“You Jews are even more stupid than I thought! Now look at me, such as you see me here, if I were as stupid as you, if I too listened to voices, do you know where I would be at this very minute? In Cracow! Yes, you heard me correctly. Imagine that for weeks and weeks, there was that voice at night telling me: ‘There is a treasure waiting for you at the house of a Cracow Jew named Eizik, son of Yekel! Yes, under the stove!’

Of course, Eizik returns to Cracow and finds the treasure beneath his own stove, buried there all along. The story’s message, that there is no need to search for truth and meaning in far off, distant places, that, to paraphrase Dorothy at the end of “The Wizard of Oz,” if you’re looking for your heart’s desire you never have to seek any further than your own back yard, is one that resonated deeply with the Hasidim of Pshiskhe.

I recently had the privilege of discussing the world of Hasidism in general, and particularly the school of Pshiskhe, with Prof. Wiesel when I presented him with a tallit tied with strings of authentic biblical blue tekhelet. The secret of that blue color, lost to the world for more than 1,300 years and only recently rediscovered, is a topic that I have been researching for more than 20 years. My wife and I wrote a book on the subject, “The Rarest Blue,” which I also presented to Prof. Wiesel.

One of the great masters to emerge from the Pshiskhe line was Gershon Henokh Leiner, the Rebbe of Radzyn, who devoted his life to the rediscovery of the lost tekhelet. Gershon Henokh’s grandfather, Mordechai Yosef of Ishbitz, famously broke away from his Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, perhaps precipitating the Kotzker Rebbe’s breakdown and 20-year seclusion. These personalities and their stories are fascinating; Professor Wiesel wrote about them, and in one chapter of our book we briefly traced the history of Radzyn over the five generations from Mordechai Yosef through the last of the descendants, Reb Shloimele, who was murdered by the Nazis.

Those of the Pshiskhe School were revolutionaries, challenging the regnant Hasidic belief that only the great and holy Rebbe could bring salvation. They maintained that while a Rebbe can offer important guidance and direction, true spiritual growth does not come from anywhere else but only from deep down inside yourself, from “your own back yard.” This was a biting critique of the establishment, of the founders of the great dynasties of Hasidic culture.

I remarked to Prof. Wiesel that those “rebels” were exceptional people. He looked toward me, but his thoughts were in another place and another time. “Yes, they all were great men. The rebels were remarkable — as were the Rebbes of the establishment.”

The notion that truth, significance, purpose and redemption were to be found and achieved only by profound heart searching was the hallmark ideology of Pshiskhe. But each of the Rebbes of that school of thought took this core principle to radically divergent places. Menachem Mendel of Kotzk believed in rigorously disciplined introspection; he was a purist, scathing, harsh, cynical and relentless in his demand for self-analysis and absolute rejection of affectation and posturing. When the Hasidim in Kotzk prayed, they did not move. Any external sign of piety was deemed pretentious, the slightest outwardly directed gesture, deplorable. All efforts toward spirituality were directed inwards. The story is told of the great student of Kotzk, the Hidushei HaRim, who after one prayer session — though someone observing from the side would not even have noticed that he was praying — was bathed in sweat and had actually cracked two of his teeth.

The Rebbes of Ishbitz/Radzyn — Mordechai Yosef, the Bais Yaakov, Reb Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin, Gershon Henokh — cast the ideas of Pshiskhe in a different light. The notion that redemption is to be found only within was seen not as constricting but as liberating, invigorating, a testament to the greatness and importance of each individual. Every person is unique, with his own talents and experiences, and each has a specific part to play, large or small, in God’s great plan. At every turn of events, at every crossroad, man is offered a singular opportunity to follow his path towards his destiny. In order to fulfill that destiny, he must look deep inside to understand his true self, to try to discover his role in the world, and to focus all of his actions on that mission.

Prof. Wiesel looked at me, then at the prayer shawl, and then back at me with penetrating eyes: “And so, Reb Baruch, is this your mission?” I hesitated, never having actually framed such thoughts along those lines. In that brief, time-contracted moment, I reviewed my life, my accomplishments, my aspirations, my priorities. “Yes,” I replied, surprising myself somewhat, “I believe that it is.” Prof. Wiesel smiled gently and returned his gaze downwards, contemplating the sky blue of the tekhelet strings wrapped around his fingers.

In the book that I presented to him, I inscribed the famous passage from the Shema prayer referring to the thread of tekhelet, “And you shall see it, and remember all of God’s commandments, and you shall do them.” To see — to bear witness; to remember — to never allow anyone to forget; to act — to work tirelessly in the service of mankind. It struck me as I stood there that perhaps this was Elie Wiesel’s mission.

There are those who maintain that the dietary laws of the Bible are essentially health related, a throwback to the days when eating pig meat could lead to trichinosis or some such disease. I think that approach misses a crucial central point, namely that kosher has little to do with the quality of particular foods per se. This fact highlights the difference between keeping kosher and other types of dietary restrictions that people adopt. Vegetarians and vegans, for example, believe that it is immoral to eat meat, as well as unhealthy. Health food devotees are convinced that fried foods, unsaturated fats, or processed sugar are bad for you, and they will scrupulously avoid those in their diet. But kosher food is no better or worse than non-kosher food; both may be delicious, nutritious and perfectly suitable according to the most rigorous of utilitarian ethics. For meat eaters there is nothing inherently more evil in horsemeat than in beef – Ikea diners in London take note. When it comes to kosher, however, the restriction applies to the person, not to the food. The dietary laws of Passover prove this point most emphatically. During that holiday, bread suddenly becomes non-kosher, though all year long it is the most basic of foods.

