Preface		xvii
ARNIE GOTFRYD	Proof for the Existence of the Creator	1
A teacher once wrote to the Lubavitcher Rebbe asking him if there exists convincing proof, palatable to a skeptic, that demonstrates conclusively that God exists. The Rebbe's reply forms the basis of this article. In his letter the Rebbe uses no religious rhetoric and no polemic. Rather he builds a rationally based scientific argument that leads inexorably to the surprising conclusion that the Jewish faith is eminently reasonable from a scientific perspective. Moreover the cornerstone and foundation of Judaism, the stand at Sinai, emerges from rigorous scientific scrutiny as the most reliably documented empirical fact in human history.
LAYA BLOCK	Education as the Basis for Morality	9
The article argues that the teaching of morality is needed to offset the pattern of physically and psychologically destructive behavior of today's young people. Until the mid-nineteenth century, philosophers and educators assumed that a primary goal of education was to teach morality. A dramatic shift then occurred and the teaching of morality was removed from the schools. In this new era there were no absolutes and no infallible authority. Now the pendulum is swinging back, as followers of the educational theories of Harvard's Lawrence Kohlberg acknowledge a process of moral development from age five through the late teens. In contrast, Judaism has never wavered in its emphasis on education as the basis for morality. Moreover, Judaism posits that education begins before birth and continues throughout life. In discussing methods of teaching morality, the author claims we should not only "practice what we preach" but also "preach what we practice." She links the word chinuch (education) to chanukah (dedication) and concludes that "Those of us in chinuch have a mission: to dedicate ourselves to instilling within our children the moral values found in the Torah."
YITZCHOK BLOCK	Rationality and God	17
What is more rational? To believe in God or not to believe? The answer hinges on what we mean by rationality. Dr. Block argues that scientific verification and mathematical proof are useless for querying God's existence because He is neither an empirical hypothesis nor a mathematical theorem. In order to weigh the alternatives, we need a more basic standard of rationality -- the criterion of simplicity or unity. That is, when one has competing explanations which are equally plausible, empirically and logically, the rational response is to choose the explanation that is simpler or which displays greater unity. Countless people from all walks of life have asked, "What is the origin of the universe? Where did it come from?" Ultimately there are only two possibilities. Either God made the universe, or it is eternal and without origin. However, to ascribe eternalness to the universe is to "add on" a property for the sole purpose of explaining the universe's existence, for eternalness is not part of the meaning of the universe, nor is it an empirical property that could be confirmed by experiment or observation. The "eternalness" of the universe serves no purpose other than to "explain" its origin. It is therefore an ad hoc explanation. In contrast, the theistic view simpler and more unified, and therefore more rational, than its alternative.
CYRIL DOMB	Jewish Distinction in Science	29
This essay proposes hereditary factors which may underlie the immensely disproportionate number of Jews who have achieved excellence in the sciences. Professor Domb's argument assumes that the ability for the kind of abstract thinking involved in science has a hereditary association. He then demonstrates that for at least 2000 years, Jewish abstract thinkers have been choosing mates based on familial scholarship. This, he argues, would preserve and enhance any hereditary tendency to outstanding intellectual achievement. Furthermore, even those Jews whose immediate forebears did not choose their mates eugenically would have benefited from the enriched gene pool developed over the ages. He concludes that such inborn talent is not praiseworthy in itself. It is rather a person's ethical integrity which is of value, and this is not inherited but acquired.
ARNIE GOTFRYD	Beyond Description: The Boundary between Science and Religion	45
This essay begins with a sharp confrontation between religious and scientific outlooks on why leaves change color in the fall. However, careful analysis of both views leads to the conclusion that these two approaches are not competitive but rather most complementary. The essential difference between religious and scientific explanations of natural phenomena lies in the questions they address: Science is concerned with how the world works, while religion attempts to tell us why. To highlight the distinction, the author probes successive layers of scientific study for the "explanation" of changing leaf color. One by one, ecology, physiology, biochemistry, physical chemistry and particle physics are brought to bear, but all these fields merely serve to enrich our description rather than to provide an expianation of why nature behaves in that way. Even the most reliable laws of nature are purely descriptors of the orderly relationships among things. Indeed the very existence of such orderly relationships is itself something that requires explanation.
