New Heavens and a New Earth

Back in the 1970’s, Israel’s Chief Rabbi announced that he wanted to change the blessings of the new moon. The old one no longer made sense to him, now that the USA had sent astronauts to walk on the moon. How could he say “as I dance before you but I can’t touch you” if it was now possible to touch the Moon? The other Rabbis all said “Rabbi Shlomo Goren, have you gone crazy?” But Rabbi Goren stuck to his guns. Next come the morning prayers. There’s a prayer that goes “thank you Lord for not making me a woman” while at the same time the women say “thank you Lord for making me according to your will.” Some say the prayer is sexist. Others ask which verse has to be said if the reader is a transsexual. Does she say “thank you for not making me a woman” if she is now a woman? Is it appropriate for her to say “thank you for making me according to your will” when she’s been made according to her own will?

When it comes to Judaism, science can open up a long line of endless debates. Is organ donation allowed? Is it acceptable for women to get tattoos? Can a man or priestly descent, forbidden to be in the presence of the dead, dissect cadavers in medical school? The list goes on and one, but in this new book, New Heavens and a New Earth, we focus on one debate only; the Heliocentric Theory. It was not a Jew but a Polish clergyman, Nicholas Coppernick (or Copernicus if you prefer) who decided that the planets revolved around the Sun. Some Rabbis argued in favor, others against. In Judaism, the calendar is based on the cycles of the Moon, so it would’ve come as a shock to some that the great shining star would now be the center of the galaxy.

One unusual Jewish scholar who argued against it was Isaac Cardoso. His family was Portuguese Marranos who were publicly Catholic, but Jewish in secret. After attending medical school in Spain, he moved to Venice and began living as a Jew. What was unusual about him was not that he “came out” as a Jew, but that he went from being pro-Copernican to anti-Copernican. He first argued in favor, citing practical evidence; if the Earth was so tiny compared to other heavenly bodies, it did not make sense to him that the satellites could be greater than the mother planet. Then he argued against it, claiming that the rapid movement of the Earth would prevent bullets from hitting their targets.

A pattern emerges in this book regarding the geographics of the Jewish scholar and the Heliocentric theory. Most of the Jews discussed in the first part are Sephardic, while Ashkenazi Jews factor in later. The Jews of the Mediterranean world appear to have been on the receiving end of all the great scientific knowledge of the world at the time, though it’s understandable, as the Jews of Poland and Lithuania were further away. Later on you have German Jews, like Raphael Levi in Hanover, who argued in favor of Copernicus, in concert with non-Jewish scholars. Another pattern can be clearly seen in this book; the astronomers were all amateurs and hobbyists. Cardoso was a physician, Copernicus was a priest, and Levi was a banker. Nobody went to college to study astronomy in those days, it was the work of mathematicians, and the mathematicians were either bankers or engineers. Perhaps there was even less debate of their work as nobody was truly an expert in the field?

New Heavens and a New Earth is a serious study, but funny as well. I enjoyed reading about how the Jewish community became more accepting of scientific trends, and it reminds me even more of today’s debate over things like grafted fruit trees, genetically modified cattle, and the use of robots on the Sabbath.