A different approach to understanding kosher laws focuses on the notion of self-discipline. We are urged to restrict what we eat in order to suppress gluttony and tendencies to self-indulgence and hedonism. One trip to a good kosher deli and a casual census of the corpulent clientele should be enough to challenge this line of reasoning.

Many, of course, maintain a vestigial connection to kosher observance; they refrain from pork or lobster, and eat only kosher at home but not outside. Others don’t buy into the whole idea of kosher and feel that it does not speak to them; they simply pay no special attention to the kosher status of any food. These people are basically just a-kosher, that is, they don’t keep kosher. But there is another small class of individuals that can be described not just as non-kosher but almost as anti-kosher, as resolutely avoiding any conventional food restrictions. Such people have undertaken the daunting task of eating everything, and this they do as a matter of principle. It has nothing to do with gluttony or lack of willpower. On the contrary, sometimes the utmost fortitude is required in order to quiet one’s queasiness and chomp on some pretty intimidating chow.

Take for example the culinary critic Jeffrey Steingarten, author of The Man Who Ate Everything. In order to truly understand food in all its varied forms and disparate cultural contexts, he set out to taste “everything that anyone anywhere has ever called ‘dinner’.” This was not a lapse into the self-indulgence of a glutton or gourmet, it was a gastronomic mission. But without a doubt, the high priest of food aficionados and devotees of the unusual was the 19^th century paleontologist, The Very Reverend Dr. William Buckland. One of his goals in life was to experience the taste of everything, and to eat a specimen of every living creature. Once, the story is told, when he was shown the miraculous “martyr’s blood” on the floor of an Italian cathedral, he got down on his knees and tasted it, concluding with certainty that it was bat urine. Extreme eccentricity maybe, but such a lofty pursuit is hard to categorize as sin.

For over two thousand years, another idea relating to kosher has been espoused in countless sermons, namely, that what is truly important is what comes out of one’s mouth, not what goes into it. I certainly agree with this statement. Often, however, this credo is intended to minimize the importance of keeping kosher. But watching what goes into one’s mouth and what comes out of it are not mutually exclusive; the two in fact can reinforce each other. Keeping kosher and refraining from eating this or that tasty morsel can serve as an effective cue for guarding one’s tongue and watching one’s general behavior. The Passover holiday highlights this theme as well. Plain dough, puffed up by yeast and swollen into bread, is compared to a person’s inclination to haughtiness and a self-important disposition. Avoiding bread and making do with simple unleavened, flat pieces of matzah is meant to invoke some degree of introspection into one’s deeds and personality traits.

The Archbishop of York once showed Buckland his prize possession, the embalmed heart of Louis XVI. Buckland admired the priceless specimen, then deftly scooped it up and swallowed it, declaring that he had never eaten a king’s heart before. I like to think about this story when I am famished and keeping kosher is particularly inconvenient. It is the best way to remind myself to make sure that my words and actions don’t cause anyone to eat their heart out.

Death’s Acre, a wonderful book that I just finished reading, is the memoir of Dr. Bill Blass, founder of the world’s first workshop to study in detail what happens to bodies after death. Blass established “The Anthropology Research Facility,” better known as “The Body Farm” at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, an outdoor laboratory to observe and document what happens to corpses over time under various conditions and in different environments. He and his students basically invented entire fields of study such as forensic entomology (the progression of insect activity in a corpse) and forensic anthropology (what can be deduced from skeletal remains). The book was a great read – if you have the stomach for it.

One particular episode, where Blass explained what motivated him to create his macabre farm in the first place, made a special impression on me. As a young anthropologist/archeologist, Blass had been called in by the local police to help investigate what appeared to be a simple case of grave robbing in a family cemetery. Digging around the grave, he unearthed what looked to Blass like a fresh corpse. A high-profile manhunt ensued to find the killer, presumably still at large, armed and dangerous. As the investigation progressed, however, Blass came to realize that the murder might not have been as recent as he had originally thought. The victim turned out to be a soldier from the Civil War who had met his untimely death on the battlefield. The estimated TOD (time of death) was off by approximately 150 years! But Blass turned his grave error into an opportunity. Realizing how precious little science knew about decomposition processes, he decided to undertake the important mission of expanding and deepening our understanding of death and decay, and to unearth buried truths.

Vilfredo Pareto, a sociologist, mathematician and founder of the field of microeconomics, once said, “Give me a fruitful error anytime, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.” While reflecting on Blass’ experience and Pareto’s maxim, my thoughts turned (how could they not these days) to politics. When was the last time anyone ever heard politicians say that they had been wrong? I know that when I look back on my own life, I can’t even count the number of things that I would like to change, words I’d like to take back, ideas that I realize now were completely misguided, actions that I should or shouldn’t have taken. Extrapolating from a statistic of one would lead to the expectation that of all the politicians in the Knesset, at least one should have made at least one mistake over his career. Yet you never hear an admission along those lines, let alone an apology – even for a well-meant position – that in hindsight turned out to be mistaken.