ABRAHAM M. HASOFER	Jewish Mysticism and the Intelligibility of Nature	58
One of the greatest wonders of the world is something we automatically take for granted: man's ability to use mathematical equations to predict the course of physical events. This has been considered miraculous by Einstein, Hertz, Planck, etc., for one simple reason. Mathematics is an exercise in mental artistry without any reference to the physical world, and yet the abstract constructions that mathematicians develop are very often applied with remarkable success to accurately describing and predicting phenomena in the real world. Why? The author points out that, according to Kabbalah, both the human personality and the cosmos are built according to the same ground plan -- the Sefirotic Scheme. Since man's creative process mirrors the Divine creative process, the creations of the Divine mind can be grasped by using the creative ideas generated by the human mind.
MENACHEM KOVACS	Relativism and Absolutism in Sociology	72
Throughout its century-and-a-half of development, the science of sociology has been attempting to interpret society using theories which are either so rigidly absolute in their bias that they lead to callous intolerance or, at the other extreme, so relative that they lack any capacity to address even the grossest violations of fundamental human rights. Recently a growing minority of sociologists has been developing views which retain flexibility and tolerance but only within the bounds of basic ethical criteria (e.g., the work of Merton, Sapir and Whorf). While this trend is encouraging, the ethical criteria chosen may be arbitrary and therefore limited. This difficulty is transcended by metasociology, a social theory developed by Kranzler, which acknowledges ethical criteria handed down by God. Nonetheless, metasociology retains the best aspects of relativism by allowing one to understand society from widely divergent viewpoints.
ZALMAN I. POSNER	Adolescents face Modernity	82
Ethics are not grist for the ethicist's mill, not some "specialty" with new arcane wisdom, but rather a field relevant to other scienfists and to other human beings generally. Even scientists who diligently try to avoid making value judgments must take stands in their professional capacities. A physician who deals with adolescents, for example, may be dealing more with issues of ethics, of moral right and wrong, than with physical disease. For that matter, adults who display disabling symptoms may never be cured unless some underlying moral issues are resolved. For challenges such as this, scientific resources may be inadequate, while Torah can provide crucial guidance. But how can it be legitimate to transmit ethical standards in our era of "relative morality"? Validation of the moral code is a critical aspect of the transmission of values, whether from parent to child, teacher to pupil, or therapist to patient. This issue forms the focus of Rabbi Fosner's essay.
AVI RABINOWITZ and HERMAN BRANOVER	The Role of the Observer in Halachah and Quantum Physics	91
What role does human observation play in the grand scheme of things? On the surface -- not much, since we feel that the world carries on in its way whether we watch it or not. But according to quantum physics and Halachah, our perceptions do not merely reveal what is happening; they determine what is happening. In fact, without observation by a conscious being, no thing can be said to have reality or existence. The authors explain, in layman's terms, how this conclusion is not just speculation but is rather derived from the results of various laboratory experiments involving electron beams projected through narrow slits. The notion that existence depends on observation is to be found in numerous cases in Jewish Law (Halachah), i.e., where the court or an individual decides an ambiguous matter and thereby unequivocally defines the situation, whether in a legal sense or even in an empirical case.
PAUL C. ROSENBLOOM	What's in a Name?	110
This essay compares and contrasts secular and religious views on the role and significance of names. Torah teaches that the essence and lifeforce of a created being is contained in its Hebrew name. Moreover, all properties of any created being are encoded in the Hebrew name, rather like the way genes code for an organism's hereditary characteristics, or, for another example, like the way Dirac's equations tell us everything that is knowable about the physical state of an electron. To illustrate this, the author explains various types of names: Conventional names merely serve to identify an object; structural names indicate how something's parts are arranged; functional names describe how something works. The Hebrew name includes all these aspects and more -- it actually serves as the channel through which the Divine Being continuously creates and sustains the thing named.
ZVI VICTOR SAKS	Applications of Mathematical Infinity in Jewish Philosophy	123
A finite human being cannot truly conceptualize God, since He is Absolutely Infinite in all respects. Still, we can gain insights into the Divine creative process by studying those aspects of Torah, in Chasidut and Kabbalah, which describe the infinite, intricate and very abstract processes involved in the Creation of the universe by God. When the author of this essay, a mathematician, first learned about these concepts, he was completely amazed to discover that the infinite, intricate and very abstract ideas he had been developing for years in the cerebral world of mathematics actually had a "real world" application -- modeling the process of the Creation of the universe by G-d. This essay examines in detail the striking parallels between the two systems, with result that the reader comes to appreciate the profound beauty and meaning of the mathematical concepts on the one hand, and the rational accessibility of the Divine creative process on the other.
