21. Cutting Edge Religion

Mazal tov.

Once again, science is discovering that Jewish observance is good for your health. And the timing couldn’t be more perfect. For just as millions of Jews the world are reading anew about the first infant circumcision in the weekly Torah portion[1], scientists the world over are poring over the latest circumcision research in the November 2006 issue of Pediatrics. That major study proves there’s gain with the pain, because it shows that the procedure cuts STD risk by up to 50%.

Over 500 New Zealand boys were studied over 25 years and compared for the incidence of sexually transmitted infections. The results: Uncircumcised boys have over 2.5 times the risk of infection between the ages of 18 and 25, even after controlling for confounding factors like number of partners and other precautions.[2]

Of course, Jews don’t practice circumcision because it’s healthy, just as they don’t fast on Yom Kippur to cleanse the digestive system. They do it because that’s the sign of the covenant since Abraham. The health benefits are just an added bonus, but those benefits can really add up.

For example, out of 50,000 American cases of penile cancer reported since 1935, only 10 have occurred in circumcised men.[3] That’s a factor of 5,000 to 1 in favor of the practice (in addition to the infinite benefit of having done a mitzvah). Combine all this with a one-tenth incidence of urinary tract infections, plus reduced fungal, bacterial and parasitic infections related to hygiene, and you’ve got one multi-purpose high-potency recipe for wellness.

What’s the lesson from all this? Well, let’s start with what it’s not. Years ago, my wife and I had a Shabbos dinner guest who was the director of the burn unit at a major hospital. She was the one who first told us about one of the most amazing medical wonders associated with the mitzvah of circumcision. She explained how infant surgery can be very risky until about the eighth day at which time the major blood clotting factors are at their highest levels in the life of a person.

She asked, “It’s amazing how advanced those ancient Hebrews were in Biblical times. How did they know to wait until the eighth day to circumcise? How did they know about the peaks in Vitamin K and prothrombin?”

The question surprised me. Of course they didn’t know the likes of biochemistry or haemotology. Why should they? Those things were taken care of by Someone else: The One who designed the mitzvos, designed the body to go with it. As the Torah says, “And you shall live with them”, meaning that the commandments are intended for life, and a healthy life at that.

Now if only someone would come up with some health benefits for such customary delicacies as potato latkes and jelly doughnuts. It seems that the only miracle of oil in those foods is that we survive the holiday fare. But who knows? Maybe the higher cholesterol is offset by the lower blood pressure associated with celebrating one’s faith.

Mazal tov. Mazal tov. Pass the schmaltz herring?

[1] Genesis 21:4
[2] Reuters Nov. 6, 2006
[3] British Medical Journal 313:46

20. Astrology and Judaism

Dear readers, please share your knowledge on this issue! I'll print some of your responses next week. Is there a kosher astrology website out there in the e-universe? How about sending me your best link on the subject? All this will help Henny and the rest of us too.

Hello Dr. Gotfryd -

As a thinking person and Jew I enjoy reading your articles and I like the way you incorporate science and Torah.

I actually have a very strong interest in Astrology. I began reading books on it and really began studying it like one would study any science. I'm not into the finding out the future stuff at all, its more like understanding the different horoscopes and how they make up one's personality. I originally got interested in it to help understand myself better and eventually it helped me understand others as well.

I was wondering if Astrology is something you have studied and what advice you would give to someone who does have an interest in it. I understand very well that it must be taken with a grain of salt, and I don't put people in a box once I know their birthday, because there is so much more to it then just one's sun sign, not to mention one's upbringing, environment, life experiences that all contribute to the makeup of one's personality.

Anyhow, if you can get back to me with some advice on how an observant Jew can or cannot incorporate astrology into Judaism, I would appreciate it. Thank you and all the best.
- Henny

Dear Henny,
Scientists, in general, frown on astrology as ancient mythology or new age fluff with no relevance to any forces in nature that could affect people or anything else. For them, astronomy is a science; astrology is a joke. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the stars have the last laugh on that one.

Astrology, like everything else, has its source in the Torah, as the sages say, “G-d looked into the Torah and created the world.”[1] So to understand the power of the stars properly, we should explore them from the Torah’s perspective. The Hebrew word mazal refers to the unique spiritual forces that influence natural phenomena great and small.

