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When Judaism Meets Science
Posts Tagged ‘DNA’
Jews and Genetic Disorders
Credit: ‘EM Unit, UCL Medical School, Royal Free Campus’. Wellcome Images
Introduction
Victoria Gray, a Black American woman now in her mid-thirties, was just three months old when she suffered her first painful bout with sickle cell disease (SCD), a debilitating genetic blood disorder. SCD is caused by a mutation of the hemoglobin-beta (HBB) gene in chromosome 11 that alters the shape of normally flexible, round red blood cells into rigid, crescent shaped cells. When it does, the flow of red blood cells that usually deliver oxygen to bodily tissues is restricted resulting in limited oxygen delivery to tissues and associated severe pain. Until recently, treatment consisted primarily of strong pain relief medication and, also, frequent blood transfusions. SCD affects about 100,000 people in the United States, more than 90% of whom are African-American or non-Hispanic Black, and millions more worldwide.
In 2019, Ms. Gray became the first patient with any form of genetic disease to be treated by gene-editing technology known as CRISPR which modified blood cells taken from her bone marrow for subsequent infusion back into her body. Two years later, she was not only pain free, but doing well enough to no longer be part of the landmark study for which she volunteered, although she will continue to be followed for fifteen more years in order to check the long-term safety and efficacy of her treatment.
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Biology and Genesis: Are they compatible or irreconcilable?
Credit: Malka Rappaport
Introduction
Biology is the scientific study of life, and Genesis is the biblical story of life. Both address matters ranging from the origin of life to how we find life today, and both contain lessons that are important for our continued existence. And despite the fact that differences of interpretation of Genesis and the Bible in general have been the source of much discussion about perceived conflicts between religious and scientific ideas, perhaps these perspectives need not be considered so divergent.
Genesis is the first book of the Hebrew Bible, and most Jews accept the idea that it contains metaphors and should not be intended to serve as a substitute or alternative for valid scientific textbooks. However, it is also true that close reading of these stories can reveal perspectives and themes in common with many contemporary issues of scientific interest and importance. For example, the field of biology is now reaching an unprecedented peak of experimental power. We can now change our own biology in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. This is not to say that we should not move ahead, but we need to do so carefully. Because of this unprecedented power, though, all biologists today would be well served to incorporate ethical and moral considerations into their work to consider what should be done, not just what can be done. The stories in Genesis can help here because they directly address many biological issues of current interest, and they may provide valuable philosophical and ethical perspectives. read more
The Lessons of the Bible Code
Let’s start at the very beginning. It is, as Oscar Hammerstein once wrote, a very good place to start. Let’s go to the biblical book of Genesis, or, more specifically, to the Hebrew text of it, known as B’reishit, and look at the first four verses. Let’s start with the first word in the first verse, b’reishit. The last letter of b’reishit is the Hebrew letter tav. Now let’s look for the letter which is fifty letters away from that tav. Let’s repeat that process two more times, each time skipping forty-nine letters and seeking the next letter that is fifty letters away from the one we just found. If you count carefully, when you reach the third letter in the second word of the fifth verse in B’reishit, the four Hebrew letters you find in this sequence are tav, vav, resh and hey. Together, in that order, they spell Torah, the first five books of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible.
Congratulations! You have just uncovered a hidden Bible code, one formed by an equidistant letter sequence, or ELS. Skeptics can repeat the exercise, and get the same result, as the beginning of the next book in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Exodus, known in Hebrew as Sh’mot. Find the first tav in the first verse of Sh’mot (it’s at the end of the second word) and the next three letters each 50 letters apart. Again, if you are careful, you should find the sequence tav, vav, resh and hey, or Torah.
Too simple? A mere coincidence, you say? Wait, there’s more. read more
Jews, Genes and Genetics: A Look at Family, Haplotypes and Peoplehood
In the United States today, the freest and richest nation on the planet, a country characterized by opportunity and mobility, the reality is that most Jews are Jews, if at all, by choice. For some, that choice is relatively easy, a coincidence of birth, culture and acceptance. For others, the situation is more complicated, involving perhaps disaffection with the faith or circumstances into which one was born and raised or, conversely, an attraction to a set of beliefs or patterns of behavior newly encountered.
Regardless of one’s position, in the open and fluid society that is America, most adults are not forced to be Jewish, i.e., to engage in conduct commonly understood to be specifically Jewish, such as attending shul, keeping kosher, studying sacred texts or simply identifying as a Jew. Nor are they forced to believe in a particular collection of ideas or ideals, including whether God exists, or, if they think that God does, what attributes or aspects that God may or may not have. Certainly strong social pressures can operate on an individual to motivate him or her to behave or believe one way or another, but most individuals still retain the ability to choose whether to be Jewish.
There is, however, one matter that is not open to choice, much less dispute or revision, and that is one’s genetic structure. And here, as elsewhere, advances in science in the relatively recent past have allowed us to investigate, to probe, to attempt to provide science based perspectives, if not answers, to the most basic questions: “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?”. read more