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Dr. Eliyahu Rips, one of the prominent names in Torah Codes research, at his home in the Ramot district of Jerusalem. I visited with him on a rainy February morning. After finding his front door (with some difficulty) among the blocks of stone houses that stair-stepped down the side of a hill, we sat at a table cluttered with books and scrolls, in a room where the ceiling seemed to be held up by stacks of paper and books. His wife made us steaming mugs of black coffee. Professor Rips unrolled a facsimile scroll of the Book of Numbers, explaining some of his recent Codes studies from the Torah. Eliyahu Rips is one of the leading mathematicians in the world, specializing in the obscure micro-field of group theory, and devoting much of his time to researching codes found in the Torah. He is the co-author of the earth-shaking paper on the Codes published in Statistical Science in 1994, and serves on the faculty of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He and his wife immigrated to Israel from their native Lithuania. Once a staunch atheist, his studies of the Torah Codes have led him to an orthodox belief. About the photograph: Before parting we stood by a pebbled glass door that led out onto a small garden. The winter light was diffused. I shot this single photograph that thankfully captured (for me) some of the depth and kindness of this great Jewish thinker and personality.
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