines Kruger’s attempt to popularize Maimonides’ philosophy and make a thinker noted for the esoteric nature of his thought into someone accessible to the readership of the Keneder Adler. It also investigates Kruger’s attempt to compare Maimonides with modern philosophers, especially Kant and Nietzsche, in the context of contemporary attempts to incorporate modern philosophy into the task of understanding Judaism. Kruger’s work contributes to our understanding of the intellectual milieu of the Montreal Jewish community as well as the reception history of Maimonides in the twentieth century.Au début du XXe siècle, la communauté juive de Montréal a créé ses propres espaces religieux, culturels et intellectuels, notamment des synagogues, des écoles, une bibliothèque et un quotidien yiddish, le Keneder Adler. Derrière ces institutions variées mais complémentaires se cache un groupe de personnes remarquables qui, ensemble, ont bâti une communauté juive dotée d’une créativité culturelle considérable. L’un des plus intéressants d’entre eux était Chaim Kruger (1877-1933). Il était shoḥet [abatteur casher], rabbin, enseignant et journaliste au sein de l’équipe du Keneder Adler. Dans le Keneder Adler, Kruger partageait les résultats de ses lectures et études approfondies et étendues. Il a écrit des séries d’articles sur des sujets très variés tels que Philo Judaeus, Saadia Gaon, Moïse Maïmonide, Isaac Luria et Ḥayyim de Volozhin. Ses chroniques sur Maïmonide ont été rassemblées dans un livre, Der Rambam, zayn leben un shafn [Maïmonide : sa vie et ses œuvres], publié en 1933. Le livre sur Maïmonide constitue la base de notre analyse de la pensée de Kruger. Cet article examine la tentative de Kruger de populariser la philosophie de Maïmonide et de faire d’un penseur connu pour la nature ésotérique de sa pensée une personne accessible au lectorat du Keneder Adler. Il étudie également la tentative de Kruger de comparer Maïmonide aux philosophes modernes, en particulier Kant et Nietzsche, dans le contexte des tentatives contemporaines d’incorporer la philosophie moderne dans la tâche de comprendre le judaïsme. Le travail de Kruger contribue à notre compréhension du milieu intellectuel de la communauté juive de Montréal ainsi que de l’histoire de la réception de Maïmonide au vingtième siècle

Correlation Differences in Heartbeat Fluctuations During Rest and Exercise

We study the heartbeat activity of healthy individuals at rest and during exercise. We focus on correlation properties of the intervals formed by successive peaks in the pulse wave and find significant scaling differences between rest and exercise. For exercise the interval series is anticorrelated at short time scales and correlated at intermediate time scales, while for rest we observe the opposite crossover pattern -- from strong correlations in the short-time regime to weaker correlations at larger scales. We suggest a physiologically motivated stochastic scenario to explain the scaling differences between rest and exercise and the observed crossover patterns.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Fire, climate and the origins of agriculture: micro-charcoal records of biomass burning during the Last Glacial Interglacial Transition in Southwest Asia

This study investigates changes in climate, vegetation, wildfire and human activity in Southwest Asia during the transition to Neolithic agriculture between ca. 16 and ca. 9 ka. In order to trace the fire history of this region, we use microscopic charcoal from lake sediment sequences, and present two new records: one from south central Turkey (Akgo¨ l) and the other from the southern Levant (Hula). These are interpreted primarily as the result of regional-scale fire events, with the exception of a single large event ca. 13 ka at Akgo¨ l, which phytolith analysis shows was the result of burning of the local marsh vegetation. Comparison between these and other regional micro-charcoal, stable isotope and pollen records shows that wildfires were least frequent when the climate was cold and dry (glacial, Lateglacial Stadial) and the vegetation dominated by chenopod–Artemisia steppe, and that they became more frequent and/or bigger at times of warmer, wetter but seasonally dry climate (Lateglacial Interstadial, early Holocene). Warmer and wetter climates caused an increase in biomass availability, with woody matter appearing to provide the main fuel source in sites from the Levant, while grass fires predominated in the interior uplands of Anatolia. Southwest Asia’s grasslands reached their greatest extent during the early Holocene, and they were maintained by dry-season burning that helped to delay the spread of woodland by up to 3 ka, at the same time as Neolithic settlement became established across this grass parkland landscape. Although climatic changes appear to have acted as the principal ‘pacemaker’ for fire activity through the last glacial–interglacial climatic transition (LGIT), human actions may have amplified shifts in biomass burning. Fire regimes therefore changed markedly during this time period, and both influenced, and were influenced by, the cultural-economic transition from hunter-foraging to agriculture and village lif

The close limit from a null point of view: the advanced solution

We present a characteristic algorithm for computing the perturbation of a Schwarzschild spacetime by means of solving the Teukolsky equation. We implement the algorithm as a characteristic evolution code and apply it to compute the advanced solution to a black hole collision in the close approximation. The code successfully tracks the initial burst and quasinormal decay of a black hole perturbation through 10 orders of magnitude and tracks the final power law decay through an additional 6 orders of magnitude. Determination of the advanced solution, in which ingoing radiation is absorbed by the black hole but no outgoing radiation is emitted, is the first stage of a two stage approach to determining the retarded solution, which provides the close approximation waveform with the physically appropriate boundary condition of no ingoing radiation.Comment: Revised version, published in Phys. Rev. D, 34 pages, 13 figures, RevTe

