Presenter Biographies 2011

Conference Organizer
Nathan Katz

Nathan Katz , Ph.D., is professor of religious studies and founder-director of the Program in the Study of Spirituality at Florida International University. Arguably the world's leading authority on Jewish communities in India, his work has focused on the cultural interactions between Judaic and Indian civilizations. He is co-founder and co-editor of "The Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies" and was one of eight delegates at the historical 1990 Tibetan-Jewish dialogue hosted by the Dalai Lama, and recently keynoted the third Hindu-Jewish summit in New York. Of his fifteen books, his latest is a memoir, "Spiritual Journey Home - Eastern Mysticism to the Western Wall" (2009), and his 2000 book, "Who Are the Jews of India?" was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Studies.

Website: www.indojudaic.com Email: spirituality@fiu.edu

Conference Organizer
Rabbi Sholom D. Lipskar

Since receiving ordination from the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva in Brooklyn in 1968, Sholom D. Lipskar has worked as an emissary for the Lubavitcher Rebbe. In 1973 he founded the Landow Yeshiva Center in Miami Beach, Florida. He has served as its principal and dean of its elementary, academy, and high school studies, and was directly responsible for training its rabbinical students. In 1981, he founded The Shul in Surfside, Florida. As its head rabbi he is both the spiritual leader and educational programmer for all ages. Also in 1981, Rabbi Lipskar founded the Aleph Institute and the Educational Academy for the Elderly, both based in Surfside. The Aleph Institute is a non-profit national humanitarian organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for Jews in limited environments, including prisoners and military personnel and their families. Rabbi Lipskar has created alternative punishment philosophies and developed unique educational opportunities for the general public in the field of treatment of closed populations. Rabbi Lipskar is the founder and chief organizer of the Miami International Torah and Science Conferences.

Conference Organizer
Professor Joseph S. Bodenheimer

The new editor-in-chief of B’Or Ha’Torah, Joseph S. Bodenheimer is a full professor Emeritus of electro-optics at the Jerusalem College of Technology (Machon Lev) and President Emeritus of this unique college. He received his PhD from the Hebrew University in physics. He did post-doctoral studies in laser spectrometry at Kings College, London University and discovered two previously unknown phase transitions and also developed a new spectrometric technique.

In 1982 Professor Bodenheimer was appointed head of the electro-optics department of the Jerusalem College of Technology. In 1989 he was elected rector and subsequently, up until 2009, was president of JCT. Under his leadership, JCT expanded dynamically to become a world-class institute combining Torah and academic studies, supporting Israel’s position as a global hi-tech superpower.

Professor Bodenheimer has endeavored to make Israel a world leader in the field of optical engineering, through his students and applied research. Awarded substantial research grants from institutes and foundations throughout the world, he has published over eighty papers and holds eleven patents in a broad range of electro-optical devices and systems. He has served as consultant for numerous high technology companies in Israel and the United States, and as a member of several national scientific committees.

Professor Bodenheimer sets aside time for daily Talmud study, and gives regular shiurim. A founding member of the California chapter of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, he is a member of the Zomet Institute for Halacha and Technology, a member of the board of Nishmat Center for Advanced Torah Study for Women, and the president of Ramban Synagogue in Katamon, Jerusalem.

Fascinated by the combination of science and technology with Jewish studies and ethics, Joseph Bodenheimer is a life-long Zionist leader who loves working with young people, especially his own extensive family. He and his wife Rachel have eight children and many, many grandchildren.

Rabbi Professor Avraham Steinberg, MD

Rabbi Professor Avraham Steinberg, MD is an associate clinical professor of medical ethics at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. He is the author of The Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, published in seven volumes in Hebrew (two editions) and three volumes in English (translated by Dr. Fred Rosner), for which he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1999. Professor Steinberg is a senior pediatric neurologist at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. He directs the Medical Ethics Unit at Shaare Zedek. Head of the editorial board of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, he is also director of Yad Harav Herzog, and a member of national and international societies of child neurology, medical ethics, and Jewish medical ethics.In Israel, Professor Steinberg is a member of the National Bioethics Council, the chairman of the Dying Patient Committee, the chairman of the Organ Transplantation Committee, the chairman of the Altruistic Live-Organ Donations Committee, a member of the Brain-Death Criteria Committee, a member of The Status of the Fetus and Pre-Embryo Committee, and the chairman of the Pathological Specimens Committee. He is the author and editor of thirty books in forty-eight volumes and 242 articles and chapters in scientific journals and books on Jewish medical ethics, general medical ethics, the history of medicine, medicine and law, and pediatric neurology. He has given over 3000 expert witness opinions in court cases on pediatric neurology and medical ethics.

