Category: Science and Health

While around the world, blistering cold snowstorms have been raging for weeks and especially in the last few days, winter has finally roused itself and arrived in Israel. For some people, the cold season means feeling pain as the body can experience more than just frozen fingers, but an actual allergic reaction to the freezing […]

It’s Saturday morning, and your family is hungry. Thankfully, the deli down the street is within walking distance — it’s hard to miss, as the front patio is littered with coin-operated kiddie rides and a queue of hungry patrons. As you walk in, jugs of 50 cent candy line the path to the stand, where […]

Can anything minimize the serious polarization among groups in countries like Israel and the US? With the global escalation in conflicts among population groups, acts of violence by residents of cities and the increasing participation of youth in civil conflicts, there appears to be an urgent need to develop science-based methods to mitigate hatred and […]

Bad breath is so embarrassing for those who suffer from it, but there are several solutions out there. One major factor is the food you eat.  A new study found that eating yogurt and other fermented foods could banish bad breath. Researchers in China say that probiotic bacteria in yogurt, sourdough bread and miso soup […]

Researchers have for years tried to discover what determines “resilience to stress,” a term describing the ability to adapt to difficult situations and to overcome adversity. Is it acquired through experience, or is there a tendency to easily recover from stress possibly ingrained in us from a very early age or even from birth? A […]

I have an ambivalent relationship with mirrors. Looking at my image in one brings up emotions about how I look, so sometimes I avoid them. But a mirror image also can feel like a window, a portal into some other place. So it fascinates me that in Jewish folklore, mirrors are typically treated as portals […]

We have spent a lot of time in this tractate discussing all the ways that a man can dissolve the vows of his wives and daughters. Today, we shift gears to discuss situations where he cannot. According to Numbers 30:10, “every vow of a widow, and of her that is divorced, with which she has bound her soul, […]

According to Numbers 35, if a man killed someone accidentally — what today we would call manslaughter — he should be sent to a “city of refuge” to live out his life. This is a form of exile, but it’s also an opportunity to live free from the threat of retaliation by the victim’s family, at […]

The cardiovascular health of both men and women who wear tefillin (phylacteries) around their arms can improve, according to new research at the University of Cincinnati (UC). The study suggests those benefits are the result of ischemic or reduced blood flow preconditioning that produces protection from the damage caused by heart attacks. “Tefillin is used […]

Research published Wednesday in peer-reviewed JAMA Surgery has found that the quality of lung cancer surgery in the United States varies widely with patients whose surgery failed to meet established guidelines experiencing significantly worse outcomes. “It is crucial to have a solid understanding of what constitutes a high-quality lung cancer surgery,” said Varun Puri, MD, a […]