Neo-Tzig: I believe this article can be especially helpful to you.
The Rebbe is the only one who makes the unequivocal statement that the many assertions in the Tanach regarding the structure of the world have to be taken literally. If the Torah says that the Earth is standing still and the sun is going around it, then it is true, even though any first grader in any school will tell you the opposite. The Rebbe is stressing the point that maybe 100 years ago, in the time of classical science, there were questions, but now, in the era of modern science, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, things have changed completely. This is turn Is an additional proof that we are in Moshiach's era, because even the world, the material world, is ready for Moshiach. Even something which is derived from the material world, which is science, cold and detached science, is also converging back to Torah. The exact opposite of what used to be 100 years ago.
One of the exams is the structure of the world. In 1973-74 when I had just come out of Russia, Dr. Tzvi Feier, who used to be the secretary of the Organization of American Orthodox Jewish Scientists, a physicist himself, was the publisher of their magazine, Intercom. He wrote a letter to the Rebbe, asking many questions with respect to the reconciliation of Torah and Science. He got a very detailed answer, and two or three days later the Rebbe wrote him another additional letter. Tzvi was very pleased, and he gave me the Rebbe's answers to read. He asked the Rebbe for permission to publish this in Intercom, which the Rebbe gave. Tzvi published it. The entire paragraph, that there was no scientific problem with the earth standing still, was not in the printed version. I called him up and asked him. He told me he was very uncomfortable including it. He said, "I think I did a good service to the Rebbe not to publish it." I said, "Tzvi, you shouldn't have done that. The Rebbe gave you permission to publish it. The Rebbe put it in the letter for the purpose that everyone should read it!" "Yes, but you know, that would cause all kinds of unpleasant comments, and I appreciate the Rebbe too much to involve him in this." "Don't you think the Rebbe knows better? How do you dare to interfere?"
We made some seminars in Crown Heights for people whose education was in physics. Some of them could learn [Torah, including chasidus] well also. Each session was a few hours. We were digging and digging, and we couldn't find where is the real proof. At Yechidus I told the Rebbe we had difficulties. He said, "You are going too far and too deep. It is on the surface. Look on the surface of Einstein's Theory of Relativity." Still we couldn't understand. A few days later we found in Barnes and Noble's bookstore, a book first published in 1926 by one of Einstein's closest disciples, Hans Reichenbach. This was the English translation. The title was "The Philosophy of Time and Space." He analyzes there, on a very popular level, the whole question, and shows that the heliocentric and geocentric hypotheses are equally acceptable, and that as long as Einstein's theory is accepted, science will never be able to decide between them. If both versions are acceptable, and Chumash, Gemorah, and Rambam choose one of them, why jump to the other?
Let me explain a little more. According to Einstein's theory, there is no absolute space and no absolute movement. All science can do is establish the relative velocity between two bodies. It can never say which one is moving and which one is standing still. It can never say which is on the center and which is on the periphery. That is not in the details. That is the basic concept on which the Torah is built. When we made ourselves crazy analyzing equations and more equations, it didn't help, because we went too deep. The whole discussion of evolution, Darwin, the Rebbe shows the weakness of extrapolation, that it is not really science, just speculation which can produce any results one wants.
(from an interview with Chaim Dalfin in "Encounters with the Rebbe", posted on 613.ORG)
33 comments:
Why did you do this HT?
Don't you know that scientists are the purest, most honest, unbiased individuals ever to walk the earth? they can't possibly have an agenda when it comes to science vs. creation etc.!
H,
I'm curious as to why you thought this was especially helpful to me?
But I am not looking to get into a scientific debate - I had to cheat on my bio & chem regents to get my diploma, so - (interesting as it can be, and I did become more intereted in the field as I go older) science isn't my field of expertise by any streach of the imagination.
I do know that the scientific issues that the Rebbe addressed (and I'm not really sure why he addressed them alltogether, nor do I know why he addressed them the way he did) do not necessarily shtim with currently accepted views of physics - which is obviously not to say that the scientists of the day are necessarily correct.
What I am saying is, that the Torah perspective, as Chazal and later gedolei Torah (the Rebbe included) explain it may very well not shtim. And, I said, it's time to get over it...
But thanks for the post, it was intersting to read :-)
As long as Chazal and the Rebbe shtim I could care less about Weinstein, uh uh I mean Einstein.
NT
I'm surprised at your question, although maybe I shouldn't be anymore.....
wasn't the Rebbe's idea that all Jews should see that they're connected to the Torah relevant to students of science, that they too should see it that way?
Neo-Tzig: I too got C's and D's in science and also found myself cheating at times on these subjects so I really related to your comment.
My advisors tell me that the Rebbe once said that the dinosaur bones that were uncovered by scientists were not truly bones but something else to make them believe that they were. Have you heard of this?
Also, what are your thoughts on it?
JJ,
Neither you or I have any way of knowing the Rebbe's true intentions. I belive - and I can be completely wrong here - that the Rebbe's positions on science were meant as a way to help bring the "Shtetl Yiddishkeit" and package it for the modern man. Honestly, I dont think that the Rebbe's arguments were ends in and of themselves - they were a means to an end: bringing Chassidishe values to the modern Jew.
