Noah Efron (6:37)
There is a toilet that talks to you, I think in Japanese is what I saw, but presumably they could make it talk to you in English. Now, as for me, my name is Noah Efron and I do not mean to boast, but a listener and highly regarded friend of the podcast, Israel Cohen, sent me a note saying that the generally considered authoritative for such matters, Baby center operation, which describes itself as, quote, the world's number one digital parenting research operation, aiming to provide the most helpful parenting in the world. We believe in the journey. We believe in you. End quote. That selfsame BabyCenter.com lately published its list of last year's most popular baby names, which they described in an article that began, quote, it's official, Olivia and Noah are keeping their titles as the number one girl and boy names among baby center parents. Now, as you gathered, Noah was also the most popular baby name for boys in the prior year. Now, I do not know how much of the popularity of the name, oh, to this podcast, it could be as little as 3 or 4%. But for me, the point is otherwise. I grew up never meeting another Noah. It was a lonely thing. And every time it rained, all the kids on the bus would say, noah, you better start building your ark. In fifth grade, Steve Lennett found his dad's old Bill Cosby records with the thing that he did about Noah and he played it for everyone in the yeshiva. And after that they'd go, noah, I want you to build an ark. Or they'd go, what's a cubit? And everyone would laugh and laugh. And I think that makes maybe one of the reasons I ended up moving to Israel was that I wanted to be in a place where I figured lots of people would be named Noah or Noah. In the event, there's political Zionism and there's cultural Zionism and mine was a nomological sort of Zionism. But then I got to Israel and dudes, no one here is named Noah, save for Noah Morris on kibbutz to Ra, who has long been a comfort to me. But now I learned from the good people at Baby center that in America these days everyone is named Noah. Though I would just like to say that also on the list at number 14 is Hudson, number 19 is Grayson, number 28 is Wyatt, number 60 is Weston, and number 72 is Atlas. While number 91 is Zion and number 96 is Grayson. And please don't think that I'm bragging. God knows that is not how my mother Rosalyn and my father Herman raised me. But I think maybe I like not fitting in even more than I always dreamed would be the greatest thing in the world for just a little while in one or two places, which is just fitting in. Today we got two topics which are so great, so huge, that if these topics were dogs, they would be Clifford the Big Red Dog. If they were hot dogs, they would be that 2000ft or 600 odd meter long hot dog that the Sara Lee people made for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. You probably remember that. And if they were dog days, they would be July 23rd or so, when the star Sirius rises, most heliocally making it the doggiest dog day of the summer. And if they were doggerels, they would be that limerick about the man who comes from Nantucket. My point being that these topics are huge. They are great. They are probably the best topics we have ever discussed. But first, we have this matter in memoriam. A long time ago years, I heard a lecture at Tel Aviv University that I never really understood, but I never really forgot. It was when I was just starting as a graduate student and it was by a physicist named Eliyahu or Eli Komai, who looked like he was in his 30s, but I learned later was well in his 50s. What did I know? I was 20 something though. Eliao Komaii, for all that he was older, he was Also younger in that he was only about to get his doctorate, or maybe he had just gotten it. The details were never fully clear to me. Anyway. His dissertation was called Physical foundation of Nuclear Mass Difference Equations and Their Extrapolative Applications. And the lecture, which I heard through the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, where I had just started, was about physics, but also not about physics. So it was certainly about physicists. And the lecture had enough equations and graphs and diagrams that I was lost almost when it began. But what the lecture was about, which was not lost on me, was about how a scientific field, even a scientific field as freewheeling and ruggedly irreverent as particle physics, it can develop the certain orthodoxy without the scientists even noticing. And once an orthodoxy had developed new theories that don't fit in with it, well, often enough they just seem wrong or unsophisticated or stupid. All of which was Aleph bet for historians and philosophers of science, or really anyone who had ever read Tom Kuhn's staggering the first time you read it, best selling academic book of all time, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But what Eli Komai brought to the matter was the fact that he was a new PhD or maybe an almost