Eliyahu Rips: Difference between revisions

{{Use dmy dates|date=AprilJuly 20202024}}

| caption = Rips in 2017

| birth_place = Latvia[[Riga]], [[Latvian SSR]], [[USSR]]

| death_place = [[Jerusalem]]

Ilya (Eliyahu) Rips grew up in [[Latvia]] (then part of the [[Soviet Union]]). His mother was Jewish and from [[Riga]], the only of nine siblings that survived the war; the others were killed in [[Rumbula massacre|Rumbula]] and other places. His father Aaron was a Jewish mathematician from [[Belarus]]; his first wife, children, and all of his relatives were killed during [[the Holocaust]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://satori.lv/raksts/11284/Lolita_Tomsone/Serkocins_Ripss |author=Lolita Tomsone |title=Sērkociņš Ripss |publisher=Satori |language=lv |date=23 May 2016 |access-date=30 December 2016 |archive-date=31 May 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160531133553/http://satori.lv/raksts/11284/Lolita_Tomsone/Serkocins_Ripss |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Rips was the first high school student from Latvia to participate in the [[International Mathematical Olympiad]]. In January 1969, he learnt from listening to Western radio broadcast — then illegal in the USSR — of the [[self-immolation]] of Czechoslovak student [[Jan Palach]]. On 13 April 1969, Rips, then a graduate student at the [[University of Latvia]], attempted self-immolation in a protest against the [[Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia|Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia]]. After unwrapping a self-made slogan condemning the occupation of Czechoslovakia he lit a candle and set his gasoline-soaked clothes ablaze. A group of bystanders was able to quickly put the fire out, resulting only in burns to Rips' neck and hands. Though injured, he was first taken to the local KGB office and interrogated. He was incarcerated by the Soviet government for two years. After his story spread among Western mathematical circles and a wave of petitions, Rips was freed in 1971. The following year, he was allowed to [[aliyah|immigrate]] to [[Israel]].

In the late 1970s, Rips began looking with the help of a computer for codes in the Torah. In 1994, Rips, together with Doron Witztum and Yoav Rosenberg, published in the journal ''[[Statistical Science]]'' an article, "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis", which claimed the discovery of encoded messages in the [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] text of the [[Book of Genesis]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.nzz.ch/2004/08/18/ft/article9PRR2.html |title=Botschaften des Allmächtigen oder zurechtgeschusterte Daten? |date=2004-08-18 August 2004 |work=[[Neue Zürcher Zeitung]] |access-date=28 February 2012-02-28 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080122041752/http://www.nzz.ch/2004/08/18/ft/article9PRR2.html |archive-date=2008-01-22 January 2008}}</ref> This, in turn, was the inspiration for the 1997 book ''[[The Bible Code]]'' by journalist [[Michael Drosnin]]. While Rips originally claimed{{citation needed|date=October 2019}} that he agreed with Drosnin's findings, in 1997 Rips described Drosnin's book as "on very shaky ground" and "of no value."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1997/06/08/seek-and-ye-shall-find.html |title=Seek And Ye Shall Find |author=Sharon Begley |date=8 June 1997-06-08 |work=[[The Daily Beast]] |access-date=28 February 2012-02-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120508055008/https://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1997/06/08/seek-and-ye-shall-find.html |archive-date=8 May 2012-05-08}}</ref> Since Drosnin's book, [[Bible code]]s have been a subject of controversy, with the claims being criticized by [[Brendan McKay (mathematician)|Brendan McKay]] and others.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://cs.anu.edu.au/people/bdm/dilugim/torah.html |title=Torah Codes |website=cs.anu.edu.au |access-date=2016-07-24 July 2016}}</ref> An early supporter of Rips' theories was [[Robert Aumann]], Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics 2005, who headed a commission overseeing Rips' experiments attempting to prove the existence of a secret code from God in the [[Torah]]. Eventually, Aumann abandoned the idea and withdrew his support from Rips.

''[[The Bible Code]]'' treats the text of the Bible as a [[word search]] puzzle: for example, a word may be spelled diagonally moving in a north west direction, or perhaps left-to-right taking every second letter. The more patterns that are allowed, the more words that can be found. Elementary statistics can be used to estimate the probabilities of finding certain hidden messages. The statistician [[Jeff Rosenthal|Jeffrey S. Rosenthal]] shows in his book ''Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities''<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNX7cRhWVi0 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211221/GNX7cRhWVi0 |archive-date=2021-12-21 December 2021 |url-status=live|title=Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities |website=YouTube |access-date=2016-12-20 December 2016}}{{cbignore}}</ref>{{page needed|date=October 2019}} that "hidden messages" are statistically expected and hence should not be seen as divine messages, much less as predictions of the future. Mathematician [[Brendan McKay (mathematician)|Brendan McKay]] illustrated this point by finding messages in the English text of ''[[Moby Dick]]'' that supposedly "predicted" famous assassinations of the past, such as the [[assassination of John F. Kennedy]] and the [[assassination of Indira Gandhi]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/codes/moby.html |title=Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick! |author=Brendan McKay |date=1997 |access-date=6 October 2019-10-06}}</ref>

The 1997 "[[Ig Nobel Prize]] for Literature" was awarded to Eliyahu Rips, Doron Witztum, Yoav Rosenberg, and [[Michael Drosnin]], for their work on [[Bible codes]].<ref>{{CitationCite web needed|title=The 1997 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony |url=https://improbable.com/ig/miscellaneous/ig-97.html#winners |access-date=January22 July 2024 |website=improbable.com}}</ref>