Les Jeux olympiques de Berlin dans l’arène médiatique montréalaise

Les Jeux olympiques de Berlin en 1936 sont l’un des moments forts de la lutte idéologique qui se déroule alors sur la scène internationale et Montréal n’y échappe pas. Le présent article explore l’hypothèse que cet événement aurait rendu plus lisibles les clivages identitaires et politiques de la société québécoise, à partir de l’analyse de la couverture qu’offre des JO un échantillon substantiel de journaux montréalais. La première partie de cette étude décrit les caractéristiques de la couverture des Jeux, replacée sur la facture usuelle des journaux, et révèle la dépendance des périodiques montréalais à l’endroit des agences de presse nord-américaines. Le recours massif aux agences crée l’illusion d’un récit unique ressassé partout, fait de tableaux et de petites anecdotes. Cependant, grâce aux textes dans lesquels s’affirme une subjectivité, dans les chroniques sportives, entre autres, le lecteur de l’époque est mis en contact avec l’expression de jugements individuels desquels se dégage une interprétation proprement montréalaise des Jeux olympiques, qui fait une place à des enjeux débordant le caractère strictement sportif de l’événement pour toucher aux questions de politique internationale. L’hypothèse initiale se révèle finalement insatisfaisante, les JO paraissant avoir joué le rôle d’un catalyseur modifiant provisoirement l’économie du système des journaux montréalais, réorganisé autour d’impératifs moraux irréductibles aux clivages sociaux et identitaires locaux

Performance Assessment and Selection of Normalization Procedures for Single-Cell RNA-Seq

Systematic measurement biases make normalization an essential step in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analysis. There may be multiple competing considerations behind the assessment of normalization performance, of which some may be study specific. We have developed "scone"- a flexible framework for assessing performance based on a comprehensive panel of data-driven metrics. Through graphical summaries and quantitative reports, scone summarizes trade-offs and ranks large numbers of normalization methods by panel performance. The method is implemented in the open-source Bioconductor R software package scone. We show that top-performing normalization methods lead to better agreement with independent validation data for a collection of scRNA-seq datasets. scone can be downloaded at http://bioconductor.org/packages/scone/

Testing gravitational-wave searches with numerical relativity waveforms: Results from the first Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project

The Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project is a collaborative effort between members of the numerical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The purpose of NINJA is to study the sensitivity of existing gravitational-wave search algorithms using numerically generated waveforms and to foster closer collaboration between the numerical relativity and data analysis communities. We describe the results of the first NINJA analysis which focused on gravitational waveforms from binary black hole coalescence. Ten numerical relativity groups contributed numerical data which were used to generate a set of gravitational-wave signals. These signals were injected into a simulated data set, designed to mimic the response of the Initial LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors. Nine groups analysed this data using search and parameter-estimation pipelines. Matched filter algorithms, un-modelled-burst searches and Bayesian parameter-estimation and model-selection algorithms were applied to the data. We report the efficiency of these search methods in detecting the numerical waveforms and measuring their parameters. We describe preliminary comparisons between the different search methods and suggest improvements for future NINJA analyses.Comment: 56 pages, 25 figures; various clarifications; accepted to CQ

A Study of B0 -> J/psi K(*)0 pi+ pi- Decays with the Collider Detector at Fermilab

We report a study of the decays B0 -> J/psi K(*)0 pi+ pi-, which involve the creation of a u u-bar or d d-bar quark pair in addition to a b-bar -> c-bar(c s-bar) decay. The data sample consists of 110 1/pb of p p-bar collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.8 TeV collected by the CDF detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider during 1992-1995. We measure the branching ratios to be BR(B0 -> J/psi K*0 pi+ pi-) = (8.0 +- 2.2 +- 1.5) * 10^{-4} and BR(B0 -> J/psi K0 pi+ pi-) = (1.1 +- 0.4 +- 0.2) * 10^{-3}. Contributions to these decays are seen from psi(2S) K(*)0, J/psi K0 rho0, J/psi K*+ pi-, and J/psi K1(1270)

Search for a Technicolor omega_T Particle in Events with a Photon and a b-quark Jet at CDF

If the Technicolor omega_T particle exists, a likely decay mode is omega_T -> gamma pi_T, followed by pi_T -> bb-bar, yielding the signature gamma bb-bar. We have searched 85 pb^-1 of data collected by the CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron for events with a photon and two jets, where one of the jets must contain a secondary vertex implying the presence of a b quark. We find no excess of events above standard model expectations. We express the result of an exclusion region in the M_omega_T - M_pi_T mass plane.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures. Available from the CDF server (PS with figs): http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/physics/pub98/cdf4674_omega_t_prl_4.ps FERMILAB-PUB-98/321-