new PhD, and he had a particle physics theory of his own that did not fit well with the orthodoxies of most of the particle physicists who had just given or about to give him that PhD. And he had lots of criticisms of the orthodox views, what he called in the lecture the Standard Model, which he showed in equations on a whiteboard in Those days, before PowerPoint made the whiteboard the buggy whip of the seminar room. Now Eliahu Komai was finding his work was not getting a hearing by the lions of his field, who, he said, looked blankly at him when he presented to them, for instance, what he called simple proofs of contradictions in quantum electrodynamics, qed. Which contradictions, in light of the fact that QED is the jewel of the standard model of physics, disprove the entire standard model, which Eliahu Komai said ought to keep the professors up at night. But as he later wrote in something he called the moral of a short story, end quote. The short story being how, quote, unfortunately, the physical establishment completely ignores the inherent contradictions of its theories, end quote. A state of affairs about which Elie Komai wrote, quote, I am still waiting for someone who really cares, question mark, end quote. The beseeching quality of the question mark in that essay I now find a little haunting and very sad. Ofer Komai, one of Eli Komai's four sons. There is also Oded Dror and Omri wrote a book in Hebrew and English. In Hebrew it is called Astonishing, Brilliant, Preposterous, the Strange Story of the Most Precise Model in History. And in English it is called More on the Nosedly Science or Fiction, the Phony side of Particle Physics. The scientific advisor for the book is Eliahu Komai, and he is frequently the subject of the book, and when he is not, his spirit still hovers over every sentence. Ofer Komai is a mathematician who was three times over the span of just under 20 years, from 1980 to 1999, from when he was 22 to when he was 41, champion of the World Chess Solving Championship, in which entrants from around the world compete to solve chess problems. If you look at the list of champions over the last 45 years, it mostly reads Soviet Union. Soviet Union Soviet Union, Poland, Soviet Union Poland, Russia, Russia, Russia, Poland, Poland, Poland, though Great Britain has won three times, and Finland too, and Israel three times. All three times in the event being Ofer Komai, who also has on his CV a gold medal at the Israeli Youth Olympiad in Mathematics from back in the day. At the heart of the book is what Ofer Komai described as, quote, the vitriolic campaign of delegitimization against any scientist who dares to question or cast doubt on existing theories. I would like to apologize if from time to time I was unable to help myself from hurling the occasional sarcastic remark at those who partake in that campaign. The book is a broadside against groupthink and particle physics, carried out through anecdotes like this one, for instance, told in chapter 43 of the book, which is entitled the Ivory Tower. A physicist who was formerly the head of the particle physics department at Tel Aviv University received 10 lines of text showing a theoretical mistake in one of the premises on which the Higgs boson equation, among others, is founded. Just 10 lines. What can be easier than refuting an argument that spans less than a page if the Standard Model is indeed so devoid of contradictions? Several days later, the refutation was finally given by the esteemed professor. If what I read here is true, then everybody is wrong, and the chances that everybody is wrong are one in a million. But the book is something else as well. It is a hundreds of pages long love poem by a son for a father, tens of thousands of words of a boy defending the honor of a man, his father, who was 82 years old when the book was published in English 11 years ago, and who was still then publishing articles and letters in some of the best journals in physics, like the Physical Review ABC. Though to be honest, by then most of Eliyahu Komai's publications when he was in his 80s found their way into an open access journal called Progress in Physics that says on its masthead quote, owing to furtive jealousy and vested interest, Modern science abhors open discussion and willfully banishes those scientists who question the orthodox views. Very often, scientists of outstanding ability who point out deficiencies in current theories or interpretation of data are labeled as crackpots so that their views can be conveniently ignored. Speaking of his father after Eliyahu Komai died to Ofer Aderet, who does the obituaries for Haaretz, Ofer Komai said his discovery explains one of the fundamental forces in nature, the strong force, and the explanation it gives is essentially different from the explanations given by the Standard Theory. His model is astonishingly simple and known experimental findings are naturally explained by it without fancy manipulations. Despite this, and though it has never