Baruch Sterman

Baruch Sterman (born 1961) is an American-born Israeli technologist, entrepreneur, and author. He is noted for his work with VOIP and the renewal of the ancient Biblical blue Tekhelet, and holds over 50 patents in Laser Technology, Computer telephony integration and VOIP Security. He is a co-founder of Ptil Tekhelet organization and its current CEO. His book, The Rarest Blue: The Remarkable Story of an Ancient Color Lost to History and Rediscovered (co-authored with Judy Taubes Sterman) won the Jewish Journal Book Prize for 2013.
== Education ==
Sterman was an undergraduate at Yeshiva University and received a master’s degree from Columbia University in Electrical Engineering. He studied quantum optics under Prof. Shaul Yatziv at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received a Ph.D. in Physics for a thesis entitled “Diffusively Cooled RF Excited, Extended Area CO and CO2 Lasers”.
== Career ==
Sterman worked as a programmer in the Satellite Software division of Bell Labs before moving to Israel. As a post-grad, he founded Gal-Or Lasers to commercialize a laser he and Yatziv had designed. In the mid-nineties he returned to computers as VP R&D for deltathree, an early VOIP provider, where he spearheaded the adoption of the nascent Session Initiation Protocol. As opposed to many SIP adherents who believed computer telephony would be a free service (similar to email), Sterman argued that adoption would only come if proper billing could be applied. He helped adapt AAA (Authentication, Authorization, Accounting) to SIP and authored “Digest Authentication in SIP using RADIUS” which eventually became IETF RFC 4590/5090. In 2003, Sterman founded Kayote Networks together with David Schwartz to provide cloud based VOIP routing, the first SAAS implementation of this technology. Later, as Chief Scientist for Vonage, Sterman designed a three-tiered routing architecture that became the core of Vonage’s network using a top layer ENUM-based number by number mapping feeding into a Least-cost routing layer for carrier selection, underpinned by East-West routing along Vonage’s global network to hand-off the call to a carrier in closest proximity to its ultimate destination.
== Tekhelet ==
In 1991, Sterman joined Rabbi Eliyahu Tavger and together with Joel Guberman and Dr. Ari Greenspan, founded the non-profit Ptil Tekhelet organization to produce and promote Tekhelet, the Biblical blue dye worn on the ritual Tallit which had fallen into disuse over a thousand years ago when (presumably during the wars between the Roman Empire and Islamic Empire) the identity of its sea-snail source and the procedures for obtaining the dye were lost and forgotten. Based on new discoveries by Otto Elsner of the Shenkar College of Fibers showing that it was possible to obtain blue (as opposed to purple) from Hexaplex trunculus, Tavger was able to reconstruct the dye method and obtain Tekhelet from the snails, thus paving the way for the renewed ability to perform the Biblical command to “attach a cord of Tekhelet to the fringes [of the tzitzit] at each corner.”Numbers 15:38. Tavger’s main argument in identifying the source of the ancient dye was that not only was it clear that Murex snails were used in antiquity for dyeing, but that they are the only species in the Mediterranean capable of producing a fast and durable blue dye. Sterman extended this argument by pointing out that indigo (the colorant obtained from the snail) is unique as a naturally produced organic molecule capable of dyeing wool with a blue that will not wash out or fade, in complete agreement with the assertion of ancient writers that Tekhelet was identical to plant-based indigo. He further explained that the unique color properties of the indigo molecule are due to the underlying physics of the quantum interactions between light and matter that result in blue, making the occurrence of blue objects in general extremely rare in nature . He also helped developed techniques for dyeing Tekhelet at a large-scale taking into consideration the requirements of Jewish Law as well as industrial efficiency. In addition to authoring The Rarest Blue, he has lectured widely and written extensively on Tekhelet.
== Personal Life ==
In 1986, Sterman married Judy Taubes Sterman and six months later they moved to Israel. They have seven children and live in Efrat, Israel.
Ancient Color Lost to History and Rediscovered, Guilford 2012. |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.21697/ct.2015.85.3.11 |journal=Collectanea Theologica |volume=85 |issue=3 |pages=199–204 |doi=10.21697/ct.2015.85.3.11 |issn=0137-6985}}</ref> and has written on Science and Religion (most notably Judaism and Darwinian Evolution), the thought and work of Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog, as well as various other topics.
Category:1961 births
Category:American people
Category:Entrepreneurship
Category:Yeshiva University alumni