Leo Baeck College

Graph databases play a pivotal role in the FinTech industry. However, existing graph benchmarks fail to capture the unique characteristics of financial datasets and workloads, rendering them inadequate for evaluating graph databases in financial scenarios. This paper presents the LDBC Financial Benchmark (FinBench) Transaction Workload, a novel benchmark that adopts a choke point-driven design methodology, emphasizing performance bottlenecks, and incorporates distinct features such as dataset skewness, edge multiplicity, temporal window filtering, recursive path filtering, read-write query patterns, and truncation on hub vertices. Key contributions include a scalable data generator that synthesizes datasets with financial-specific features, a parameter generator that leverages bucketed data statistics for runtime consistency across queries, and a scalable benchmark driver that biases query execution by time windows. Experimental evaluations on graph databases demonstrate the benchmark's capability to reveal novel choke points and provide insights into system performance in financial scenarios.

Fractures are the most common result of rock brittle failure in the Earth’s crust. Their presence, distribution, orientation, and interconnection are some of the main parameters that control rock’s mechanical characteristics and fluid flow. The arrangement of fractures on outcrop analogues is critical in predicting rock mass integrity and subsurface fluid migration and storage. Here, we present the application of Fracture Analyser, a Python tool, in analysing two field case studies. We performed the analysis remotely from manually interpreted images of a fractured vertical wall of siliciclastic turbidites and a horizontal pavement of karstified limestone. To test our tool, we analysed the two outcrops at different scales: the first case, i.e., the siliciclastic turbidites vertical wall, from images at a ground resolution of about 0.0005 m/pixel; the second case, the karstified limestone pavement, with a ground resolution of about 0.04 m/pixel. To demonstrate the efficiency of Fracture Analyser in objectively and repeatedly quantifying fracture attributes and the fractured state of an outcrop from a given dataset, after the digitalisation of fractures we quantify fracture pattern attributes such as number, length, spatial orientation, spatial position, angle between scanline and fractures, apparent spacing, fracture density (P20), and fracture intensity (P21). The examples presented in this study demonstrate the efficacy of Fracture Analyser in quantifying fracture pattern attributes.

Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear warfare, none is so great as the deadening of our response' (Macy, 2007; p. 92) We are alive at a time of great opportunity, in a world that is burning for transformation.In February 2024, BABCP declared a climate emergency, recognising that planetary health is inextricably linked to human health and wellbeing.As part of a professional collective body, members of BABCP can decide how to be part of a better future.However, before we can determine an appropriate response, we must turn towards the reality of the crises we face today.This special issue orients the reader to the implications planetary crises have for mental health and how we can respond.It explores how developing transdiagnostic approaches can empower people to turn towards the truth and distress of climate change, to find meaning and connection, and support a just transition to a safer world.Many readers will be familiar with current global ecological challenges, but as others may be less well acquainted with the underpinning science of planetary health, a summary is given first.We then discuss how the CBT community can respond.Being a therapist in a time of climate and ecological breakdown poses unique challenges, and we must adapt our tools accordingly.Some other therapeutic modalities, such as psychoanalytic approaches (Weintrobe, 2020) are already engaging with this (Anderson et al., 2024; Haase and Hudson, 2024), and it is time for our CBT communities to do more.We hope this special issue will inspire more engagement, action and advances in theoretical and empirical work.Turning towards the climate and ecological crises is not always easy, so go gently, and remember the community of other practitioners who are reading this alongside you.

Abstract According to the mashal (parable) attributed to Shimʿon ben Yoḥai in Gen. Rab. 22:9, the murder of Abel (Gen 4:8–10) may be likened to a gladiator’s death in the arena. This article argues that the parable assumes the audience’s familiarity with gladiatorial shows, which came to an end in the early fifth century CE. Tracing the transmission of the mashal in Tanḥuma ha-Nidpas (Bereshit 9) and the earliest commentaries on Genesis Rabba, it further argues that the gladiatorial allusion was not understood after the demise of the games, and that the Tanḥuma’s version is a later reformulation. The preservation of the imagery in the earliest extant manuscripts of Genesis Rabba, despite the fact that it was not well-understood when they were produced, demonstrates the conservation of a reference to a late antique public institution in medieval copies and thus contributes to the knowledge of Genesis Rabba’s textual history.

This article traces the interpretation of Genesis 1:26–28 from the approach of contemporary identity studies over the past fifty years (in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of Bible Week). The article commences with a personal anecdote as a means of demonstrating the link between the biblical text and the lived experience of real people in relation to feminist interpretations. The article continues by detailing examples of academic writing from the following contemporary hermeneutical approaches: feminist, Earth-centred/environmental, queer (LGBTQi+), post-colonial, and indigenous.

Jonathan Romain and David Mitchell, Inclusive Judaism: The Changing Face of an Ancient Faith, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2020, $19.95Keith Kahn-Harris, Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism, and the Limits of Diversity, Repeater Books, 2019, £10.99A.C. Jacobs, Nameless Country: Selected Poems, edited by Merle Bachman and Anthony Rudolf, Carcanet Press Ltd, 2018, £12.99

Progressive liturgists seek to introduce gender parity into the first paragraph of the Amidah by adding the names of the Matriarchs immediately after those of the Patriarchs. I argue that this misrepresents their marriages and the role played by the concubines. A more balanced understanding is made possible by distancing the names of the Matriarchs from those of their husbands, and inserting them in the form of a brief piyyut, composed of biblical citations, just before the concluding blessing formula. The proposed insertion reflects the agency displayed by the Matriarchs and alludes obliquely to the concubines. Account is taken of the appropriateness of the piyyut for use in traditional settings.

Since 1970 the Society for Old Testament Study (SOTS) and the Oudtestamentisch Werkegezelschap (OTW) have held joint meetings every three years, alternating locations between the UK and the Netherlands. During the course of these joint meetings, papers on a vast array of topics in the field of biblical studies have been presented, enriched by scholars from both societies interacting and discussing their work together. In the preface to Torah and Tradition, Klaus Spronk reflects on the value of these encounters and details a brief history of the joint meetings. All but one, the 1991 Durham meeting, have had their papers published as a volume by OTS. Torah and Tradition carries on this tradition of publication and does so with the high level of scholarship one associates with both SOTS and OTW. Of the twelve essays in this volume, ten were presented at the sixteenth annual joint meeting itself with two later contributions by Bill Arnold and Klaas Smelik joining to complete the volume. (Two other papers from the conference are published elsewhere.) The topics covered are suitably diverse—a number of chapters are devoted to the prophets including one on Hosea, two on Isaiah, and one on Jeremiah as well as one on Nehemiah; one chapter comparing a report in 2 Chronicles to 2 Kings by way of Psalm 95; one chapter each on topics relating to Leviticus, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; and finally two chapters relating to post-biblical works, including one each on the Septuagint and (largely on) the book of Jubilees. Methodologically most of the chapters include some amount of detailed philological study and close reading of the text. In that sense certainly, Torah and Tradition feels like a very traditional collection of biblical scholarship.