been contradicted or disproven, Mayaba's theories were never given serious discussion. There is a webpage hosted by Tel Aviv university called Eliahu Komai's site that looks like it was designed in 1994. Dozens of big, bold, bright blue and red headings that say things like for reading a refutation of Majorana neutrino theory, click here. Or for reading a discussion of erroneous elements of the gauge concept in qed, please click here. Or A short introduction to a present QED contradiction. For details, click here. Or Two simple arguments proving that the electroweak theory violates relativistic covariance. For the proof, click here and here Or A presentation of new errors of the Standard Model. And it goes on and on like that. Clicking on a link that reads who am I? One finds a text that says, among other things, during a very long period of my life, I was sure that physicists try to do good work, that they correct errors which may be found in their work, and that they objectively examine new ideas, and that they regard people who think differently as colleagues and even as friends. I'm quite sure that the man in the street shares this opinion. Unfortunately, I now think that the practice of the present particle physics community is different. Standard Model supporters who act as referees reject every paper that dares cast doubt on the correctness of any Standard Model element. Click on the link that says contact Me, though. And it takes you to Eliau Komai's Tel Aviv University email address, which he kept until the day he died, and we see this week, even after that. Physics was an important part of Eliyahu Komai's life, but it was only one part of his life. Eliahu Komai was born in tel Aviv in 1932. His folks had come here not long before from Latvia. Eliyahu Komai was named after his grandfather, Rabbi Eliyahu Baruch Kamai, who became famous, renowned and revered, really, first as the Rabbi of Karolitz and then in Minsk, where he served as the head of the Mere yeshiva. The writer Eliezer Steinman, himself, the son of a famous rabbi and a communist writer and poet who founded an important poetry journal with Avram Shlonsky in Tel Aviv. He told in his book Tsin tzinet Haman, the Jar of Manna, a book of stories about great rabbis, the story of how Rav Eliyahu Baruch Kamai got his first big appointment as Chief Rabbi of Karlitz. The people of that city had turned to Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, the event my own great uncle, three times removed, who recommended to them the young scholar. Brilliant and sharp, he could slice a tamuric sugiya as if with a scalp. But when the delegation of the town elders came to meet the candidate, they saw a slender young man without the trappings of dignity, dressed in worn clothes, standing by the bookcase and perusing a sacred book. They asked him, where is Rabbi Yosef Dov? He answered, the rabbi will be here soon. The Karlat's elders sat and waited for the Rabbi of Brisk and paid no regard whatsoever to the young fellow standing there. By his short stature, his appearance and his attire, he looked to them like a poor yeshiva student or a beggar who lingered at the rabbi's table. And you've probably heard enough stories of this sort to know that when Rav Seloveitchik arrived, the elders of Karolitz asked him to introduce them to the young rabbi he had recommended so highly. And when he did, they could not hide their disappointment at how simple the young man looked, how thin, how ragged, how undignified. Rav Soloveitchik, in response, sent them to the marketplace, telling them to look for the head butcher. He has a robust body, a man of form in every respect. You will have satisfaction looking at a man like him. End quote. The elders of Karolitz, chastened, hired Rav Eliyahu Baruch Kamai when he moved to take the position as the head of the Mir Yeshiva, that institution was not yet known as it was, would come to be known as a place unsympathetic to Pilpul, pilpul being a style of Talmudic learning that scours for apparent contradictions in texts and slices them and dices them with the aim of producing greater clarity. Raveliyau Baruch Kamay. He believed in pilpul, though not the gag al gag pilpul, roof upon roof, pilpul meaning clever but ungrounded, unstable, that it got ahold of young scholars in Poland. But still he held that a text must be interrogated, dissected with clarity again as if with a scalpel. Rav Kamay agreeing in the event with his illustrious older contemporary, Rav Yisraelanter, who wrote that pilpul is a great and powerful foundation for seeking truth, and without it, almost Torah will not endure. End quote. When Rav Eliahu Baruch Kamay died in October 1917, a Hebrew paper printed in New York called Haivri published a long notice under the headline the Passing of a Great man, describing how he was one of the few who remained to quote all his soul, his being, to Torah learning and to innovations. End quote. Rav Eliyahu Baruch Kamai had eight children, of whom five perished