We launch our new “Science with a Schmear” speakers' series with a talk by Prof. David Kaiser (MIT) entitled "Einstein's Legacy: Studying Gravity in War and Peace”.  

Prof. Kaiser will be introduced by Rabbi Michelle Fisher, Executive Director of the MIT Hillel.

Free breakfast is included.  Both members and friends of CBE are welcome to attend this event.

The “Science with a Schmear” breakfast is funded by the Scientists in Synagogues program and is co-sponsored by the CBE Brotherhood.

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Abstract:  "Einstein's Legacy: Studying Gravity in War and Peace" , MIT's Dr. David Kaiser

A popular image persists of Albert Einstein as a loner, someone who avoided the hustle and bustle of everyday life in favor of quiet contemplation. Yet Einstein was deeply engaged with politics throughout his life; indeed, he was so active politically that the U.S. government kept him under surveillance for decades, compiling a 2000-page secret file on his political activities. His most enduring scientific legacy, the general theory of relativity -- physicists' reigning explanation for gravity and the basis for nearly all our thinking about the cosmos -- has likewise been cast as an austere temple standing aloof from the all-too-human dramas of political history. But was it so? This lecture examines ways in which research on general relativity was embedded in, and at times engulfed by, the tumult of world politics over the course of the twentieth century.

Free Breakfast & Program/ Zoom Session Timeline

Sign up below. For our planning purposes, we would appreciate all to sign up.  However, we will have extra breakfast items, so join, anyway, if you decide at the last minute.  The program will be held both in person (with free breakfast!) and via Zoom (no breakfast!).

Scientists in Synagogues Speaker Series

CBE was one of 15 synagogues to receive a grant from Scientists in Synagogues for a science-oriented speaker series.  You will find more  information about this grant and about Scientists in Synagogues, click here.

About Professor David Kaiser 

See his full bio at this link:  https://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/

David Kaiser is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also served as inaugural Associate Dean for MIT's new cross-disciplinary program on Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing. He is the author of several award-winning books about modern physics, including How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival and Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, Kaiser has received MIT's highest awards for excellence in teaching. His work has been featured in Science,Nature, the New York Times, and the New Yorker magazine. His group's recent efforts to conduct a "Cosmic Bell" test of quantum entanglement together with Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger were featured in the documentary film Einstein's Quantum Riddle, which premiered on PBS in 2019.

About Rabbi Michelle Fisher

See her full bio at this link: https://hillel.mit.edu/content/rabbi-michelle-fisher

Executive Director, MIT Hillel

Rabbi Fisher is the first alumna rabbi from MIT, and describes her return to MIT in 2009 as "the mother ship calling her home."  Rabbi Fisher earned her undergraduate degree, in chemistry, from Princeton University, and her Masters in Chemistry from MIT. Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, she has served as the Associate Rabbi of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, MD and the Rabbi of Congregation B'nai Shalom in Walnut Creek, CA. She is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, a veteran of the US Naval Chaplain Corps, and a former student at both the Pardes Institute and the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.  She enjoys fantasy and science fiction, cycling (and unicycling), oenology, exploring the nexus of science and religion, and, especially, meeting with students, faculty, and alumni. In 2014, Rabbi Fisher was awarded Hillel International's highest individual award, the Richard M. Joel Exemplar of Excellence Award.