C. NATAN SCHLESINGER	The Stars Are Singing as They Shine: "The Hand that Made Us Is Divine"	143
Did the universe come about by chance or was it planned? The question is timeless, but recent discoveries in physics and cosmology have revived Rabbi Akiva's Talmudic "Argument from Design" and catapulted it into the limelight of popular intellectual controversy. The author's precision instrument for dissecting the issue and resolving the conflict is the idea that there are two kinds of very improbable events: ordinary ones, like holding the winner out of a billion lottery tickets (which some ticket-holder must do), and extraordinary ones, like winning three consecutive one-in-a-thousand draws. Even though the odds of this are also one-in-a-billion, the triple win raises eyebrows because it is an unexpected kind of event. One of the new discoveries is that the forces of gravity and electromagnetism within a star are very delicately balanced. A change in either force by one part in 1O,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO would render the star totally incapable of sustaining life. Is this by chance or design? As Schlesinger points out, one may believe what he wishes but those who claim to refute the renewed Argument from Design all commit the same inexcusable blunder in their reasoning: They fail to distinguish between those improbable events which are bound to occur in some fashion, and those which are of a totally unexpected kind and hence require explanation.
JACOB I. SCHOCHET	Society's Legal Codes: Pragmatism or Morality? A Jewish View of Natural Law	157
Legality per se has nothing whatever to do with morality. Thus an accepted law may well be immoral and a valid moral principle may well be illegal. While we naturally aspire toward laws that reflect what is good, right and just, this quest tends to fail. For moral principles (like the Golden Rule) are by definition universal and independent of public consensus, whereas human law is political, and thus as limited and fallible as the human beings who generate it. On the other hand, Divine Law, being neither limited nor fallible, provides: true moral guidance and justice; precise and just definition of the situations where given rules apply; truly suitable rewards and punishments; rules for internal acts and motives; etc. While Divine Law includes that which is reasonable to man, it ultimately transcends human intellect since even the rational aspects stem from the Divine Will. Man has freedom of choice not only in the quality of his actions, but also in the quality of his motivation. The best motive for good behavior is not the inherent rationality in such behavior but rather the fulfillment of the Divine Will.
MEIR TAMARI	The Challenge of Wealth: A Jewish Perspective	173
There exists a distinctive Jewish ethical framework for the conduct of business, within which Jews have always operated. This framework regards wealth as a gift of God, legitimate and useful but operative within the parameters laid down by Jewish law, morality and custom. These parameters forbid the earning of wealth through dishonest means, which include not only theft but also coercion, misrepresentation, unrevealed conflict of interest and the concealment of other relevant facts in business dealings. Corporations are bound by the same moral obligations as their shareholders and therefore what is forbidden to the individual is also forbidden to the corporation. Because of the national orientation of Judaism, society has, as it were, a share in the wealth of the individual. Private property rights are recognized and protected but are never absolute. This means that possessors of wealth, corporate or otherwise, can be taxed for the social welfare of the community, in order to meet various needs, including charity for the poor and the provision of public services. Furthermore, business may not be conducted in a way that will damage another's property or health, or the ecological quality of life of individuals or of society as a whole. The legal nature of Judaism ensures that its ethical framework is expressed in terms of law, and the rabbinical courts are obligated to enforce these laws. At the same time, acting beyond the minimal requirements of the law, such as doing one's fellow man an economic favor and voluntarily relinquishing one's property rights, is also part of Jewish religious education.
ELIEZER ZEIGER	Torah, Science and Human Knowledge	185
Torah and science provide different ways of looking at the world. The science "map" is built from observation, inference and testing. Its methods and conclusions are relative to time, place and the observer. The Torah "map," on the other hand, was revealed to man by God and is thus an absolute standard clothed in relative human terms. The author describes how the biological nature of man limits his knowledge. All living beings are "closed systems" with no way of validating reality except by the fickle and fallible tool, consensus. Still the scientific method helps man achieve an admirable (albeit relative) degree of consistency in describing and understanding reality. But with all this, collective scientific knowledge remains permanently confined within the boundaries of biological and cognitive closure. Not so Torah. Its origin transcends biology and cognition and it is therefore totally free of their limitations. Moreover, even though Torah is expressed in relative human terms, its absolute truth and validity remain intact while simultaneously being completely compatible with science. In discussing why the Absoluteness of Torah is a concealed property, the author posits that this ensures that people not observe the commandments blindly, but rather through the maximal exercise of free choice.
Glossary		209