October 29, 2012 | 4:16 am

Space Travel: Is it worth it?

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

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NASA just embarked upon its most ambitious Mars mission to date, spending a whopping $2.5 billion on this 1-ton rover, hoping to find some evidence as to whether or not Mars once supported life.

At the same time, a United Nations report noted that there were 870 million undernourished people in the world (defined as “a state of energy deprivation” for more than a year). Even if all food production and distribution goals are met, 12.5 percent of the world will be undernourished in 2015. On a planet that also has more than a billion people living in destitute poverty, can we justify spending so much on another one?

Abraham Joshua Heschel (The Moral Dilemma of the Space Age) said it well:

I challenge the high value placed on the search for extraterrestrial life only because it is being made at the expense of life and humanity here on earth. …Is the discovery of some form of life on Mars or Venus or man’s conquest of the moon really as important to humanity as the conquest of poverty, disease, prejudice, and superstition?  Of what value will it be to land a few men on the wilderness of the moon if we neglect the needs of millions of men on earth?  The conflict we face is between the exploration of space and the more basic needs of the human race.  In their contributions to its resolution, religious leaders and teachers have an obligation to challenge the dominance of science over human affairs.  They must defy the establishment of science as G-d.  It is an instrument of G-d which we must not permit to be misused.

Proponents of the space program and NASA’s current $17.7 billion budget (and $300 billion collectively spent by all countries) point to technological advances that have come about or accelerated as a result of the space program:

• Satellite television and the mobile telephone
• Global positioning system (GPS) technology
• Virtual reality devices
• Extremely accurate maps
• Advances in digital imaging that have improved screening methods of existing technology (e.g., improved MRI, CT scans, and breast cancer screening)

There are also elements that cannot be quantified, such as the use of the photograph of Earth taken from space that was used to promote environmentalism, or the effect of the space program in promoting science in schools. As astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson stated: “You don't have to set up a program to convince people that being an engineer is cool. They'll know it just by the cultural presence of those activities. You do that, and it'll jump-start our dreams." There are a lot of benefits to space travel and galaxy exploration.

Currently, NASA has about 100 space programs ranging from examining the Earth’s atmosphere, measuring the planet’s water cycle, and tracking hurricanes and storms, to exploring asteroids and planets. Many scientists consider these ongoing programs to be vital to the advance of science and understanding our planet and the universe.

On the other hand, the American space program grew out of the Cold War anxiety over the Soviet Union’s success in launching the Sputnik satellite, and much of this program has had military intentions. Nor should it be forgotten that the United States used former Nazi scientists who had developed the dreaded V2 rocket (some of whom worked in facilities that starved their slave laborers). While the program had a spectacular success in landing a man on the moon in 1969, it also led to the creation of weapons like the inter-continental ballistic missile and multiple independent reentry vehicle. These “advances” enabled a single missile to carry up to 10 nuclear warheads thousands of miles, creating the potential for annihilating all human life on Earth. Thus, the space program has had mixed results.

Many believe that we are searching for extra-terrestrial life. This reality is not impossible according to Jewish thought. There is a Jewish theological basis to accept that there are other worlds in existence. “‘There was evening and there was morning, the first day’ (Bereshit 1:5): From here (we learn that) the Holy One, Blessed is He, created worlds and destroyed them, until G-d created these. G-d said: These give me pleasure, but those did not give me pleasure” (Bereshit Rabbah 3:7).

Rav Saadia Gaon taught that we live in a centripetal Platonic notion of the universe, where everything moves toward the center (toward the human). This is an anthropocentric approach (i.e., that humans occupy the central position of existence, and that everything should be interpreted for its effect on humans). The Rambam, however, taught that we live in a centrifugal universe of Aristotelian values. The Rambam rejects anthropocentricism with the teleological position that G-d creates everything for its own purpose (Mishlei 16:4, “l’maanehu”—for the sake of G-d as opposed to for the sake of man), and thus the universe is centrifugal (everything moving away from the center), and the value of all increases as it goes outwards from man, Earth, into the “active intellect,” and beyond.

The science of both thinkers is known to be incorrect today, but there is still philosophical value to their approaches. In our own time an important Jewish philosopher, Rabbi Norman Lamm, followed in the school of the Rambam and wrote: “There is no need to exaggerate man’s importance, and to exercise a kind of racial or global arrogance, in order to discover the sources of man’s significance and uniqueness.”

Although “there is no need to exaggerate man’s importance” and there is a lot of value in expanding our knowledge of the universe around us both for knowledge’s sake and for the forward march of technology that advances the cause of human sustainability, on balance it is clear that the noble goal of reaching out into the cosmos must play second fiddle to the nobler goal of continued life on the only planet we call home. We must be invested in science and discovery and long-term growth but we must also remember that our main priorities are addressing the human needs of today in this world.

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Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"

October 6, 2012 | 9:51 pm

Apocalypse? Building a New World!