This apparent infallibility seems to be present everywhere – not just among politicians. Many others, in diverse fields, are also permanently error-free. Rabbis, pundits on both the left and right, journalists, academics –even some scientists – seem to be incapable of making a mistake, or at least of admitting that they have made one. Perhaps they fear that such an admission would diminish their influence or allow room for detractors to attack their credibility. Perhaps the fixation on a specific worldview and the absolute faith in a particular path can blind one to any indication that sights need to be readjusted, that an internal GPS requires serious recalibration.

Dr. Blass’s turning of an embarrassing mistake into a “fruitful error” reminded me of a story in the Talmud about Rabbi Simon of Amasia, who had spent his career promoting his unique method of reading the Biblical text. One specific passage, however, made him realize that his entire approach had been incorrect all along. Immediately Rabbi Simon acknowledged his error and abandoned his teaching. When asked by his students how he could renounce a lifetime of work, he responded, “Just as I received reward for interpreting, so I will receive reward for retracting.” It was not his reputation that concerned him, but only what was true and correct.

The readiness of such extraordinary truth-seekers to admit mistakes, to realign their understanding, and to move forward in quite different directions should serve as inspiration. Old ideas, habits, and views should if necessary be allowed to die and decompose, providing the nutrients for fresh opinions, more appropriate conceptions, and more productive courses of action to spring to life.

Actually, this is the second time we said goodbye to a foster child. The first baby was with us for almost a year and a half. He was just starting to walk and had a few words – nana (banana), up, ball. Watching as Nili drove away brought back memories of the same scene with him. It’s been almost two years since he left and there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think about him.

The Bible is full of stories about childless women who finally become pregnant and have children. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel spring to mind. In the book of Samuel, the familiar pattern is played out, where the barren woman, Hannah, has to endure a

co-wife who has multiple children, and who, according to the Midrash, uses her superior fertile status to taunt poor Hannah. Finally, desperate, Hannah pours out her heart to God, and promises that if He grants her a child she will dedicate him to the service of God. God hears Hannah’s plea, she becomes pregnant, and soon after giving birth she keeps her promise. She delivers him to the Temple in Shilo where he is raised and eventually grows up to become the prophet Samuel, one of the greatest leaders of the Jewish people.

How traumatic it must have been for Hannah to give up this child, the answer to all her prayers! Although the text never says it in so many words, a close reading hints at the difficulty Hannah had in parting with her baby. Right after she gives birth her husband pays a visit to the Temple, but she doesn’t join him, preferring to wait until the child is weaned. In the space of the next three verses, the notion of “until the child is weaned” is repeated four times, as if the phrase is ringing in her ears, looming over her. With each passing day that she nursed her baby, the inevitable separation draws closer.

And yet, when the time finally comes, Hanna does leave the child at the Temple. Perhaps she is able to do so because she understood something that we only fully comprehended through the experience of fostering. No child is ever your personal property, an object to possess and do with as you please. Each child, your own or one in your care, whether with you for a short time or a longer one, is a temporary gift from God, a cherished present not to be taken for granted. True love for a child sometimes means letting go, setting them free to follow their own path and fulfill their own destiny.

Because we were constantly aware that Nili’s stay with us would soon come to an end, we learned to truly open our hearts, to live and love – her and our own 7 children – being fully in the moment, pushing aside the typical dreams and plans for the future that usually occupy so much of a parent’s thoughts and only concentrating on the immediate present.

Our deep, profound, and unconditional love for two complete strangers, taught us something else too; that our responsibilities to care for children are not limited to “our own” children. Funny things started to happen when we became foster parents. On a plane once, a mother was trying to comfort her crying baby. We went over and asked if we could try, and took the baby for a bit. It was a natural gesture, because we – the generation of parents – are meant to aid and care for the children – all of them, anywhere. Our two foster children taught us that our responsibility goes beyond the parochial and the particular in a kind of expanding ripple effect.

When the opportunity to foster Nili came up, we asked our kids what they thought, having gone through this once before. The response was unanimous. Although saying goodbye to the first child was the hardest thing they had ever done, it was so worthwhile, they said, that they wanted to do it again. And that is what we focus on now, as the hole in our hearts is so raw and fresh. We tell the kids that they did wonderful things for Nili, gave her love and joy, a sense of humor and a feeling of belonging and lots of self-confidence, and that those things will stay with her and shape her personality for the rest of her life, wherever she goes and whatever path she chooses.

We wish little Nili a wonderful, rich life, full of happiness and good times, with her new family who will most certainly love her as much as we do. She probably will never even know that there are people far away that think about her every day and have her in their hearts and in their prayers always. Goodbye Nili.

(Written together with Judy Taubes Sterman)

For more information on fostering -

In the US - http://www.ohelfamily.org/foster

In Israel - http://summit.org.il/en

Tony: It’s an imperfect world, but it’s the only one we’ve got. I guarantee you, the day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peace, I’ll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals. My old man had a philosophy, “Peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.”

Reporter: That’s a great line coming from the guy selling the sticks.

Tony: Tell me, do you plan to report on the millions we’ve saved by advancing medical technology or kept from starvation with our intelli-crops? All those breakthroughs – military funding, honey.

Reporter: You ever lose an hour of sleep your whole life?

