Published: 26 April 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
IN A MID-SIZED STUDY hall in Jerusalem, rows of men in white shirts and black pants are swaying to the sing-song of Talmudic verses. Some sit, hunched over their ancient texts; others stand, resting their books on a wooden lectern, or shtender, in Yiddish.
Forty-five minutes away from the beit midrash, Israel’s leading scientists are conducting cutting edge research in natural sciences and engineering at Tel Aviv University’s Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. They are pioneering the field’s newest advances: creating a bionic eye in order to restore vision in the blind, studying protein to find a cure to Alzheimer’s, engineering nanoparticles to target specific cancer cells.
These worlds rarely merge — the religious/secular divide is so deep in Israel that a 2016 survey found that secular Jews are more uncomfortable with the notion that their child might marry a Haredi Jew than a Christian.
Yet two cousins — a Haredi rabbi and a secular professor — have joined forces to create a dialogue between these worlds. In a country characterized by religious divide the merge of both groups is revolutionary. It also happened by mistake.
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Photo: Courtesy Intersecting Pathways