Our Sages teach, "There is no blade of grass in the world below that does not have a spiritual life-force (mazal) above striking it and telling it to grow"[2]. Another definition of mazal is constellation, or more specifically, the spiritual influences associated with the signs of the Zodiac.[3]

The patriarch Abraham was expert in astrology and used it to determine that he was destined to remain childless. G-d, however, had other plans, and blessed him with offspring as numerous as the sand and.. ..stars!. He told him, “Get out of your astrology! There is no astrological power over Israel.”[4]

Thus instead of Abraham conforming to his mazal, G- d made his mazal conform to him. G-d channeled higher energies to him through visiting him on Passover, sending him to the Holy Land, and changing his name. To this day, Judaism recognizes that changes in time, space, and soul affect one’s mazal. Weddings are often set for Tuesday, a day of good mazal. Also, when people move into a new home, the traditional blessing is “when you change your residency, you change your mazal, for good and blessing” To improve their mazal, seriously ill people will add a name.

None of this is superstitious, idolatrous, or occult. All those things are both foolish and forbidden by Torah. What we are doing is acknowledging that spiritual forces are at the beck and call of the Creator just as physical forces are.

My personal view? Once you’ve got G-d, who needs astrology? - AG

[1] Zohar (1:161b)
[2] Genesis Rabba 10:7, Cf. Zohar I:251a, Zohar Chadash 4b
[3] Sefer Yetzirah 5:4
[4] Genesis Rabba 44:12

19. Monkey See

One of the classic arguments against Rabbinic Judaism is that we just don’t have it right, so why pretend we do?

What’s the problem? According to most people, all those myriad details of Orthodox Jewish life could not possibly have been retained correctly over all these years. Cultural transmission of rituals is never exact and over so many generations, the ‘broken-telephone’ effect would have kicked in big time. The presumed result? With even minor variations at each step, today’s Judaism would bear little resemblance to that of our forebears.

Enter Victoria Horner. She has just published research demonstrating that chimpanzees do get the message, with very high fidelity, even down six generations of cultural transmission. She chose two chimps and taught each one a different way of opening a box to gain a food reward. The food, tucked away in a box, could be fetched by either lifting a flap or sliding a door. In a chain of instruction, each chimp taught another chimp his learned method. Then each of those chimps taught another student and so on.

Instead of the expected degradation over time to 50% accuracy, the chimps retained their learned methods with virtually 100% accuracy over 6 generations.

True we’ve had longer to mess up than they had. But it’s only been about 100 generations since Sinai, and we have a few big advantages over our cousins the apes. We’ve documented the procedures, we’re a little smarter, and we refer not only to our immediate forebears but to our entire historical record to maintain accuracy.

Does all this prove we’ve got it right after all these years? No. But if chimps can do it...

New Scientist, Sept. 2, 2006

18. Six Days, Six Thousand Years

Man towards Heaven: “Master of the Universe! is it not true that one of your days is like a thousand years?”
Voice from Above: “That’s right.”
Man: “So wouldn’t one of Your pennies be like a million dollars?”
Voice: “Pretty much.”
Man: “So could I please have a penny?”
Voice: “Sure.. ..tomorrow.”In the Jewish concept of time, patterns of time repeat at different scales. Among these timeless patterns in time, sevens figure prominently. Thus the seventh day is a special day of rest, and similarly, the seventh year is observed by resting from agriculture and allowing fields to lie fallow. So too at the scale of millennia.

The Sages say, “the world is to exist six thousand years: 2000 of chaos, 2000 of Torah, and 2000 of the days of Moshiach.” Following this is the seventh millennium, a time beyond time during which the world will achieve its ultimate perfection and G d will be openly revealed to all.

During the first 2000 years, mankind suffered original sin, murder, robbery, and idolatry. The flood took place in this period, and ethnic conflicts multiplied. during the second 2000 years, the Patriarchs lived, and the exodus and the stand at Sinai took place. The written Torah developed and expanded to include the entire 24 books of the Hebrew Bible. During the third period of 2000 years, the Jews were exiled from their land and dispersed throughout the world. Through their suffering and Divine service over this period, they have spiritually prepared the world for the true and complete redemption by Moshiach.

How can these latter 2000 years be called “the days of Moshiach” if the world is in such a sorry state? The Sages explain that before the third 2000-year period, Moshiach could not have come even if the world would have merited it. However during the third 2000, Moshiach will certainly come, whether or not the world is deserving. if so, why don’t we just sit back and wait because by doing more goodness and kindness during this period we can cause Moshiach and the ultimate redemption to come earlier, even today!

