Shabbat Service and Speaker : Soaring, Nuclear Weapons, and Judaism

The speaker is a glider pilot and a Jew who has a deep concern about nuclear weapons. Other than that, soaring, nuclear weapons, and Judaism all play a major role in his life; what relationship could three such disparate topics have in common? A glider pilot who executes a 99.9% safe maneuver might sound prudent until that statistic is seen as having a 1-in-1000 fatality rate. Worse, if the maneuver is executed 100 times, the fatality rate becomes approximately 10%. With nuclear weapons, being 99.9% safe is even less acceptable.

Applying concepts from risk analysis, Prof. Hellman explores not only the danger posed by nuclear weapons, but also how Tikkun Olam is needed to reduce the risk to an acceptable level. The strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) also raises a question with special significance for Jews: Can we reject genocide as inexcusable, but embrace nuclear weapons as necessary for our security?

Speaker: Professor Martin Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Professor Hellman is a graduate of N.Y.U with a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford. He has served on the faculties of M.I.T. and Stanford, where he is now Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering. He is the author of over seventy technical papers, and holds six U.S. patents.

Professor Hellman is best known for his invention -- with colleague Whitfield Diffie -- of public key cryptography. This technology forms the basis for secure transactions on the Internet. He has also been involved with a number of hi-tech start-up, serving as founder, advisor and investor.

Professor Hellman is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering, as well as a recipient of the Marconi International Fellow Award, the I.E.E.E. Centennial Medal - and at least thirty other prestigious awards.

Currently, his primary interest is in halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and he is the founder of Defusing the Nuclear Threat.

Free and open to the public