Prof. Dan Mahler passed away on April 16, 2024. Dan Mahler was a freedom fighter, an honorary member of the Hofesh (Freedom) – The largest secular Israeli NPO, and one of its founders. Dan Mahler was also an educated man, broad-minded, and with many interests. He was a plastic surgeon and medical consultant; He was […]

This article is translated from Hebrew. It was written originally by Eran in the “Hofesh” website. If you ask a “Western” religious believer when the world was created, you will almost certainly receive an answer that the world was created some 5700-6000 years ago. If you ask who created the world, the answer will be […]

In the nucleus of every cell of every living creature is its “genetic code”. Some of us know it by the mythological name “DNA”, which stands for a very long combination saying more or less “something Nucleic Acid”. Without delving into some sort of a biology lesson: DNA is made up of long, winding chains […]

We heard the intriguing truth not long ago, in one of the Islamic demonstrations in favor of the Hamas terrorist organization: “You believe that death is the end, we believe that death is the beginning!” – cried the brainwashed protester. How can you convince someone, given that they believe that death is a beginning – […]

Do you want to live forever? Have you wondered if science may one day enable you to live forever? Well, first we must ask what is “life” anyway. Are bacteria “alive”? Bacteria, in many cases, do not die – they simply divide into two, and now we have two new bacteria. There are also creatures […]

Israel, Tel Aviv. A few years ago, I took a taxi. The [male] driver did not wear a “Kippah”. There were no religious papers visible around. Not even the common religious stickers you can find on many cars in Israel. The busy Ayalon Highway 20, however, inevitably established the necessary atmosphere for a driver-passenger conversation. […]

I’m not sure to what extent this is also the case in some other countries, but the political division into “right” and “left” in Israel largely (even if not perfectly) corresponds to a citizen’s “religiousness”. And the affiliation seems relatively clear: “Religious” Jews (of any kind) will usually associate themselves with the “right” wing, while […]

I have heard this line of thought several times — You talk with a religious Jew about the borders of the State of Israel, you raise all kinds of considerations: The need for a Jewish majority, the need for secured borders, the much-needed support of the various countries of the world, the Palestinians, the economy […]

The debates between religious and secular, between “believers” in some god and “non-believers” – are as old as human imagination. In the ancient world where scientific knowledge was much inferior to nowadays, most of these debates tended to favor the religious side. Yet, even then there were quite a few people who opposed the simple […]

Religious thinking must have a solution for any problem, especially one that puts the religious thinking itself in risk. Hence, when many millions of Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including some million innocent children – there must have been a good religious reason for this. Thus the great minds of religious thinking came up […]