jews d

in
the

Jewish Contributions to Humanity

continued from page 14

#10
#12 in
in a a Series
series

“Developing resilience can help one
find the deepest meaning in life.”

— SHERRI MANDELL

How these
Jewish math whizzes
multiplied humanity’s
potential.

RABBI NEHEMIAH (circa 150). Judaism’s first geometer.

loss, which can be a divorce or job loss
as well as the death of a loved one.
“Sherri Mandell brilliantly and
beautifully interweaves personal
vignettes with Jewish texts and psy-
chological insights of trauma, resil-
ience and growth,” Konvisser said.
Jewish Hospice and Chaplaincy
Network (JHCN) is bringing Mandell
to Detroit to be the keynote speaker
at its annual Caring Coalition
Conference on Wednesday, March
21, at Congregation Shaarey Zedek
in Southfield. She will speak about
the road to resilience. The confer-
ence, for health care and social
service professionals who work with
the elderly and terminally ill, was
near to being sold out at press time.
JHCN is also co-sponsoring
Mandell’s appearance at a luncheon
for Greater Detroit Hadassah’s Israel
Focus Group on Tuesday, March 20,
at noon at Congregation Beth Ahm
in West Bloomfield. She will speak on
“Resilience in the Face of Adversity:
How the Jewish People Continue to
Thrive.”
Other co-sponsors for the Tuesday
event include SAJE (Seminars
for Adult Jewish Enrichment),
StandWithUs, the Cohn-Haddow
Center for Jewish Studies at Wayne
State University and Congregation
Beth Ahm.

AN ACCIDENTAL SETTLER

Mandell, 62, grew up in New York.
She met her husband during a
trip to Israel in 1984. When they
decided to marry, they each made
concessions: she agreed to become
Orthodox and he agreed to move
back to the United States.
After seven years in Pennsylvania
and Maryland, where Mandell taught
creative writing at Penn State and the
University of Maryland, the Mandells
moved to Israel permanently in 1996
with their four young children: Koby,
the eldest, would have been 30 now.
Daniel is 28, Eliana is 27 and Davi
is 23. The Mandells also have two
grandchildren.

Mandell has described herself as
an “accidental settler” because they
moved to Tekoanot not for ideologi-
cal reasons but because their large
family needed more room than they
could afford in Jerusalem.
Mandell says developing resilience
is a process that moves through
seven steps (which often overlap):
chaos, community, choice, creativity,
commemoration, consecration and
celebration.
Her own life has changed in many
positive ways since Koby’s death, she
said.
“I used to hate speaking Hebrew,”
she said. “I didn’t even know the
Hebrew alphabet when I moved to
Israel. But I’ve gone on Israeli TV
and I’ve made speeches in Hebrew.”
Another step in the process was
watching the play based on her first
book. Seeing herself portrayed on
stage by an actress was very weird
and very difficult, “but very affirm-
ing,” she said.
Developing resilience can help
one find the deepest meaning in life,
she said.
“In a way, it’s about being able to
receive — from God and from other
people,” she said. “And then you
become a giver, because the gifts of
empathy and compassion are meant
to be passed on.”
Jews as a community are particu-
larly adept at resilience, said Mandell;
as a people, the Jews have gone
through each of the seven steps.
She said she agrees wholeheartedly
with Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, who
said our job is to transform fate into
destiny. “Even living with atrocity can
be directed toward a sense of mean-
ing and purpose,” she said. •

To hear Sherri Mandell at the JHCN confer-
ence from 2:30-3:30 p.m. Wednesday, March
21, at Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, you must
register in advance ($75) at caringcoalition.
org; it is almost sold out. To hear Mandell
at the event at noon, Tuesday, March 20,
at Beth Ahm in West Bloomfield, you must
call Hadassah at (248) 683-5030 by Friday,
March 16.

Perhaps Judaism’s first mathematician, Nehemiah is the likely author of the “Mishnat ha-
Middot” (Treatise of Measures), Judaism’s first text on geometry that was influential until the
Middle Ages. He was among the earliest mathematicians to discuss the value of pi and dis-
proved the mistaken belief—based on a passage from Kings—that the Torah implied a value
of exactly three.

ABRAHAM IBN EZRA (1089-1167). b. Tudela, Spain.

Bringing Eastern knowledge to the Western world.
Abraham ibn Ezra was many things—a philosopher, an astronomer,
a poet, a linguist, and a Torah scholar. But it is his contribution to the
field of mathematics that has endured the longest. Ibn Ezra spent years
wandering and traveling across Europe during a time when mathematical
advances made in Arabic and Indian culture had not yet penetrated the
European mind. Ibn Ezra brought Arabic numerals, decimals, and the use
of the number zero to Christian European culture. Although it would be centuries before these
groundbreaking ideas became integrated into European thought, Ibn Ezra’s pioneering helped
lay the groundwork.

NIKOLAY LOBACHEVSKY (1792-1856).

b. Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. The Copernicus of geometry.
If there was a mathematician as daring to that field as Coperni-
cus was to the field of astronomy, that person may have been Nikolay
Lobachevsky, who successfully challenged the Euclidean view of geom-
etry in introducing Lobachevskian geometry, or non-Euclidean geometry.
If only to serve as an inspiration to scientists and mathematicians to al-
ways challenge axioms accepted by the masses, Lobachevsky’s contri-
bution will be felt for generations to come.

CARL GUSTAV JACOB JACOBI (1804-1851).

b. Potsdam, Germany. The broadly impactful mathematician.
The first Jewish mathematician to be appointed professor at a German
university, Jacobi’s vast contributions encompass elliptic functions (“Jaco-
bi’s elliptic functions”), differential equations, algebraic theorems, and the
“Jacobian determinant.” His career work filled seven volumes, published
by the Prussian Academy of Science, and the Hamilton-Jacobi differential
equation holds an important place in the field of quantum mechanics.

JAMES JOSEPH SYLVESTER (1814-1897).
b. London, England. A mathematician and wordsmith.
Sylvester may be as impactful for his linguistic creativity as for his
mathematical genius—he coined the well-known terms, “graph” and “ma-
trix”, as well as the lesser known, “determinant.” While serving on a chair at
Johns Hopkins University in 1878, Sylvester founded the American Journal
of Mathematics, America’s first mathematical journal.

ABRAHAM LEMPEL (1936-). b. Lviv, Ukraine.
Spreading information globally.
Born in Poland but educated and now living in Israel, Lempel’s and
Jacob Ziv’s LZ Data Compression Algorithm encodes massive amounts
of digital information, which allows data to travel over the Internet and be-
tween computer networks without becoming lost or destroyed.

Original Research by Walter L. Field Sponsored by Irwin S. Field Written by Jared Sichel

jn

March 15 • 2018

17