Let’s say that it’s within your grasp to accelerate the redemption by one minute. accelerating the redemption by one minute will relieve over 5 billion people of one minute’s suffering. That’s 10,000 man- years of trouble that you can save the world for every minute you bring the redemption closer! Bringing the redemption before its latest scheduled time is comparable to the Jewish custom of welcoming the Shabbos on Friday afternoon, before the seventh day actually starts.

Each millennium is comparable to one of the days of the week. as the Jewish year at the time of writing is 5759, we are in the latter part of the sixth millennium, comparable to Friday afternoon, when the radiance of the Shabbos starts to shine. This period is called the footsteps of Moshiach, because just as you can hear the approaching footsteps of a person when he is very close but not yet in sight, so too can we notice unmistakable signs that Moshiach is very near.

One of these signs is the modern convergence of science and faith. The Torah, while describing the Noahide Flood, is simultaneously referring to something else entirely: It's posting a prophecy and pegging a date for its fulfillment.

The Zohar, some 1900 years ago, predicts a downpour of higher wisdom and an upwelling of lower wisdom starting around 5600 (1840 CE). The Rebbe explains that the higher wisdom is Chabad Chassidus, and the lower wisdom is science. He shows how both prepare the world for the seventh millenium, the sabbath of creation.

Judaism does not reject scientific discovery. It celebrates it as both a harbinger and essential component of the ultimate revelation of the Creator, the soul, and the significance of human life.

17. Rebooting Cosmology - Part 2

The science of cosmology suffers from one insurmountable problem more than any other: We will never be able to travel back in time to find out what really did happen. So when a cosmological theory does make a testable prediction, scientists grandly celebrate when confirming observations are made. This is exactly what happened in 1965 when Penzias and Wilson discovered a weak field of microwave energy visible in all directions. The find was immediately hailed as the much-sought-after Cosmic Background Radiation, i.e., the faint reverberation of the Big Bang.

But now, after decades of study, cosmologists are not so sure. Astrophysicist Glen Starkman is one of many who have shown that the microwave picture is not as smooth as predicted by theory. Instead it is decidedly uneven and strongly aligned to nearby stars and galaxies. To Starkman, that looks a lot more like a microwave “fog” caused by the scattering of local starlight than a muffled echo from the dawn of time.

At the Crisis in Cosmology Conference, astronomer Tom Van Flandern’s summed things up with his presentation emphasizing red-shift conundrums, entitled The Top 50 Problems with the Big Bang. In conclusion he remarked, “It should be evident to objective minds that nothing about the universe interpreted with the Big Bang theory is necessarily right.” Van Flandern even goes so far as to question basic idea that the universe is expanding, suggesting alternative explanations for the Hubble red-shift.

Cosmology may be in the process of a wholesale paradigm shift. That prospect positively rankles an elder generation of scientists who are now in key policy and funding positions internationally.

Resistance to change, even well-warranted change, among scientists would not surprise students of the history and philosophy of science. Thomas Kuhn, in his modern classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, explains why old ideas die hard even in the light of compelling evidence. “Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.”

Ever since George Gamow popularized the Big Bang theory in the 1950’s, research organized itself around finding confirmation and filling in the details of the theory. What was no longer up for discussion was whether or not the theory itself is correct.

The upshot of the new crisis in cosmology is that the more we know, the more we realize that we don’t know. Humility is inherent to true science. In the words of Nobel physicist, Max Planck, “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” How do we transcend nature to address those big questions on which science is necessarily mute? Who or What created the universe? Is belief in the Creator consistent with modern science? What about a six-day creation? And if the prevailing cosmology is equivalent to myth, on what basis can the Genesis account rejected?

Even anti-Creationist lobbyists like the National Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science are silent on these questions, agreeing that science can neither verify nor refute the claims of believers. Similarly the National Association of Biology Teachers has published their view that “. . .all of science is necessarily silent on religion and neither refutes nor supports the existence of a deity. . .”

Whatever your answers to the big questions, you would not be alone in contemplating them, as evidenced by skyrocketing sales of books bridging religion and science (som 30,000 titles answering to a “science and religion” search on amazon.com). Moreover the vast majority of these titles are not science-versus-religion books but rather reflective of a pervasive trend towards synergizing the spiritual with the scientific.

This spirit of reconciliation is not only evident in popular books and articles but in scholarly venues as well. For instance, relativity guru and Nobel commissioner Moshe Carmeli has published research demonstrating that the age of the universe is a physical constant that hasn’t changed since the first cosmological day. That, says Carmeli, renders the Genesis account scientifically valid.