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

This week, a reporter from the Kansas City Star called me not to ask about Israel, the Presidential Election, or anything of immediate local or global relevance. Rather, she asked me about the Jewish perspective on heaven.  I, of course, reinforced for her that the Jewish tradition has a deep eschatological foundation and offers a strong belief in olam haba (the world to come). I also assured her that the Sages of the Talmud could not imagine a heaven that was exclusive only to Jews, but rather that it was reserved for the righteous of all nations. Lastly, and most importantly, I let her know that Jews have felt obliged to prioritize the holy work that needs to be done in this world over speculation about the nature of the next world.

Jewish worldly responsibility trumps any necessity to embrace dogmas or beliefs about the nature of an afterlife. Rambam even suggests that it would be harmful to spend much time thinking about that which cannot be known, such as the messianic era and the next world. He urges us to steer away from more radical cataclysmic apocalyptic thinking (Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Melakhim 12:2).

However, in my reflections, I also recalled the haftarahs that we read around the holiday of Sukkot dealing with the final apocalyptic end-of-days war of Gog U’Magog. In both the books of  Yechezkel (38:18-39:16) and Zacharia (14:1-21), a complex picture is painted. These stories have grasped the human imagination for centuries and penetrated deeply into our religious consciousness, since they represent the destruction of our imperfect world, the ultimate full blown war against evil, and the victory of God and the Jewish people in a battle for truth. Both of these haftarahs describe a future war fought against nations oppressing Israel, in which G-d rises to fight against the enemies of Israel. Rashi argues that both haftarahs describe the same end-of-days war with “every man’s sword against each other” and G-d’s ultimate supernatural intervention and destruction.

Some modern thinkers have suggested that we have experienced these wars already or are in the midst of them. The Vilna Gaon (commentary on Mechilta Exodus 14:20) said that this Gog U’Magog war will only last three hours and will take place on Hoshana Rabba. Another rabbi recently pointed out that the U.S. war in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda began on Hoshana Rabba.

Others claimed that World Wars I and II were the Wars of Gog and Magog preparing the world for the coming of the Messiah, started by the Jewish return to Israel. Previously, Chassidic teachers saw the Jewish struggles with France and Russia as the wars of Gog and Magog.

But must we worry? These wars are of the past, not the future, and these stories of Gog U’Magog have not gained prominence in Jewish theology.

Recently, an alleged Mayan prediction that the world will come to an end in December 2012 has been popularized in the media. Responsible theologians and scientists alike have unanimously repudiated this, along with popular entertainers. As Jay Leno recently joked on the Tonight Show: “According to the Mayans, the world is supposed to end in the year 2012. Are you buying that? When's the last time you even ran into a Mayan?” Or as the band REM once sung: “It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”

Incredibly, many people have given credence to this apocalyptic vision. In an international poll conducted for Reuters in May 2012, fully 10 percent of Americans believed that the world will end by the end of 2012, and 22 percent believe that the world will end during their lifetime. Contrast this with France, where only 6 percent of those polled believe that the world will end in their lifetime. Significantly, the poll revealed a correlation between anxiety over the future and belief in an imminent end of the world.

Contemporary thinkers have echoed the warnings of past rabbis to focus on real contemporary crises rather than imaginary doomsday scenarios. Deepak Chopra has noted that Americans should focus on the changing world, in which nations will have to curtail their indiscriminate use of natural resources, and in which “crude nationalism” and “religious intolerance” were credible threats worthy of attention. He warned against those who focused on the end of the world: “…reactionary forces, fueling an undercurrent of fear, promoting a fantasy of America as a perfect society where privilege is a birthright and the rest of the world exists on a plane almost beneath notice.” 

The Mayan doomsday episode will soon be behind us.  I would suggest that the wars of Gog and Magog are not in the Tanach and in our haftarahs in order to strike fear into us or to lay out a perfect picture of the end-of-days. Rather, it should tickle our moral imagination around the possibilities of destruction and creation.

This theme of global destruction is not new. We saw that G-d destroyed the world with the flood and Noah rebuilt the world. Later, all of civilization was broken once again and dispersed at the Tower of Babel. After the Shoah, the Jewish people needed to re-create a lost Jewish world. We are asked, now once again, to step out of our known world and imagine a new one. If your world were destroyed, how would you rebuild it? How would you change it?

Today, our American discourse is dominated by the details of how we are going to rebuild, as is demonstrated by the political process. You have about half the country saying we need big strong government and half saying we need small hands-off government, and a lot of bickering in between. But within the debate of HOW we structure our society, have we lost the big picture of WHAT—what is the ultimate world we are trying to construct together. That is much bigger than any individual’s pocketbook, any particular policy, any politician, and even any generation. It is ultimately what we leave in this world. The project of Judaism is designed to constantly push us from self-interest into the big picture of society, global impact, and long-term generational impact. What will the world be like after me?

To do that, we cannot go to the woods and wonder alone. To dream, we must do it together. And we must do it with those who have been excluded from the actualization of past dreams. As poet Toni Morrison said: “All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.” The best dreamers of the future are often those denied the dreams of yesterday.

