“HIGHER MEANINGS: CONNECTING RELIGION AND MATHEMATICS”
our 2021 general audiences math-and-religion speaker series for Sinai and Synapses “Scientists in Synagogues”; funded by CLAL, John Templeton Foundation, etc., in consultation with the DoSER program of the AAAS (world’s largest scientific society)
organizers/grantwriters:
- Dr. Larry Lesser, Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, The Univ. of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)
- Rabbi Ben Zeidman, Temple Mount Sinai (El Paso’s Reform Jewish congregation since 1898 with about 300 households now)
topic(linked to the talk)/affiliation/speaker/date:
- nature of the infinite, UTEP’s Larry Lesser, 3/18/2021
- role of axioms and geometric dimension, Northwestern College’s Kim Jongerius, 4/25/2021
- spread of math among religions in medieval times, Univ. of District of Columbia’s Victor Katz, 6/10/2021
- math, computing, ethics, UTEP’s Olga Kosheleva & Vladik Kreinovich, 8/19/2021
- Gersonides and limits of knowledge, Middlesex University’s Snezana Lawrence, 10/17/2021
- technology/computers, UTEP’s David Novick, 12/16/2021
documents:
- flyer
- series page on congregation website
- recordings of speakers’ presentations
- SiS math topic page that includes our speakers’ talks (with transcripts)
- speaker supplementary papers
attendance for the 6 talks (and later views) combined:
- 333 computers (some had > 1 viewer) logged in during talks
- many views (2184, as of 3/18/2026) of the posted recordings (here and here) on YouTube
dissemination, media coverage, and related activity:
- 2021: TV (e.g., ABC-affiliate KVIA), radio (e.g., NPR-station KTEP), print media, podcast, blogposts/e-blasts, newsletter blurb; first 2 talks yielded the #2 and #8 most-viewed Scientists in Synagogues posts in 2021
- 2022: 21-page paper (with results from host congregation and funding organization surveys) in an international journal, talk at a university-sponsored conference, and a 2/16/22 Scientists in Synagogues workshop
- 2024: invited presentation for a national workgroup (the Scientists in Synagogues Culminating Workshop, which was followed by a major 11/12/24 public event at NYC’s Streicker Center), and one of the projects selected for inclusion in a Fourth Line Films documentary. The public event had 1000 virtual and 250 in-person attendees at New York City’s Streicker Center, featured distinguished panelists (Dr. Brian Greene, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Rabbi David Wolpe, and moderator Abby Pogrebin), debuted a video, and distributed a booklet whose first listed talk (in a set of 12 curated from 200+ talks from 64 teams over a 5-year period) was Lesser’s archived (3/18/2021) talk, “Divinity and Infinity.”
- 2026: 4-minute short film Living With Unresolved Questions: Reflections on Math and Judaism by Fourth Line Films from interviews of Rabbi Ben Zeidman and Dr. Larry Lesser, announced on 2/19/2026 at https://sinaiandsynapses.org/content/living-with-unresolved-questions-reflections-on-math-and-judaism/ with the public posting of the film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0to6t0GpBc
- 2027: co-organizer (with B. Zeidman and C. Bench) of talks on Judaism and AI given March 2, 2027 by Rabbanit Sara Wolkenfeld
from our 2022 piece in Journal of Humanistic Mathematics: “We intentionally sought and selected speakers to have diversity in gender (half of the talks included a woman), discipline, religion (one speaker had a strong Christian identity, several speakers [spanned varied] Jewish identities, and talks collectively engaged with mathematics of all three major Abrahamic faiths), and geography: we balanced local speakers with speakers from other parts of the United States or beyond (e.g., the UK). Other aspects of diversity involved the angle or type of content, including philosophical, historical, and sociological aspects of mathematics and religion.” (p. 362)
some takeaways: this slide from a 2022 conference presentation