in the Holocaust. Two moved to North America, one to Canada, the other to Detroit, and one, Yaakov Kamai. Eliyahu Kamai's father moved to Tel Aviv. Eliyahu Komai grew up in Tel Aviv. He went to Max Fine Vocational School school, where he studied to be an electrician. And in the afternoons there was the youth movement, the communist hashomer Hatzair. In 1950, when he was 18, Eliyahu Komayi joined the Gareen, given the task of founding Kibbutz Nachshon in the Ayalon Valley on the way to Jerusalem. And Eliyahu Komai worked there, first as an electrician, then in the bananas and then in the cowshed, which work suited him, though it did not give him the opportunity to move much. So he took to running between milkings twice a day, sometimes more. And in 1952, when he was 20, he signed up for the first ever running of the around the Mount Tavour run, 11 kilometers of up and down, and he came in 12th place, a fine showing that he knew that he could beat, which in time he did just a couple of years later, finishing first. A year after that first run, after the kibbutz movement split into Two Eliau Komai moved to kibbutz Yad Hana, which back then some people called, quote, unquote, the only real communist kibbutz. And it was there that he met Esti, his wife, who had come to the land from Egypt and come to Yad Chana because she too was looking for a place more committed to real communism than the kibbutz that she had first settled on. Yi Ron Ayad Hana. Eliyahu Komai again worked in the cowshed, and in between milkings again he ran. And by the 1957 Maccabiya Games, he became the first Israeli ever to win the 10 10K, setting a national record running barefoot. The kibbutz gave him running shoes to each according to his need, but Eliyahu Komai worried about getting sand in them while he ran. And after that, Eliahu Komai was off, breaking Israeli record after Israeli record in the 10k and the 5k and the marathon, and also competing internationally. A slender young fellow without the trappings of dignity, dressed in worn clothes. But boy, could he run. And he never lost his interest in setting records, as when, for instance, in 1988, now a 56 year old physicist and researcher at Tel Aviv University, he set the record for best time for anyone in the 55 to 60 age grouping. Grand Masters, they are called, running the 42 kilometers and 195 meters in 2 hours, 45 minutes and 33 seconds, a record that stood for 27 years. A few years before that, when he was 50, the papers reported his excellent achievement in the London marathon, finishing in 2 hours and 34 minutes and 1 second, which is an excellent achievement indeed. At the same time he was milking cows, running long distance races barefoot, getting degrees and picking fights in particle physics. Eliao Komai was all along deep into communist politics, appearing on the Communist Party's knesset slates in 1959 and 1961 and 1965 and 1969, he ran for a seat on the board of the Heastad Labor Union, also as a representative of the Communist Party. The papers over the years are filled with petitions he signed because he was by then a famous runner. His name turned up in the headlines, like in a petition he signed in 1972 that was reprinted in the Alhamishmar Socialist newspaper, calling on the army and the government to return confiscated lands to Palestinian farmers on the West Bank. In 1966, he helped organize the Communist student cell at the Hebrew University, and with his comrades he put on a conference calling to democratize higher education, throwing open the gates of the university to Israeli Arabs eager to study. Sometimes Eliyahu Komai's different interests would overlap, as when he was sent to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1957 to represent Israel at the World Festival of Youth and State Students in Moscow, where he listened to jazz, talked about Lenin and Marx, and ran barefoot through Gorky Park. All through his life, Eliahu Komai wrote angry letters to the editor. In October 1953, after Ariel Sharon led a retribution operation on the west bank village of Qibya, then under Jordanian control, killing dozens of people, including kids and women. This following a Fedayeen attack, killing four a woman and three of her children in Yehud, Eliahu Koma I wrote to the leftist tabloid Haolam Hazeh, attacking its editor Ori Avneri, for not being critical enough of what the IDF had done and for ignoring the better condemnation. The communist paper Matz Pen had written. The mass murder carried out yesterday by armed Israelis in the Arab village of Qibya, across in Jordan, is a terrifying criminal act which must be condemned with our firmest condemnation. Only irresponsible people without conscience could decide to carry out acts of murder in cold blood of women, children and old people in their sleep. In 1968, though, Eliao Komai wrote a very long, very angry letter to Matz Penh, the Communist Party newspaper, in response to a statement the paper had published about the Six Day War and the occupation