Though not exactly of the same genre, Robert O’Connell’s Ghosts of Cannae on the history of Hannibal and the second Punic War, which I just finished reading, does describe a superhero of sorts. Archimedes of Syracuse, the great mathematician and scientist, was probably the most important person alive at that time. The city of Syracuse was a major stronghold on the island of Sicily, and was an ally of the Carthaginians. Their enemies, the Romans tried again and again to capture the city, but to no avail – primarily because of the ingenious defenses that Archimedes implemented. The Roman general, Marcus Claudius Marcellus put it bluntly – “Syracuse can not be defeated so long as Archimedes defends it.”

To most of us, Archimedes will always be the one who ran naked from his bathtub shouting “Eureka!” after discovering the important principle of buoyancy that now bears his name. But he had lots of other brilliant insights and quite a few significant inventions as well, and many of those had military applications – both defensive and offensive. His “heat ray,” it is said, was able to set enemy ships ablaze while they were still far from the city walls. And if a ship did succeed in getting close, it would inevitably be capsized by means of the notorious Claw of Archimedes. Eventually, after two years of blockade, the Romans did manage to capture Syracuse. Marcellus gave explicit orders that no harm come to the great sage, but that was not to be. When a roman soldier demanded that Archimedes appear before Marcellus, the great mathematician, who was engrossed in working on some complex problem, responded that the general would have to wait until he had finished. Infuriated, the soldier struck him down on the spot. Archimedes died whispering the words “Do not disturb my circles…”

Necessity is the mother of invention, and threat of annihilation makes for one tough mother.

Military technology has always driven creative innovation. Necessity is the mother of invention, and threat of annihilation makes for one tough mother. Archimedes said, “give me a lever and I will move the world,” but if the need to flip over ten-ton boats is what moved Archimedes to invent the lever, then all the subsequent millions of instruments, machines, and gadgets that incorporate its principles owe a debt of gratitude to the Roman assault. What is true regarding the Claw in Syracuse still holds for the Iron Dome in Ashkelon. Israeli technology has in such great measure been driven by the army. The engineers who develop Arrow missiles and the super-stuxnet hackers end up founding, staffing and running so many of the start-ups of our nation. All that education, training, and experience, not to mention civilian and commercial derivatives, ideas, and innovation – military funding, honey.

That thought gives me pause.

The life – and death – of Archimedes is a metaphor for a different point of view, namely the wasted potential that war can cause. What other brilliant ideas were still inside his head when Archimedes was senselessly killed by that Roman soldier? What discoveries might have been made if he had not been preoccupied devising defenses for Syracuse? I would like to believe that even in times of peace the Tony Starks and “8200” intelligence geeks would still be inspired to channel their innovative spirit and brilliance to benefit society. And who knows what amazing breakthroughs could be achieved if they had the leisure to concentrate on problems other than military. Survival is, of course, paramount, and so developing technology to ensure our country’s safety is the highest priority. But we can still dream of a time when our best and brightest will focus on building better bricks and beams for baby hospitals.

My trip coincided with my having just finished reading a biography on Isaac Newton by James Gleick. Newton lived in the age when science was being invented, and one could argue that he was not only the greatest scientist of all time, but also the very first.

In the margins of his early notes, which he titled Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae [Certain Philosophical Questions] (c. 1664), he wrote:

“Amicus Plato — amicus Aristoteles — magis amica veritas” – Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.

I don’t think that for most religious people this statement would pose any problems. Certainly, the majority of Jewish thinkers feel that they are searching for truth, and Newton himself, an extremely religious person, clearly had no problem reconciling his scientific exploration with his religious devotion.

Newton belonged to an organization of scientists called The Royal Society, which was founded in the mid-1640’s. With Galileo’s telescope allowing man look farther than he could have ever imagined, and Robert Hooke’s microscope, which let people peer into the invisible tiny world, the age of experiment commenced. The Royal Society adopted as its motto “Nullius in Verba” –“on the word of no one” or, “trust no one else’s word”– and what they sought above all was “the determination to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.”

This notion, I believe, would be at odds with many religious outlooks, and certainly with Judaism and the emphasis it places on tradition. After all, we are a faith-based ideology, and we do very much trust the word of others. We study the Bible, the Talmud, the interpretations of those works by generations of rabbis, and we look to those words not only for specific information, but also as inspiration for a spiritual life and as a guide to how we should strive to act, what we should believe.

And so, there is an inherent tension between the cold skepticism of the scientific method and religion’s willingness to accept ideas based on faith. Tension turns to conflict where there appears to be a discrepancy between scientific truth and religious dogma. The flashpoint that seems to draw the greatest attention is evolution, with its assertion that the world has been around for a much longer time than a simple reading of Bereishit (Genesis) would suggest, and with its proposal of a mechanism for understanding how all life – including man – developed to such a fine degree of complexity without turning to a Designer – God – as explanation.

Religious thinkers tend to address the challenge from evolution in one of three ways:

1. Rejecting evolution (either on faith, or through “creation science”) and accepting the literal interpretation of the Bible.
2. Upholding the position of science and interpreting the creation story in Bereishit non-literally, as stages in the development of the universe with the “days” representing millions or billions of years, for example.
3. Dismissing the premise underlying the discrepancy, arguing that the Bible (at least the creation story) is not meant to be read literally and is concerned with psychological, moral, and spiritual truth, and not necessarily scientific or historical truth.