Also, the Rebbe's approach gave people who were interested in science a way to deal with issues - unfortunately, as in all cases like this - comments made at a specific time and place remain only applicable within their own context, and often cannot be applied in later places and times (once science has moved on) - which is the main reason i don't lik etaking the approach of reconciling science & Chazal...
Mr. President,
I have heard similar things - but I dont think that the Rebbe meant this was a definitive statement (see my comment to JJ). I think the Rebbe was just mentioning a possibility (I personally think these bones were pre-mabul animals).
Anon,
Now you see why I take the position I do?
Have you heard that theory about pre-mabul animals from any other people as well?
Anonymous said...
Usually not even worth the comment, but it's uniform linear motion, with zero acceleration, which is indistiguishable from rest, and thus relative, not uniform angular motion, which is constantly accelerated and thus one can distinguish the orbitor from the orbited. It's intellectual dishonesty concerning Torah and science.
Science is manifestly not converging towards Torah. Grand unification theories, the Rebbe's hope for a fundamental science pointing to the unity of God, are a pipe dream. See the latest from Lee Smolin and Peter Woit. Protein analyis, gene sequencing, fossil discoveries, continental drift and the detailing of ancient weather pattern converge toward the same billions of years of natural history.
There's only so much that I can take, so I edited your statement, just the personal, degarding remarks, not the "facts" - HT
I'm surprised that any discussion of science and halocho could take place without reference to the one man who was equally a giant in both disciplines, Harav Hatzaddik R' YAL Shneerson.
Surely his profound writings contain all the answers?
Snag
don't go there, pal. There's more shmootz and dirt (is that redundant?) on you guys.
Like, let's see, Reb Lazer Gordon's non-frum pharmacist daughter who lived in London and was the reason RLG went to London in the first place where he died "prematurely"?
Don't make me do this, I do have respect for people of another generation who were good Jews. Whereas yourself.....
Mr President,
Yes, I think I saw it in the Malbim, and some other miforshim that i don't rememeber off hand.
Can somebody tell me, anonymous perhaps, why I need believe Smolin and Woit and not the Rebbe?
JJ,
Who said that? I never said that you shouldn't believe in the Rebbe's position, go right ahead - all I said is that we should realize that science and the Rebbe won't always agree, and I don't even know if the Rebbe would always agree with past statements(since I still am not convinced that the Rebbe was taking his position for scientific reasons). Actually, there are contraditions in the Rebbe's own scientific remarks from different times and to differet people.
I say, believe in Torah. Don't get stuck in teh never-ending search in the dark, full of moving targets, trying to reconcile it weith science - cause it wont work.
H,
Can you delete useless comments that make reading this site annoying?
The question is: For a person who's a student of science, how can he go ahead and believe the Torah when nobody speaks of the Torah POV as being true, and science keeps on coming out with new theories that make believers in creation seems like ignorant fools!
It seems to me like the Rebbe was the only one who was bothered by this and tried to rectify it.
JJ,
But you realize that its an exersize in futility. Someone would have to be revising their position every few years to maintain the Torah side in the argument! The Rebbe's comments on the matter don't "shlug up" the latest ideas of the sceintific community, so what now? I say that we need to get past the idea that we need to have the ultimate answer to sceintific thinking at any given time.
My friend the Snag,
I really can't figure out what is so unfulfilling about your life that you spend time here.
I give you a brocha that you find some sipuk hachaim and will no longer feel the need to waste your time spewing empty thoughts to people who dont care about what your saying anyway.
waste of time? WASTE OF TIME?
I am, with great mesiros nefesh, spending valuable hours trying to spend time aong disbelievers, trying to plant a seed of intelligent logic in their heads, that they might one do be brought close to yiddishkeit!
What better to do on an erev shabbos?
I am trying to run a country here and these Snags keep up their nudnik comments!
As you Jews say, "Oy gevalt!"
BP,
Yes, thanks - we agree.
The rebbes point in all the letters ae do not throw out chazal because of a scientific theory there are other options to explain any phenomena that science is trying to explain in a way that contradicts Torah and in particular halacha. Science changes Torah is eternal. The options the rebbe gives in some of the letters is not to say THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED! rather it is not muchrach even for a scientist to reject the torahs view in these instances.
Branover, whose credentials are well established
What has Branover actually done, since he left Russia nearly 35 years ago? Besides raise money and become a Big Name Chabadnik? What has he contributed, as a scientist, to the sum of human knowledge? Who, outside Chabad and its periphery, has even heard of him?
I think he learns in the Mirrer Kolel in Yerushalyim.
minor correction to the beginning of the post.. "The Rebbe is the only one who makes the unequivocal statement that the many assertions in the Tanach regarding the structure of the world have to be taken literally."
I assume there are many other Rabanim that teach similarly, as I know for a fact Rav Nebenzahl, Rav of the old city of Jerusalem says as much.
