Chanoch Neeman Quotes

Gell-Mann and Ne'eman discovered that one such simple Lie group, called "special unitary group of degree 3," or SU(3), was particularly well suited for the "eightfold way"-the family structure the particles were found to obey. The beaty of the SU(3) symmetry was revealed in full glory via its predictive power. Gell-Mann and Ne'eman showed that if the theory were to hold true, a previously unknown tenth member of a particular family of nine particles had to be found. The extensive hunt for the missing particle was conducted in an accelerator experiment in 1964 at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island. Yuval Ne'eman told me some years later that, upon hearing that half of the data had already been scrutinized without discovering the anticipated particle, he was contemplating leaving physics altogether. Symmetry triumphed at the end-the missing particle (called the omega minus) was found, and it had precisely the properties predicted by the theory. ~ Mario Livio

The total number of people who understand relativistic time, even after eighty years since the advent of special relativity, is still much smaller than the number of people who believe in horoscopes. ~ Yuval Ne'eman

The word amen, which found its way from Judaism into Christianity and Islam, crossing cultures and continents, borders and chasms, is in fact an acronym of the Hebrew phrase 'el melech ne'eman.' Spoken in response to a blessing, it means: the words of the blessing are true and may they come to pass…Since that word is so universal, it symbolizes for me, much as literature does, everything that we, all of humanity, have in common despite the differences in our way of thinking, in our faith, and our inner and outer landscapes, the living, quivering hope of every human being for forgiveness, salvation, mercy. And so I think that even the very fact of its existence is comforting, although all our wishes may not come true. ~ Zeruya Shalev

In Biblical times, there were two different kinds of currency. One was shekels, which means weights,. The other coin was a zuz, which comes from the earth's circular movement and had nothing to do with the value of gold or silver. It had its own inherent value to it. The word "amen" was inscribed in the zuz, which is an acronym in Hebrew for the phrase "El Melech Neeman," meaning "the sovereign is trustworthy" and is an organizational copy of the statement "In God We Trust" that is found on our U.S. money. ~ Celso Cukierkorn

In America we've spent over a billion dollars on autism research. What have we got for that? We've not seen anything that's appreciably impacted the quality of life of autistic people, regardless of their place on the spectrum. Quite frankly, we've spent $1bn figuring out how to make mice autistic and we'll spend another $1bn figuring out how to make them not autistic. And that's not what the average person wakes up in the morning aspiring to. They think: am I going to be able to find a job, to communicate, to live independently, either on my own or with support? Those are the real priorities. ~ Ari Ne'eman

Once, [Rabbi Chanoch] Teller was traveling with 16 of his [18] offspring ... while changing planes in Frankfurt, Teller noticed a German woman gaping.
'Are all of these your children?' the woman asked. 'From one wife?'
'Yes, God has blessed me with all these children,' the rabbi replied.
'Haven't you heard about the population problem?'the woman sniffed. 'How many more children do you want to have?'
Rabbi Teller paused and looked the woman in the eye: 'About 6 million,' he said. ~ Lynn Vincent