Each of these positions has been exhaustively discussed and written about, and debated around the dining room table, in coffee houses and on the BBC, by scientists and philosophers, by atheists, rabbis, priests, imams and gurus.  It strikes me that many if not most religious people have found some sort of a modus vivendi and that the problem no longer seems as pressing as it once did.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss this with Rabbi Shabtai Rappaport, the head of Bar Ilan’s Institute for Advanced Torah Studies Beit Midrash. He too felt that the debate has become somewhat passé, and said that he believes the relationship between Science and Torah has moved to a different stage. The age of conflict is more or less over. People have made peace, one way or another, with the issues. Now, he said, we can move on to the much more interesting, exciting, and fulfilling phase where science can engage with Torah in a constructive way. He told me that the University is filled with researchers and professors, and each has made some fundamental discovery of a new idea, a new physical, biological, psychological property. Every one of these new discoveries can and must lead us to greater understanding of some idea or principle within the Torah, to some deeper perception, maybe by example or symbolically, of a halacha (law), a midrash (homily), a posuk (passage).

One professor of Sociology and Economics, for example, studied gender differences in the workplace in terms of how the prioritization of workflow demands unconsciously reflects the character that people seek to project about themselves. The results surprisingly helped Rabbi Rappaport understand a seemingly unrelated matter, namely the reasoning behind a difficult ruling given by Rav Moshe Feinstein in a case involving a disputed inheritance where a stepmother hoarded money intended for the children under her care.

Rabbi Rappaport sums up this refreshing perspective: “New Torah thinking should be born of every scientific discovery.”

Perhaps, twenty years after I wrote my paper, the ideas are less relevant in terms of settling the conflict between science and Torah. Rather, I would emphasize the parts that challenge us to search for ways that Darwin’s theories can help elucidate concepts and values within the Torah.

And it makes me wonder what the next phase in terms of the relationship between Science and Torah will be twenty years from now.

For many religious people, the most natural thing about a natural disaster is the subsequent attempt to find spiritual meaning in the destruction and to engage in justification of its Divine cause. Rabbi Natan Slifkin discusses this in his blog “The Theology of Sandy,” and tells of his conversation with one Rabbi who sought to attribute the reason for the hurricane’s devastating effects to the iniquities of Atlantic City.

These kinds of post facto explanations for horrific tragedies are not new. In his A Crack in the Edge of the World, Simon Winchester describes what may have been the greatest natural disaster in the history of America, the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. “The Big One,” and the fire it triggered, caused billions of dollars worth of damage to property, killed thousands, and produced a quarter of a million refugees.

Never was there a city so diametrically opposed to the piety its name would suggest. San Francisco was born of greed with the 49’ers pouring in from every corner of the globe to fill their pockets with the gold dust of the Sierra Madre and the silver of the Comstock Lode. It was a city famous for its saloons, brothels, and Chinese opium dens. When it was leveled as the Pacific plate slipped by 21 feet relative to the North American plate along the San Andreas Fault releasing an unimaginable amount of energy, it was not surprising that many would describe the event as “an act of God” meant to punish the inhabitants of this modern day Gemorrah.

One group in particular is associated most closely with promoting this approach, namely the Pentecostals. As Winchester recounts, the one-eyed preacher William Seymour had been forced to leave his parish in Los Angeles and move to Azusa Street in San Francisco after a particularly rambunctious celebration left the church floor broken. (This fervent dancing was due to a young woman named Jenny Moore who, in reaction to a sermon by Seymour, exhibited a phenomenon called xenolalia, and began to play the piano and sing in what was thought to be Hebrew – though she had never played any musical instrument before, nor had she ever heard the Semitic language.) The move to Azusa street took place just days before the earthquake, and when it hit, Seymour’s protégé Frank Bartleman immediately recognized that its proximate theological cause was based on Isaiah, Chapter 26 verse 9: “When Thy judgements are in the Earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”

That the earthquake was visited upon San Francisco as a punishment for its sins was a message that resonated with people, and the Azusa Street Revival became the center for the meteoric rise of Pentecostalism throughout the world over the next decades. The modern day importance of this charismatic strain of Christianity, as a religious as well as political force, can be traced back to the devastating disaster in 1906.

Not everyone, however,  accepted the explanation for the quake as the wrath of God, and some were skeptical. They pointed out that while over 90% of the city was utterly destroyed, one liquor warehouse, owned by A. P. Hotaling, was left completely unscathed. The poet Charles Kellogg Field mounted a whimsical challenge to the theological interpretations of the quake:

“If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did he burn the churches down
And save Hotaling’s whiskey?”

Judaism, of course, has grappled with the issue of theodicy extensively. A recurring theme within the Bible is that God brings ruin and catastrophe as punishment for our sins, and to induce us to correct our ways. Everything comes from God, as Jeremiah laments, “Out of the mouth of the Most High do not the bad things come and the good?” (Lamentations 3:38) Or as the Baal Shem Tov put it: “Even the movement of a leaf in the wind is planned by God.”

But there is another opinion, quoted in the name of the great third century Babylonian amora, Rava, “Life (health), children, and sustenance, they are not based on merit, but rather are they based on mazzal (luck, chance, or destiny).” (Moed Katan 28a) This approach seems to negate any attempt to pin tragedy (at least on a personal level) on sin in general or on a specific transgression.