Rabbi Professor Moshe D. Tendler

Rabbi Professor Moshe D. Tendler, noted authority on medical ethics and the relationship of medicine and science to Jewish law, is the rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Yeshiva University-affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), professor of biology at Yeshiva College, and the Rabbi Isaac and Bella Tendler Chair in Jewish Medical Ethics at Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Tendler was ordained at RIETS in 1949 and earned a PhD in biology from Columbia University in 1957. Since 1969, he has served on the Medical Ethics Task Force of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, for which he edited Medical Ethics and Halakhah. For six years he served as its chairman. He is also chairman of the Bioethical Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America. He has been a member of the board of directors of Americans for Medical Progress, Inc. and is a member of number of ethics commissions. A former president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, Rabbi Tendler is author of Pardes Rimonim (a text on Jewish family life); Practical Medical Halakhah; Care of the Critically Ill—Responsa of Rav Moshe Feinstein; as well as many articles on science and religion in leading publications. He is frequently consulted by the media and public officials on ethical issues.

Barry Baumel, M.D. was co-chair of the Mind Research Network Board of Trustees from 2009 thru 2010. He joined the board in 2003. The Mind Research Network is an organization dedicated to the study of brain function in various central nervous system disorders. He was founder, medical director and co-CEO at the Baumel-Eisner Neuromedical Institute, a leading medical research center in South Florida that specialized in the research of diseases of the central nervous system. Dr. Baumel is a board-certified Neurologist and has been Principal Investigator for trials sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry as well as the National Institutes of Health. His research involved patients with memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, as well as studies in major depressive disorder, Parkinson’s disease, migraine headache, stroke, generalized anxiety disorder, and peripheral neuropathy. Baumel graduated from the University of Miami School of Medicine and then completed his residency in Neurology at the University of Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen in 1998 established and since then directs the Institute for Judaism and Civilization in Melbourne, Australia. Its purpose is to explore the interface between Judaism and the arts, sciences and values of general civilization. As this suggests, it is concerned not only with explorations of the relationship between Judaism and the cycle of the sciences or human knowledge, but also with the practical ethical message of the tradition from Sinai to general society. It is this which contributes the second major focus of the Institute for Judaism and Civilization: research into the Noahide laws and their application to the issues of contemporary society. Shimon Cowen has a PhD in social philosophy and received rabbinic ordination both in Australia and Israel. Through his Institute, he mounts all kinds of forums, publications and engagements with public policy, and has a weekly radio program entitled “Ethics and Society”. He is also an Associate in the School of Philosophical, Historical and international studies at Monash University.

Website: www.ijc.com.au Email: director@ijc.com.au

Yakir Kaufman, MD

Yakir Kaufman was born in Haifa and received his MD from the Hebrew University Hadassah Faculty of Medicine in 1994. In 1995 he become a resident doctor at the department of neurology of the Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. Dr. Kaufman is a member of the Israeli Neurological Society and a junior member of the American Academy of Neurology. He spent two years in Toronto, Canada, as a Fellow in the Behavioural Neurology Program at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and the Rotman Institute. Since his return to Jerusalem in 2004 he has joined the medical staff of the Herzog Memorial Hospital and teaches Judaism and Medicine at the Hebrew University Hadassah medical school. At Herzog Hospital Dr. Kaufman has founded The Center for Brain Health, which integrates conventional and alternative medicine, using also a spiritual approach, placing the patient at the center of the healing process. His areas of research include psychoneuroimmunology and the link between spirituality and health.

Email: ykaufman@herzoghospital.org

Isaac Elishakoff

Isaac Elishakoff is the J.M. Rubin Distinguished Professor of Structural Reliability, Safety, and Security in the department of mechanical engineering at Florida Atlantic University. He also teaches in the mathematics department. From 1972 to 1989 he was faculty member of the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, where he became a professor of aeronautical engineering in 1984. He also served as Visiting Freimann Chair Professor at the University of Notre Dame, as well as Visiting Kioter Chair Professor at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Visiting Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in the USA, and the University of Tokyo in Japan. A Fellow of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science at the University of Kyoto, he was a Visiting Eminent Scholar at Beihang University in Beijing, and Distinguished Castigliano Professor at the University of Palermo, Italy, and Visiting Professor at the University Center of Ariel in Samaria. He also served as a distinguished lecturer of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is an associate editor of four international journals and general advisory editor of Elsevier Science Publishers in Oxford, England.