The stories of apocalypse that we read may tempt us to think about how the world could be destroyed, but our moral challenge is to think about how we will reconstruct the world, how we rebuild after the storms. Destruction stories can divide us in fear. Construction stories can build us in unity.

In the 18th revolutionaries here in America, understood that they were building a new world. In 1948, those building the new Jewish state, understood they were creating a new world. When one holds their newborn child for the first time, they understand that they are holding a new world.

In fact, if we look at Noah after the first destruction of the world, Rashi explains that his name is Noach due to the nechama, the comfort he brought to the world. How did he do that? He invented the plow. To build the world, we just have to start plowing. That is our work, to dream but also just to start plowing and working toward that dream.

“Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was once leaving Jerusalem.  Rabbi Yehoshua was walking behind him and saw the Temple in ruins. Rabbi Yehoshua said: ‘Woe unto us for the destruction of the Temple, the place of atonement for the sins of Israel.’ Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai said to him: ‘My son, do not worry—we have another form of atonement like it.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘Acts of loving kindness.’” That is how we rebuild the world today: turning from a destroyed past and rebuilding the future through gemillut chasadim (random acts of loving kindness).

When we read the stories reminding us of the power of destruction, may we rather dream of a new world, and commit each day to doing random acts of kindness to secure this future world that turns our dreams into realities.

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Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"
 

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September 25, 2012 | 1:46 pm

Yom Kippur: An Encounter with Death & Life!

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

“Mitah v’Yom HaKippurim Michaprin.” The two ways to truly atone are Death and Yom Kippur. But are the two really so different? On Yom Kippur, we reject food and drink, similar to one close to death. We say vidui (our confessions) just like someone preparing to die. Many wear white on Yom Kippur—the kittel, the same plain shroud that one will be buried in. We remove ourselves from leather shoes, bathing, anointing, and marital relations on Yom Kippur again as though we are mourners.  Our lives are lived in our bodies. On Yom Kippur we step out of our bodies as if we were gone. We visit the cemetery at this time to honor those who have passed away and to soften our hearts to our mortality. We ask ourselves on Yom Kippur in Unetaneh Tokef: “who shall live and who shall die.”

One of the main goals on Yom Kippur is to encounter death. We spend one day reflecting on our mortality. When we fully embrace Yom Kippur, we have an encounter with death (a preparation for death). We are to be transformed by it; in preparing for death, we come to more deeply celebrate life. Even more, our transformation teaches us to reprioritize what really matters. As Sogyal Rinpoche once wrote: "Death is a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected."

One day of the year we accept the reality of death, but we are not like Buddhists who willingly embrace death. On all other days of the year, we mourn those who have passed, we protest the taking of lives, we prevent death by seeking cures and healing. But protesting death must not overtake us. Rather, taking ownership of life must. As the great French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, wrote: “We are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death” (The Ethics of Ambiguity, 120).

So only on this day we let our guard go and embrace the inevitable to remind us that although our death must come someday, today we must live. We can best perform the mitzvah of u'varchata b'chayim, to choose life, once we are aware of the alternative and that there is a choice to be made.

There is an intimacy we achieve with our Creator when we approach death just as those on their death beds who lose their theological skepticism. In fact, we learn from the Talmud (Shabbat 88b) that those who experienced the revelation at Sinai directly from the mouth of G-d died in that moment and were brought back to life. It is only in a life/death transcendental moment that we can truly grasp certain truths.

Longtime hospice worker Kathleen Dowling Singh lays out the stages of dying in her book, The Grace in Dying. They are, according to her: Chaos, Surrender and Transcendence. Yom Kippur can be modeled off these three. We are in chaos during the night, and the early morning of Yom Kippur hits us like a ton of bricks. Then we begin to surrender once we realize that we are able to transcend our hunger and personal desires. Finally, we may reach transcendence in the late afternoon when we tap into our deeper potential to understand ourselves and the world.

If we “die” on Yom Kippur, then we go to olam haba (the next world). That next world paradoxically is actually olam ha’zeh (this world). We learn to live in this world as if it were the next world (in our near-death experience). We encounter death in order to live.

The Talmud in Moed Katan teaches the following story: “When Rav Nahman was dying, he begged Rava to implore the angel of death not to torment him. Rava replied, ‘But, Master, are you not esteemed enough to ask him yourself?’ Rav Nahman considered this for a moment, and then pondered aloud, 'Who is esteemed, who is regarded, who is distinguished' in the face of Death Himself? Then, after he died, Rav Nahman appeared to Rava in a dream. ‘Master, did you suffer any pain?’ Rava asked. Rav Nahman replied, ‘As little as taking a hair from milk. Still, if the Holy One were to say to me, ‘Go back to that world,’ I would not consent, the fear of death being so great.’”

On Yom Kippur we learn that we need not fear death. Rather, we must embrace death in order that we can affirm life in the deepest sense. May 5773 be a year of life! May we rededicate ourselves to enhancing the lives of all those around us!
 

 

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"
 

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