So how should one view Sandy, or indeed any tragedy, general or personal? Since there are conflicting opinions among the greatest Jewish theologians, I would suggest a compromise. When involved in introspection, one can always find room for improvement and therefore should view events as an opportunity to grow spiritually and to develop in terms of charity, kindness, and other good deeds and attributes. When viewing one’s neighbor, on the other hand, it is best to adopt Rava’s approach and treat suffering and loss with the utmost sympathy, never daring to explain it away in terms of sin or punishment. To ascribe sin to Job was ultimately the great mistake of Job’s friends.

There may be great psychological motivations for ascribing natural disasters to this or that offense, and to set right the celestial balance sheet, but such attempts are often too facile. And do they really bring anyone closer to God?

- Prof. Leo Taubes -

One hundred and fifty years before the devastating San Francisco earthquake, on November 1, 1755, to be more exact, a far greater catastrophe struck in Portugal. This was the great Lisbon earthquake, which destroyed most of the city and caused from 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. Churches were crowded with people celebrating All Saints Day, and the collapsing buildings killed thousands. Survivors rushed to the open spaces around the port area and were amazed to see that the water had receded to the extent of exposing shipwrecks on the ocean floor. It was an ominous sign.

About half an hour after the tremors subsided, a giant tsunami came roaring in, adding to the destruction and sweeping additional thousands out to sea. What the earthquake and tsunami spared was ravaged by fires that burned for days on end. Lisbon had experienced earthquakes before, but nothing on this cataclysmic scale.

It was not long before self-appointed interpreters of the will of God determined that the disaster was the result of divine displeasure, and that the cause of God’s wrath was…. Here there were various options. Catholic theologians ascribed it to the sinfulness of the people of Lisbon, and to the presence of Protestants in the country. Protestants were equally certain that God was punishing the Catholics, who were corrupters of the true faith. And skeptics wondered why all the churches were destroyed while the notorious red light district of Lisbon escaped significant damage, as later some Americans wondered why a liquor warehouse had been spared in San Francisco.

Skepticism, however, was not the most significant reaction in San Francisco. There the quake provided an impetus for the spectacular growth of American Pentecostalism. The Lisbon quake produced quite different results; it led to a major change in the prevalent intellectual climate of Europe.

The earlier eighteenth century was an age characterized by philosophical optimism, an age in which reason, particularly as embodied in brilliant scientific advances such as Newtonian physics, demonstrated human enlightenment and progress. The problem of the persistence of evil in a rationally constructed universe governed by a benevolent and omnipotent deity had been dealt with by the German philosopher Leibniz. His Essay of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil famously characterized our world as the best of all possible worlds, one that maximized good and minimized evil.

In England, Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man arrived at similar conclusions. The poem set out to “vindicate the ways of God to man,” a variation of Milton’s aim in Paradise Lost to “justify the ways of God to men.” Human life seems random and filled with evil, but it is in fact part of a divinely organized, rational, perfect world, one that our limited human intellect can only grasp partially and imperfectly. Pope concludes that “One truth is clear, ‘Whatever IS, is RIGHT.’”

The poem was enormously popular throughout Europe, and one of its greatest admirers was Voltaire, who praised it extravagantly, describing it as the most brilliant didactic poem ever written. But in December of 1755, the month after the great Lisbon earthquake, he wrote a Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, a cry of despair and a vehement denunciation of the optimism of Leibniz and Pope, and of all attempts to understand the horrific event as an instance of divine reaction to human evil. Can the deaths of tens of thousands, including many children, really be seen as justifiable punishment for sin? Was Lisbon more addicted to vice than London or Paris that wallowed in sensual delight?

Four years later, Voltaire published Candide: or,Optimism, his most famous work, which satirically  destroys the notion that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” The book spread rapidly throughout Europe, and in intellectual circles the beliefs of Pope and Leibniz were no longer tenable. Natural disasters were increasingly accounted for by scientific explanations rather than theological apologetics. Where the San Francisco quake led to greater religiosity, the Lisbon quake led to greater skepticism and secularism.

That God’s general providence oversees the world of man and that good is rewarded and evil punished are basic tenets of Judaism. Their specific application, however, is never simple or obvious. The philosophical problem of evil, of how to make sense of the existence of evil in a morally coherent universe governed by an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent God, logically leads either to atheism or to one or another form of theodicy. Thus the Psalmist writes that the boor and the foolish man cannot understand that the wicked flourish only to be forever destroyed. But Jeremiah, who was neither a boor nor a fool, asked in despair, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are the workers of treachery at ease?” And the corollary to that question, of course, is why the righteous suffer.

When tragedy or major disasters strike, there are always those who come up with instant glib analyses and ready accusations. To some, hurricane Sandy was a punishment for America’s support of Israel, or opposition to Assad. Others insist that America was punished for permitting gambling, or abortion, or same sex marriage, or whatever. Nothing is easier than to claim an insider’s knowledge of the mind of God, and nothing more spiritually dangerous. It takes a certain arrogance, a certain smugness and self-satisfaction to presume expertise in the ways of God. It is far better to heed the statement of R. Yannai in Pirke Avot: It is not in our power to explain either the tranquility of the wicked or the suffering of the righteous.