Oren Stier

Oren Baruch Stier, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Judaic Studies Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University.  He is the author of Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust (University of Massachusetts) and co-editor of Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place (Indiana University).  He is currently working on two book manuscripts, Holocaust Symbols: The Icons of Memory and Elie Wiesel’s Testament, from which this talk is drawn.  In 2004 he was a Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  He and his family live in Hollywood, FL.

Daniel A. Drubach, M.D

Dr.Daniel Drubach completed double training in Neurology and Psychiatry at University of Maryland and then went on to complete a fellowship in Neurorehabilitation at the same institution. He was head of the Traumatic Brain injury Rehabilitation Program and Co director of the Coma Emergence Program at University of Maryland for several years. He then went on to join the Behavioral Neurology Division at Mayo Clinic, where he has worked for the last 11 years. He is very active in the training of medical students, as well as residents and fellows. He has written extensively on the neuroscience of music, meditation, language, religion and multitude other topics He also has published several articles discussing how the application of newly discovered neuroscience concepts can help us answer some of man's existential questions about free choice, empathy for another living being, mystical experiences and others. He has given a number of lectures on this subject at multiple academic facilities But his main interest by far lays in the interface between Judaic precepts and neurosciences. He is deeply convinced that the study of Judaic works can help us understand the brain and vice versa.

Kenneth Heilman

Dr. Kenneth M. Heilman received his M.D. degree from the University of Virginia in 1963 and subsequently spent two years training in Internal Medicine at Cornell University Medical Center (Bellevue). During the Vietnam War he joined the Air Force and was Chief of Medicine at NATO Hospital, Izmir, Turkey. When he was discharged from the service, he took a Neurology residency and fellowship at the Harvard Neurological Unit (Boston City) with Dr. Derek Denny-Brown and then with Dr. Norman Geschwind. After completing his residency and fellowship, he joined the faculty at the University of Florida in 1970, as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1973 and Professor in 1975. He received an endowed chair in 1990 making him the first James E Rooks, Jr. Professor of Neurology. In 1998, he was in the first group of the faculty to be awarded the title of Distinguished Professor. He is also a professor of Clinical and Health Psychology.

Dr. Heilman is an active clinician who is Director of the Memory and Cognitive Disorder Clinics. His primary clinical interests are in attentional, emotional and cognitive disorders. His expertise as a clinician has been recognized by being listed in every edition of the Best Doctors in America as well as other publications. Dr. Heilman is also an educator. In addition to teaching medical and psychology students, he is active in resident education and has been director of a post doctoral program that has trained more than 50 post doctoral fellows. The majority of these fellows now hold academic positions in this and other universities. Several of Dr. Heilman's former fellows are now leaders in academic Neurology and Neuropsychology. Dr. Heilman also has an active research program. He is the author of several texts, and has more than 400 books, chapters and articles in peer reviewed journals.

Leah Abramowitz

Tiferet Yisrael 26, Jewish Quarter, Jerusalem, 97500, Tel. 02-6271584 (home); 02-6555198 (work)

Present Employment: Director of Geriatric Institute of Studies in Aging, Shaare Zedek Hospital, Jerusalem

Past employment record:

1968 – 1971 Public Relations Work

1971 – 2003 Social Worker Geriatric Ward, Shaare Zedek

1981 – 2008 Founder and Coordinator of Melabev

1981 – Present Coordinator of Geriatric Institute

Born in Germany

Raised in St. Louis, Mo.

Aliya to Israel – l960

Extra-curricular Activities: Free lance writer for Jewish Journals

Author of book “Tales of Nehama”

Founding member and co-chairman of Nefesh Yisrael

Member of Board of Rova Community Center

Mother and Grandmother of many offspring B"H V'Chen Yirbu

Mordechai Olesky

Mordechai Olesky has a Master of Science degree in agricultural sciences. He has worked in numerous tropical countries for the government and private sector, specializing in export development of non-traditional crops.

He resides in Florida, and is a frequent participant in the Torah and Science Conference.

Email: mordechaiolesky@yahoo.com