ANSWERS TO TEST YOUR JEWISH IQTM

1. b. The Hebrew word for life is chai, comprising two letters, chet (=8) and yud (=10). L’chaim means “to life.”

2. c. Stoning, burning, beheading, and strangling are known in the Talmud as the arba misos (four death penalties). With the exception of Reb Shimon, the Talmudic rabbis agreed that this is the order of severity of physical punishment, from most severe to most lenient.

3. d. Born in Córdoba in present-day Spain, Maimonides worked as a rabbi, physician and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt. After he died in Egypt in 1204, his body was carried to Tiberias in the lower Galilee, where his tomb can be visited today.

4. a. A reason given why sanctifying the new moon was the first commandment given to the Jews upon the exodus (Ex. 12:2) is because tracking the months accurately is vital for observing the holidays, like Passover, and for performing other commandments.

5. d. Morocco signed in December 2020, and Sudan signed in January 2021. Oman backed out at the start of the Biden administration, and no other countries have signed in the two years since.

6. d. 500 years. Religious persecution in the 4th Century jeopardized the traditional method of determining new moons by witnesses in Jerusalem each month. So Hillel II, who is regarded as the creator of the modern fixed Jewish calendar, calculated the new moons and holidays with a calendar that was not adjusted to its final form until 922 to 924 C.E.

7. b. The kohen gene, Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), has been passed from Aaron, the first Kohen Gadol (chief priest), father to son, for more than 100 generations. Date calculation based on the variation of the mutations among kohanim today suggests the ancestral founder of this genetic line lived some 3,300 years ago, the approximate time of the exodus from Egypt. The genetic similarity of today’s kohanim has the highest “paternity-certainty” rate ever recorded in population genetics studies.

8. d. Although the Chofetz Chaim never revealed his age, his obituary in The New York Times reported that he died at the age of 105 on September 15, 1933, after living a life of poverty and legendary piety in Radin, Poland. He was spared witnessing the rise of Nazism.

9. c. In the Talmud (Succah 45b), Abaye said, “There are no less than thirty-six righteous people in the world who receive the countenance of the Divine Presence each day. As it is stated: praiseworthy are all who await Him. ‘Him’ has the numerical value of thirty-six.” The Chofetz Chaim was widely thought to be one of the 36.

10. a. As of October 2022, at 8.4 cloud startups per million people, Israel leads the world, helping Israel earn the name, “Startup Nation.” By comparison, the U.S. has 2.5 per million. Israelis are natural entrepreneurs. Most of Israel’s highly-technical workforce learns technology, leadership, and communications skills in the military. 0