of the west bank, which Matz Pen's statement had said, quote, it is the right and the duty of every conquered and oppressed people to resist and to struggle for its freedom. The proper and necessary methods, paths and means for this struggle are for the conquered and oppressed people alone to determine. And it would be sheer hypocrisy for outsiders, especially if they belong to the oppressing nation, to preach morality to it and say, do this and do not do that, end quote. To which Eliyahu Komai, outraged that his comrades had endorsed Palestinian terror in the service of Palestinian nationalism, wrote, it is a perfect match. The people of Matzpan, following in the footsteps of Balaam, the false prophet in the Bible, saying, a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations. After that, Ali Au Komai wrote a learned 2000 words parsing Marx and Lenin and Rosa Luxembourg, writing, among many other things, quote, mazpan has reached this point by violating a basic principle of the Marxist Leninist approach to the national question. The working class must not make a fetish of the national question. One might dare to say that this principle is almost the whole doctrine of communism in a single phrase. In response to all of which, the editors of the Matzpan newspaper replied with their own 2,000 words divided into 10 sections, the first of which starts Kumayi's reliance on Marx and Rosa Luxembourg, and all the more so on Lenin, is fundamentally baseless. In the examples he cites, the issue is the adoption of a position with respect to the political demands of one or another national movement. Recognition of the right of an occupied people does not mean supporting every national movement that arises within that occupied people, nor every demand such a movement may raise. And this is precisely the view expressed in our statement. End quote. The editor's rebuttal ends with this the reason that Zionism is worse than other forms of nationalism is twofold. First, Zionism is not merely a nationalist ideology, but a movement of colonization by one people at the expense of another. Second, Zionism was always and remains today, tied by an umbilical cord to imperialism. Kumai is of course free to ignore all of this, but if so, he has no right to wave Marx and Lenin in the air as he does so. End quote Oded Kumai, one of Eliyahu Kumai's boys, lately posted a home video with the title Eliaoo Kumai 1932-2025, which was put together by some of his grandkids who must be handy with imovie or final cut Pro. The headings read Saba does this, Saba does that, and the video shows Eliyahu Kumai crossing finish lines, communing with cows, getting degrees, speaking at lecterns. But mostly it shows him surrounded by family. First Esti, his wife, then their kids, then their kids and their kids. And this movie. It is very beautiful to see a runner at rest, to see a contrarian just happy with a little kid in his lap, to see a lifelong communist happy to enjoy the fat of the land, to see a family growing bigger and more beautiful as the slides go from one to the next, next and it is easy to conclude and to be pretty sure you're right to conclude that when Eli Kumai looked back, if he looked back, what he saw was that his was a life well lived. Esti died five years ago, which means that Eliahu Koma I and she had 70 years together before that, I saw Eliau Komai just once, decades ago. What I know about him, I know from reading about him and from reading what he wrote. And as I read, I could not keep from thinking the too fancy thought about how much Eliau Komai reminds me of his grandfather, the man whose name he carried, Rav Eliyahu Baruch Kamai, the head or dean of the Mir Yeshiva, who did not give a wit about what he wore or how he looked and who believed that a life was meant to find people worthy of arguing with with and then just arguing with them day and night to make them see this or that truth that you have seen and that you know to be true. Often I quote Rav David Hartman, who once said to me that the story of Zionism is like a little kid who says to his parents, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. I am running away from home and you will never see me again. And then slams the door but stays on the wrong side of it inside the house. Just what Rav Eliyahu Baruch Khamai might have thought of his grandson, future Professor Eliyahu Komay, running barefoot through a park in Moscow, some hundreds of kilometers east of Mir, at a festival of communist kids from around the world we cannot know. But I think if the two men met, they would each see himself in the other and they would each find some pleasure and some solace in the fact that that in the terrible and miraculous past century and something in the terrible and miraculous past century and a bit of countless doors slammed and countless houses wrecked and rebuilt, we are still here, most of us still on the inside. May Eliahu Komai's memory be for a blessing today. Two topics for discussion. Our first