Velvl Greene
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Velvl Greene (July 5, 1928 – November 21, 2011) was a Canadian–American–Israeli scientist and academic. Specializing in
public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...
and
bacteriology Bacteriology is the branch and specialty of biology that studies the morphology, ecology, genetics and biochemistry of bacteria as well as many other aspects related to them. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classificat ...
, he was a professor of public health and microbiology at the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
from 1959 to 1986, teaching over 30,000 students. He developed the first university-level curriculum in
environmental microbiology A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
in response to an outbreak of staph infections at American hospitals in the late 1950s. In 1961 he began working for the
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
Planetary Quarantine Division in an
exobiology Astrobiology, and the related field of exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Astrobiology is the multidisciplinary field that investig ...
program that sought to determine the presence of microbes in outer space. He
immigrated Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
to Israel in 1986, serving as chair of epidemiology and public health and professor emeritus at
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) ( he, אוניברסיטת בן-גוריון בנגב, ''Universitat Ben-Guriyon baNegev'') is a public research university in Beersheba, Israel. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has five campuses: the ...
and director of that school's Lord Jacobovitz Center for Jewish Medical Ethics until 2009. Coming from a secular Zionist background, Greene became a
baal teshuva In Judaism, a ''ba'al teshuvah'' ( he, בעל תשובה; for a woman, , or ; plural, , , 'master of return God_in_Judaism.html"_;"title="o_God_in_Judaism">God)_is_a_Jew_who_adopts_some_form_of_traditional_religious_observance_after_having_previ ...
and
Lubavitcher Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (), is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic grou ...
Hasid Ḥasīd ( he, חסיד, "pious", "saintly", "godly man"; plural "Hasidim") is a Jewish honorific, frequently used as a term of exceptional respect in the Talmudic and early medieval periods. It denotes a person who is scrupulous in his observ ...
in the 1960s. He conducted a three-decade-long correspondence with the
Lubavitcher Rebbe Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (), is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic groups ...
discussing the compatibility between
Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the ...
teachings and scientific knowledge.


Early life and education

Greene was born in
Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...
,
Manitoba , image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg , map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada , Label_map = yes , coordinates = , capital = Winn ...
, Canada, on July 5, 1928. His parents were Samuel and Sarah Greene. He had two older sisters. He was given the Yiddish name Velvl after a grandfather, but was officially registered as William. Raised in a secular Zionist home, he attended the I. L. Peretz Folk School, where classes were conducted in
Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...
. As a member of a socialist Zionist youth group in his teens, he legally changed his given name to his Yiddish name, Velvl, to express solidarity with the Jews in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Influenced by his Zionist upbringing at home and at school, he chose to study agriculture in order to prepare for aliyah (immigration) to Israel. He earned his undergraduate degree at the
University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.bacteriology Bacteriology is the branch and specialty of biology that studies the morphology, ecology, genetics and biochemistry of bacteria as well as many other aspects related to them. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classificat ...
at the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
.


Academic career

In 1956, shortly after earning his PhD and marrying, Greene accepted a position as an assistant professor of bacteriology at the Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette, Louisiana. At the same time, he served as rabbi of that community's 60-member
Reform Reform ( lat, reformo) means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The use of the word in this way emerges in the late 18th century and is believed to originate from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement ...
congregation, though his only qualification was his ability to read Hebrew. In 1957, Louisiana hospitals were hit with a virulent outbreak of staphylococcus that threatened both newborns and surgical patients. Though staph infections had been eradicated through the use of penicillin, the bacteria had become resistant to penicillin. Greene, "the only bacteriologist within a hundred miles", was asked by public health officials to help halt the outbreak. He later said: "I wasn't a physician, but they asked for help so I advocated a return to the old protocols of Semmelweis and
Nightingale The common nightingale, rufous nightingale or simply nightingale (''Luscinia megarhynchos''), is a small passerine bird best known for its powerful and beautiful song. It was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is no ...
: wash your hands, wear gowns, isolate patients. It worked, so we published a paper on how we'd handled the crisis". When the staph outbreak spread northward, the University of Minnesota received a $1 million grant to conduct research on it, and invited Greene to join its faculty as an assistant professor. Greene moved his family back to Minnesota in 1959, and developed the first university-level curriculum in
environmental microbiology A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
. He lectured at the university until 1986, teaching more than 30,000 public health students.


NASA researcher

In 1961 Greene was hired by
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
's Planetary Quarantine Division to head an astrobiology project in conjunction with the search for
life on Mars The possibility of life on Mars is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to the planet's proximity and similarities to Earth. To date, no proof of past or present life has been found on Mars. Cumulative evidence suggests that during the ...
. The space scientists were concerned that "extraterrestrial microbes" might adhere to spacecraft and be transported back to earth. Greene led a research team in
Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
which collected and analyzed aerosol samples from the Earth's stratosphere. He continued working for NASA on the
Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label= Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label ...
and
Viking program The ''Viking'' program consisted of a pair of identical American space probes, ''Viking 1'' and ''Viking 2'', which landed on Mars in 1976. Each spacecraft was composed of two main parts: an orbiter designed to photograph the surface of Mars f ...
s.