We ordinary people experience the world through a mere 5 muggle senses – yet even those boring senses can evoke so many emotions. When we see the sun set, we are deeply moved with a wondrous aesthetic sense of beauty. We smell something familiar and a myriad of memories and associations overcome us – some breaking through to our conscious minds but others are buried deep inside eliciting vague impressions of nostalgia that bring a smile to our face – for reasons we can’t exactly pinpoint or explain. A song can stir us with powerful recollections of other times and circumstances when we heard it played.

The numerologist has an added dimension that fills his world. Numbers float in front of him, permeate his mind, and evoke the same kind of associations and emotions that sights, smells, and sounds do for the rest of us. They see connections in those numbers where others see sterile digits. Think of the wonderful anecdotes that Richard Feynman recounts in his autobiography, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!, in the chapter “Lucky Numbers”. Feynman is poking fun at a Japanese vendor who is extolling the virtues of the abacus he is selling. The salesman finally challenges Feynman to a contest. The great physicist against the abacus – who can find the cube root of a number quicker. A random number is chosen – 1729.03. Feynman immediately responds with the answer – 12.002. The exasperated salesman leaves in a huff. When the amazed onlookers ask how he could do such complicated math so quickly, Feynman explains that he remembered there were 1728 cubic inches in a cubic foot. That gave him the 12 (inches in a foot, duh), and by doing a quick binomial expansion of the extra 1.03, he got the other three decimal places of accuracy. He remarked that Hans Bethe was an even better mental calculator. “It was easy for him – every number was near something he new.”

If you are a numerologist who happens to belong to a faith-based community, there is an even greater source of associations that can be drawn upon. Numbers not only remind you of other numbers, but they remind you of connections between letters or phrases or passages – and when the connections are very striking, coincidence is replaced by Divine providence, and relationships become affirmations of mystical truths.

Jewish numerology is based on gematria or isopsephy as the Greeks called it. Unlike the English alphabet, letters of the Hebrew alphabet also represent numbers, and the ancient discipline of gematria (from the same Greek root as the word geometry) makes use of the numerical value of words to find hidden codes and associations. For example, the numeric value of the Hebrew word for love (ahavah) is thirteen, equal to that of the word one (echad). This leads gematria aficionados to suggest the symbolic connection between the two, namely, that when there is true love between people, there is unity of heart and soul. Furthermore, twice the value of the word love—twenty-six—is the gematria of God’s name (Y-H-V-H), implying that strong and proper love between two people will bring holiness and sanctity into the relationship.

I have a friend who is a religious Jewish numerologist. He lives in the old city of Jerusalem (where else?) and he sees the world through these truly amazing 3-D glasses where numbers flit around his landscape like birds and butterflies do mine. I gave him a copy of our book, The Rarest Blue, eager and somewhat apprehensive to find out what his impressions would be. For the sake of full disclosure, we do have a bit of gematria in the book, but it is buried deep in footnote 136. (The gematria of 136 is equal to the word lachatzov – to dig – so one must really work hard to uncover it!)

My numerologist friend called me up a few days later to talk about one particular fact we mention in passing, namely, that the wavelength of a clear sky is 477 nanometers. (You can judge that for yourselves. Using the online wavelength to RGB calculator found here, I set the color of the box on the right to #00BCFF corresponding to 477 nm. ) Biblical blue – tekhelet – of course, is traditionally equated with sky-blue. The 477th word in the Bible, my friend explained, is the first time that the name of God (Y-H-V-H) is mentioned. It is found in the passage (Genesis 2;4) that describes the creation of the sky. (“Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created. When the LORD God made earth and heaven.”) And so, that number which is the color of the sky is intimately related to God’s creating the sky.

But that was not all. 477 is the numerical equivalent of the word b’itah and the only time that word is used in the Bible is in a phrase relating to the ultimate redemption. “The smallest shall become a clan; The least, a mighty nation. I the LORD will speed it in due time.” (Isaiah, 60;22) The gematria of this famous phrase – b’itah akhishena, “I will speed it in due time” – is none other than the central word that is the focus of our book, the magical sky-blue dye – tekhelet.*

I guess it was numerological insights like this one that convinced Newton to put down his prism and pick up a Bible.

(* You are allowed to be off by one in gematria)

The most damaging information was provided by the German physicist Klaus Fuchs who was part of the English team at Los Alamos. (Note: Klaus Fuchs was not Jewish, though there are false indications around the Internet that he was.) His reports detailed the amount of plutonium the Americans were producing as well as the design of the hydrogen bomb. Jewish spies included Harry Gold, Morris Cohen, David Greenglass (who used to have kosher salami delivered to him at Los Alamos), and of course Julius and Ethel Rosenberg – the Rosenbergs being the only civilians in the history of the United States to be executed for espionage. One can make the case that their judge, Irving Kaufman, himself a Jew, adopted an overly harsh attitude towards them. When their attorney, Emanuel Bloch, petitioned Kaufman to delay their execution from its Friday night schedule in order not to desecrate the Sabbath, he refused, but moved the time up to kill them before the Sabbath came in.

It is understandable that Jews in America at that time would want to distance themselves from the acts of those individuals. I asked my father-in-law, who was at Yeshiva University during the Rosenberg trial, what the feelings were on campus at that time. There was a general embarrassment and a desire to dissociate these spies from the Jewish community as a whole. This sentiment is not unknown today, and many American Jews have a similar attitude towards Jonathan Pollard.