Yitz
I guess we can chalk that one up to Prof Branover being an overzealous Chossid, eh?
anonymous (Sunday 2:30pm)
who died and made you the authority on which scientist contributed what?
So what has he done, since he left Russia? What are his credentials that are so "well-established"?
Did he earn "advanced degrees" in physics, back in his student days in Russia? I suppose so, or at least I have no reason to doubt it, but so what? Thousands of grad students earn "advanced degrees" every year; that doesn't make them world-renowned scientists. If I asked around my social circle I could probably find a dozen people with degrees in physics, every bit as advanced as Branover's.
So he got a US government research grant! Again, this is nothing special, and does not make him some sort of world-renowned scientist, or give him any special credentials.
But what has he done since he left Russia? Science consists of adding to the sum of human knowledge; what has he added? What has he discovered, what has he developed, what has he published? As far as I can tell, all he has done in his capacity as a scientist is to raise money and travel the Chabad lecture circuit.
Above all, if you want to establish someone as an authority, the most important criterion is that people have heard of him. If they have not heard of him, why should they pay his pronouncements any more attention than they do to mine or yours? So who outside Chabad and its periphery has ever heard of Herman Branover? If you were to take 10,000 physicists, from every university and research facility in the world but who have no connection to Chabad, and ask them who is Herman Branover, how many do you think would recognise the name?
Milhouse:
Here's his "Home page" from BGU in Israel. See if that'll qualify him to REPEAT WHAT THE REBBE TOLD HIM. I think it would, no matter what he's doing now, which is still plenty.
Prof. Branover is now 75 years old, is he allowed to retire from his University work and research by your standards? Is lecturing to be Mekarev Yidden so bad?
Anyone is qualified to repeat what the Rebbe said. So he's a great shliach. But he's presented as a scientific expert with "well-established credentials", an authority whose endorsement lends credibility to the Rebbe's message. And the fact is that he is not that. He is not even moderately famous or influential as a scientist; he made a brief splash in the early 1960s, before he found yiddishkeit and became a refusenik, but he hasn't done anything significant in his field since then. Of course nobody expects him to do so now that he's retired, but what did he do for the past 40 years? He was a shliach, that's what. He taught Torah, he helped yidden, he spread the word; but so have many other shluchim, and his words carry no more weight in the outside world than do theirs.
BTW, his biggest chance to become famous came in 1983. The Likud was in government, but had not yet managed to elect a president. In 1978, Menachem Begin wanted a Sefardi president, so rather than have a contested election he agreed to install Labor politician Navon. Now Navon's term was over, and instead of seeking a second term he decided to return to active politics, so there was a vacancy for president. The Labor Party put up Chaim Herzog, and Yuval Neeman suggested that the Likud put up Branover. But the powers that were in the Likud declined this suggestion, and instead put up some forgettable party member called Perlmutter, expecting that the coalition would vote for him and he would be elected.
But the election for president is a secret ballot, and some religious MKs voted for Herzog, because of their connection to his father and brother z"l. And so Herzog became president, though he was personally very different from his father and brother (R Meir Kahane HYD called him "chometz ben yayin"), and in 1985 he chose Peres to form a government instead of Shamir, and subtly helped create the conditions that eventually led to Oslo. Had Shamir and the Likud agreed to put Branover up for president, chances are that the religious MKs would have voted for him, he would have won, Shamir would have been the senior partner in the coalition coming out of the 1985 election, and perhaps would not eventually have been forced into the Madrid talks.
I see I forgot to put the link to his page at BGU.
See Here
That's a nice story about his almost presidency, Thanks.
The anonymous poster was me. I didn't notice that I wasn't logged in. And by "not even moderately famous" I mean that I doubt anybody in his field, who did not know him personally, would recognise his name. Let alone physicists in any other field, not to mention stam scientists.
Why all this talk if we do not know whether or not Branover's famous? It's silly.
I believe most of the commenters here totally missed the Rebbe's point. The Rebbe is not out here to reconcile Torah with science by showing that modern science may hold a geocentric view, rather the Rebbe is trying to put the whole "science" business into it's right prospective. The Rebbe is saying here that science cannot assert facts, only propose theories. As an *example* the Rebbe brought what science had and has to say about the sun orbiting around the world: in the beginning it was an established "fact" that the sun orbits around the world, then came Galileo and Copernicus and the "facts" were reversed, along came Albert Einstein and asserts that the facts can never be established! Whether modern science holds a geocentric view or a heliocentric one is irrelevant to the Rebbe's point. For the same price, the Rebbe could've made his point by pointing at two theories which are *both* incoherent with Torah truths, namely: the Lamarckian theory of evolution vs. the Darwinian one. For years, the Lamarckism was taught as absolute truth, along came Darwinisms turn to be the truth, and as of today - surprise surprise- many modern epigenetics hold of a certain form of "neo-Lamarckism". The point is, Torah can offer absolute unchanging thruths while science cannot (even in the areas it supposedly covers).
Lchaim
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