discussion Thug Life. With apologies to Tupac, Mopreen McAdochees and the rated R. They together made the record, made the band Thug Life and the record as Prime Minister Netanyahu President Buji Herzog, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and many others denounced this past week the swell of Jewish violence in the west bank against Palestinians and also against Israeli Jewish. Jewish protesters who have made their way to the west bank to try to protect Palestinians from Jews doing the violence. Sometimes this thing is called protective presence. And also against IDF soldiers trying to keep the Jews doing the violence from doing their worst. The announcements by the leaders being assigned that though the rock throwings and beatings and arson and mayhem ish aggression are nothing new, they have reached a point where it is hard for anyone to just turn their head and pretend he just doesn't see. As the Nobel Laureate put it. We will try to understand who are these mostly young thugs, mostly religious thugs behind the thuggery and why their pogromory only seems to be Getting worse and discussion 2 BoP till you drop where the P in BoP is capital, making it the acronym for Board of Peace, the colloquy of state leaders headed by Donald Trump who is shepherding peace into Gaza, making this title BOP til you drop. Such a good pun though, for which pun we still apologize to Rick Springfield as on Monday this week the United Nations Security Council voted voted to adopt UNSC resolution S RES 2803 open paren 2025 close paren which made Donald Trump's 20 point plan that ended the fighting in Gaza all nice and official and launched the second phase of the peace process. And we will try to make sense of what the UN endorsed and what it might mean going forward in the short term, the long term and in the in between term. And for our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters in our extra special extra discussion, the link to which you can find in our show Notes on your podcast app or at patreon.com promisepodcast on the world Wide Web, we will talk about the letter that US President Donald Trump sent this past week to President Yitzhak Boujee Herzog, which read in its entirety, quote Dear Mr. President, it is my honor to write to you at this historic time, as we have together just secured peace that has been sought for at least 3,000 years. I hereby thank you and all Israelis again for your gracious and warm hospitality and am addressing a key topic of my speech at the Knesset. As the great State of Israel and the amazing Jewish people move past the terribly difficult times of the past three years, I hereby call on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a formidable and decisive wartime Prime Minister and is now leading Israel into a time of peace which includes my continued work with key Mideast leaders to add many additional countries to the world changing Abraham Accords. Prime Minister Netanyahu has stood tall for Israel in the face of strong adversaries and long odds, and his attention cannot be unnecessarily diverted. While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli justice system and its requirements, I believe that this quote unquote case against Bibi, who has fought alongside me for a long time, including against the very tough adversary of Israel, Iran, is a political unjustified prosecution. Isaac we have established a great relationship, one that I am very thankful for and honored by, and we agreed as soon as I was inaugurated in January that the focus had to be centered on finally bringing the hostages home and getting the peace agreement Done. Now that we have achieved these unprecedented successes and are keeping Hamas in check, it's time to let Bibi unite Israel by pardoning him and ending the lawfare once and for all. Thank you for your attention to this message matter. Sincerely, all caps Donald J. Trump all caps President of the United States of America about which Yowza and about which Alison and I will chat mostly, but not exclusively, about how amazing the Jewish people really are, how we got our own People Policy Institute and by God, what about all those Nobel Prizes? Time permitting, we will also talk about what to make of an American president asking an Israeli president to pardon an Israeli prime Minister. But before we get to any of that, that listen to this. Mashem ratsu, fredom shal shalonu, kali kolai. That song is Ma Avak from the debut record of hip hop singer Shacher Hillel, who did an amazing show at Levantineva last week and whose debut record, Hilchot Milhama, the Rules of War is, I think, the first we've seen that is all and only about life after October 7th. And it is something we will listen to songs from the record over the course of the show. And now it is time for our first discussion. So, Alison, gangs of boys and men with their faces inside covered pelting farmers with rocks, beating up kids, women, anyone setting fires to cars and even a mosque. What is this thing?