Certainly, there is no justification for calling into question the allegiance or loyalty of the entire Jewish community based on the conspiratorial acts of a few traitors, but the problem still must be addressed: Why were there so many Jews among the atomic spies?

I think that there are three major reasons. First, Jews were disproportionately represented in theoretical physics in general and at Los Alamos specifically. Given that there were so many Jews working on the Manhattan project, one would expect to find them disproportionately engaged in espionage as well.

Another key reason most certainly had to do with the war against Hitler. After all, Stalin and his army were the ones fighting and dying on the battlefields of Eastern Europe. Certainly in the early 1940s, the best bet for beating the Nazis was to support the Russians. Rhodes notes that this was a major motivation of the spies – Klaus Fuchs in particular – who saw the evils of the Nazi regime firsthand, (his grandmother, mother, and sister all having committed suicide to avoid capture by the Nazis). Besides, the lend-lease strategy adopted by Roosevelt that shipped supplies to the Soviets may well have included nuclear material, and was based on the same utilitarian reasoning.

But I believe there was a third reason that Jews were so taken by Stalin and communism, and that has to do with the fundamental “messianic” desire of Jews – religious and secular alike – for a better, more just world. This dream, which drives so many Jews to the forefronts of human rights groups, of philanthropic activities, of the desire to create a more perfect society – Tikun Olam (perfecting the world) – is a powerful force. It is often so powerful that it can overcome objectivity and blind those who are swept up by the noble aspiration to do good. The dream of a more equitable society that socialism held out (and the early moves by Lenin and Stalin to outlaw anti-Semitism corroborated this hope) was extremely attractive to Jews. Socialism spoke to them so persuasively not only because they suffered from persecution, but because they truly wanted to believe that such a utopian society could be achieved. This passionate yearning blinded many Jews to the signs that Stalin was far from being a savior, and led the atomic spies to justify any means towards achieving exalted ends.

Food for thought in these election days (US and Israel) when passions run deep, the stakes seem so high, and the values and principles are so weighty. On each side, the goals are noble and the vision of what is best for the world so clear. Nonetheless, it is important to resist any temptation to quiet one’s moral conscience, and short circuit legitimate discourse and actions – no matter how important the goal.

One explanation for this obsession with blessings is the attempt to introduce an element of spirituality into even the most mundane of circumstances. Perhaps an even more important take-away from all these blessings is that it teaches us the importance of saying thank you.

This leads up to the dilemma in which I found myself during the course of my doctoral work. We had proposed a new type of carbon monoxide laser. CO had been used before, of course, but the schemes were complicated, often involving supersonic flows and pieces of jet engines and the like. Our design was to be compact and relatively simple. (Relative is a relative term, so one might consider waterproofing an ice-cream freezer and filling it with over 1,000 quarts of anti-freeze simple.) The preparations for the experiment took months and included the occasional soaking with minus 20-degree liquid. (We learned that standard O-rings don’t seal well at low temperatures, something we should have picked up on after the tragic NASA Challenger disaster.) Through the optimistic eyes of a young graduate student with dreams of changing the world, this seemed to me an experiment of the utmost significance, and I was brimming with anticipation.

And so, as the laser was almost ready and the test day approached, I went to see my teacher Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein to ask if there was a special blessing that should be made on a scientific discovery. Should it be the one recited when observing a wondrous natural phenomenon such as lightening – “Blessed is He who created the wonders of nature?” Or perhaps, since this was a discovery first observed by scientists, the proper blessing would be the one made when seeing a great intellectual – “Blessed is He who has given wisdom to flesh and blood.” Maybe some kind of mixture of the two blessing would be most appropriate.

With a soft voice that could cut like a razor, Rav Aharon responded. “I am confused. Are you looking to make a blessing praising how smart you are?” No! Of course I don’t mean that. I am looking to celebrate the scientific endeavor where man becomes partner with God in unlocking the secrets that He has hidden in the natural world. There are amazing, marvelous, almost miraculous phenomena that are buried like treasures deep down in God’s universe, but they would remain forever concealed if not for the tenacious exploration of the laws of physics – and yes, the cleverness, of science and scientists… is what I should have said… But instead, utterly deflated, I stumbled to find an answer, and meekly agreed that it might be best just to recite the standard fallback “Blessed is He who has granted us life, and sustained us, and allowed us to reach this occasion.” A bit of a letdown, but if that text can be said when putting on a new shirt, it can certainly apply to an experiment which is the culmination of six months of preparation.

I thought about that episode this past week as I stood in front of the boxes that had just arrived from our publisher. What blessing do you make when you see your book in print for the first time? Twenty years later, I realized what Rav Lichtenstein was trying to tell me. Blessings are not things to be taken lightly. Think hard about what you are really saying. Is it truly an expression of gratitude to God or is it ultimately self-serving? Not to mention that blessings, and curses, often come in disguise. As I opened the box I recalled the ancient Jewish tradition that distinguished between the written law (the Bible) and the oral law – all other knowledge that was prohibited to be put to pen. Only God, I thought, can write a perfect book. Everyone else will inevitably find some fault with their handiwork, and if they don’t some reviewer will!

As I took the book out of its package, I murmured to myself somewhat apprehensively, “Thank you God for granting me life, and sustaining me, and allowing me to reach this occasion.”