Ultimate questions need ultimate answers, and those by definition cannot be found within the purview of science. Periodic shakeups, like the current crisis in cosmology, serve a dual purpose: They refresh our awareness that scientific knowledge is always tentative, while impelling us to seek the truth from wherever it may be found.

16. Rebooting Cosmology

For those who trust the Genesis account of creation, the universe was created in 6 days, less than 6,000 years ago. While these time frames sit well with a few billion adherents to various religions, there are others, including most cosmologists, who believe that the universe was created in an inexplicable explosion of primordial plasma, some 10 to 20 billion years ago, and gradually evolved from there.

Science is based on a “bottom-up” approach, constructing theoretical models that are constantly being modified and regularly replaced as observations and analytical methods improve. Religion, on the other hand, is based on a “top-down” disclosure or revelation. While science evolves, revelation doesn’t. It originates from an unchanging, eternal source, the very same source that created the universe in the first place. Not surprisingly, believers in the Bible haven’t changed their tune for thousands of years, while scientific opinion has been more dynamic.

For over half-a-century, the Big Bang has enjoyed most-favored status among the numerous models developed by scientists to describe how today’s cosmos may have come into being. The theory evolved in the process of trying to explain why the wavelengths of light from distant galaxies were longer than expected. Longer wavelengths are at the red end of the visible spectrum, and astronomers coined the term “redshift” to describe the phenomenon. In 1929, American astronomer Edwin Hubble proposed that these “redshifts” could result from the motion of the galaxies receding rapidly away from us. He reasoned that since light is a wave, it could behave like sound which is also a wave.

Sound waves shift to higher or lower frequencies as the sound source moves towards or away from the listener. For example, when a speeding police siren approaches, it sounds higher pitched but immediately after it passes, its pitch sounds much lower. For light, higher frequencies are more bluish and lower ones are reddish. Over the decades, the Hubble redshifts were interpreted as evidence that the universe may be expanding. Extrapolating back over time, scientists calculated that the expansion process began with an explosion of immense force in a tiny space at the beginning of time. Hence the term “Big Bang.”

Now, however, the whole theory is coming under fire from a groundswell of astrophysicists who point to a whole slew of recent (and not so recent) observations that are completely at odds with the theory’s predictions.

In 2004, thirty reputable scientists from ten countries banded together and launched a position paper into the blogosphere which made a big bang of its own, especially when it landed in the pages of New Scientist magazine in May 2004. The group objects to the stranglehold of the Big Bang theory on cosmological research and funding and claims that the Big Bang explanation of the universe is scientifically untenable, patently illogical and without any solid observational support.

The letter blasted the stifling of research challenging the existence of such hypotheticals as “dark matter” and “dark energy.” If these don’t in fact exist, the theory won’t work. And that would leave Big Bang theorists with no way to account for conundrums of their own making: Missing gravity, gross violations of thermodynamics, and galaxies that are younger than the stars within them.

Despite decades of experiments and observations, there is no sign yet of the elusive dark matter and dark energy, believed to be the major components of the cosmos. “What is more,” claim the signatories, “the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation.”

The newly formed Alternative Cosmology Group quickly attracted hundreds of sympathetic researchers to join their ranks. With momentum mounting, the group convened their First International Crisis in Cosmology Conference, held in Moncao, Portugal in June 2005. The American Institute of Physics published informal proceedings in the December 2005 issue of its journal, Progress in Physics. Here are some highlights.

Conferee Dr. Riccardo Scarpa, of Santiago, Chile, used the most sophisticated optical-infrared observatory in the world to demonstrate 100% predictive accuracy of his alternative model of gravitational effects on spinning galaxies. The result: There is no need to invoke Dark Matter. According to Scarpa, “Dark Matter is the craziest idea we’ve ever had in astronomy. It can appear when you need it, do what you like, and be distributed in any way you like. It is the fairy tale of astronomy.”

Russian astronomer Yuriy Baryshev, author of The Discovery of Cosmic Fractals, has identified nested, hierarchical structures at every scale of study, throughout the observable universe. This violates the Cosmological Principle, one of the Big Bang’s central assumptions. According to that principle, large scale observations should be homogeneous, meaning they should look the same for any observer at any place, and this is not the case.
Another conference participant, physicist Mike Disney of Cardiff University, noted that while the Big Bang model contains 14 measured paramaters, it also contains 17 free variables, making it virtually impossible to test, since the variables can easily be moulded to fit any observation.

So where do we go from here?