By Paul Eidelberg
The Zohar was not written for its author’s (or authors’) contemporaries, but for a generation two millennia hence. This suggests that the author of The Zohar peered into the flux of history with new insights about man and the universe.
The Zohar – which means “radiance” – was written especially for our time because we live in an age of darkness, of intellectual and moral confusion, and the confusion is magnified by what we are most proud of, Science.
On the one hand, the great and successful scientific theory of General Relativity purveys a doctrine of strict Determinism, which seems to contradict Free Will, without which moral behavior is meaningless.
On the other hand, the great and no less successful theory of Quantum Mechanics purveys the doctrine of Indeterminism, suggesting that our world is merely the chance combination of subatomic particles devoid of meaning or purpose.
Determinism and indeterminism correspond, respectively, to the macro and micro domains of existence. Here I am reminded of the renowned eighteen-century Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (known by the acronym RAMCHAL), an Italian rabbi. Well-versed in science, the Ramchal (1707-1746) held that “The world contains two opposite general influences. The first is that of natural determinism, while the second is indeterminism.”[1] Perhaps we should also mention that the Ramchal was a master of Kabbalah, which would account for his recognition of the dualism of determinism and indeterminism, more generally, of the Unity of Opposites that governs the universe. We have come a long way from Luzzatto.
Richard Feynman, regarded by some as the greatest theoretical physicist since Einstein, writes: “Everything is made of atoms… there is nothing living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.”[2] Here one may wonder whether this Nobel Laureate ever correlated his knowledge of atoms with a well-known fact of biology, that the “Atoms of our body get recycled many, many times before death, so we don’t have the same bodies our whole lives. Nevertheless, we feel like the same person. Why? Because unlike a [rotting] ship, each human being has an uninterrupted store of thoughts and remembrances. If the human soul exists, that mental cache is it.”[3]
Fenyman’s materialistic reduction of man to a mere ensemble of atoms acting according to the laws of physics reminds me of Jean-Paul Sartre. His novel Nausea, describes our present age in terms of the nausea of a man who lives in a world without meaning.
Feynman’s materialistic reductionism is the default position of the social sciences, which calls to mind William James’ witticism, “A Beethoven string-quartet is truly [nothing more than] a scraping of horses’ tails on cats’ bowels”[4] Imagine educating one generation of youth after another on this academic diet of nihilism, while Muslim youth, including some Americans, are joining ISIS!
Yes, The Zohar was written for our time, which is thoroughly confused about the nature of man and of his place in the universe. How can it be otherwise when theoretical physics is itself confused about reality?
Although The Zohar is not meant for casual readers, it should not be identified with mysticism else it would not have attracted the attention of great minds and rationalists like Newton and Leibniz, who knew there is a deeper reality underlying space and time.
The Zohar contains a body of information which many people need and needed to know about themselves, about the universe around them, about the Creator of this universe, and about how people should relate to each other and toward their Creator.
The Zohar was written especially for our time, a time that would witness the parallelism of Torah and Science. Only the recognition of this parallelism can save us from self-destruction; for as most people now know and fear, we are lost in a world of increasing violence and anarchy, world without precedent to help or guide us. We are like a babe newly born into a world of buzzing confusion. There is no philosophy or psychology or sociology that can help us.
We are learning that all our learning is vanity. We have been cast into churning sea. We see no beacon or sight of a distant shore on which to plant our feet. Turbulent winds are driving are driving us hither and yon filling our hearts with fear. We are adults that feel like a child that has lost his mother. Our grown-up knowledge only renders us more confused.
It no longer provides us with a moral compass. That compass was buried in the deluge of the materialistic reductionism of modern science, which knew only about matter in motion, and reduced us to nothing more than matter in motion.
This was foreseen by the author(s) of The Zohar who thus anticipated the need of a convergence of science and Torah to provide the moral compass we lost in the stark light of modern science.
Extracted from my book Rescuing America from Nihilism: A Judeo-Scientific Approach (Lightcatcher)
[1] Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, The Path of the Just (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1989), 81.
[2] Richard Feynman, Six Easy Pieces: The Foundations of Physics Explained (London: Penguin, 2011), 20. In a more modest mood, Feynman also says, “nobody understands quantum mechanics,” as cited in Brian Green, The Elegant Universe (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 103.
[3] Sam Kean, The Violinist’s Thumb (New York: Little Brown & Co., 2012), 341-342.
[4] See www.goodreads.com/…/1010693-a-beethoven-string-quartet-iii. No less than Darwin once sighed, “What thought has to do with digesting roast beef, I cannot say.”