Religious observance

Living in Minneapolis, the Greenes enrolled their children in a small Torah day school to ensure they received a Jewish education. Greene was inspired to increase his own Jewish knowledge after agreeing to meet the city's newly-appointed Chabad shaliach (emissary) in 1962. The shaliach suddenly interrupted their conversation to pray the afternoon service, which Greene regarded as an insult. But when the rabbi explained that "What I came for was very, very important, but what I had to do now was even more important", Greene was intrigued. Impressed by the shaliach's sincerity and dedication, he agreed to study with him and slowly took on more religious observance. When Greene began asking questions about how religious Jews reconcile the theory of evolution with the Genesis creation narrative, the shaliach introduced him to the
Lubavitcher Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (), is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic grou ...
Rebbe A Rebbe ( yi, רבי, translit=rebe) or Admor ( he, אדמו״ר) is the spiritual leader in the Hasidic movement, and the personalities of its dynasties.Heilman, Samuel"The Rebbe and the Resurgence of Orthodox Judaism."''Religion and Spiritua ...
, Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Schneerson Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Modern Hebrew: מנחם מענדל שניאורסון; old-fashioned spelling: מנחם מענדל שניאורסאהן; April 5, 1902 OS – June 12, 1994; AM 11 Nissan 5662 – 3 Tammuz 5754), known to man ...
, who had studied science and mathematics at the university level in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
and
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
. Greene began a scientific and personal correspondence with the Rebbe that lasted from 1963 until the Rebbe's death in 1994. The Rebbe expressed interest in seeing all of Greene's scientific papers and would critique them. Eventually the Rebbe clarified all of Greene's doubts about the evolution vs. Creation debate. Greene laid
tefillin Tefillin (; Israeli Hebrew: / ; Ashkenazic pronunciation: ), or phylacteries, are a set of small black leather boxes with leather straps containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah. Tefillin are worn by adult Jews durin ...
for the first time in 1966 after receiving a pair as a gift from the Rebbe. With the encouragement of his wife, who wanted a kosher home, Greene slowly became a kippah-wearing, Shabbat-observant Jew. He later served as an emissary for the Rebbe, smuggling in books and religious objects to Jews in the Soviet Union. His transformation from a secular Jewish professor to a Lubavitcher Hasid became part of Chabad lore. In 2017, the Tzeirei Hashluchim produced an animation of Greene's first meeting with the Chabad shaliach for the purpose of instructing youngsters in ''shlichus'' work.


Move to Israel

Greene taught at
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) ( he, אוניברסיטת בן-גוריון בנגב, ''Universitat Ben-Guriyon baNegev'') is a public research university in Beersheba, Israel. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has five campuses: the ...
on two sabbaticals, in 1977 and 1984. In 1986, he and his wife
immigrated Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
to Israel, where he accepted a professorship in public health and epidemiology at the university and also served as director of the school's new
Jewish medical ethics Jewish medical ethics is a modern scholarly and clinical approach to medical ethics that draws upon Jewish thought and teachings. Pioneered by Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits in the 1950s, Jewish medical ethics centers mainly around an applied ethics draw ...
program. The latter position saw him participate in a 1989 conference organized by bioethicist
Arthur Caplan Arthur L. Caplan (born 1950) is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine and the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics. Caplan has made many contribut ...
, which was the first to discuss the ethics of using data from
Nazi human experimentation Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Chief target po ...
in modern-day scientific research. Greene lectured around the world on the compatibility between Torah teachings and scientific knowledge, and had a morning talk show program on public television. He retired from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2009.


Honors

In 1983 Greene received a Bush Foundation fellowship and was named a Senior Fulbright Lecturer by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars.


Personal life

Greene met his wife, Gail Chesler, a music student at the University of Minnesota, in 1955; they married a year later. The couple had two sons and three daughters. Both their sons became Chabad ''shluchim'' in the United States. Greene died on November 21, 2011, aged 83. His sons edited and published his autobiography, ''Curiosity and the Desire for Truth: The spiritual journey of a NASA scientist'', in 2015.


Selected bibliography


Books

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Chapters

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Papers

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Notes


References


External links


"The Development of Medicine in Nazi Germany – Velvl Greene"
March 25, 1997 video
"One Little Apostrophe" (video)Rabbi Feller's visit to Velvl Greene (animated video)
Tzeirei Hashluchim, 2017

Chabad Lubavitch – Minnesota {{DEFAULTSORT:Greene, Velvl 1928 births 2011 deaths American bacteriologists American microbiologists Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidim Baalei teshuva University of Minnesota faculty University of Minnesota alumni University of Manitoba alumni People from Winnipeg People from Minneapolis Academic staff of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev