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Scientists, Spiritual Leaders Find
Meaning in Webb Telescope Images
O SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
Image of the Carina Nebula from the James Webb Space Telescope
showing the “Cosmic Cliff s,” about seven light-years high
to the Webb Telescope images from Jewish
astrophysicists and rabbis suggest a har-
mony between religion and science.

“Th e two biggest sellers probably for
[the James Webb Space Telescope] are its
ability to study these extrasolar planets
systems, but also its ability to see galax-
ies and their very early youth by looking
very far away and very far into the past,”
said University of Pennsylvania Reese
W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and
Astrophysics Gary Bernstein, who was
The Jewish Federation’s
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Courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
n July 11, NASA released the
fi rst images taken from the
James Webb Space Telescope.

A “dawn of a new era in astronomy,”
according to the agency, the images
provide the most detailed and clearest
infrared images of space, including of
the most distant galaxies and oldest star
clusters detected, according to NASA’s
press release.

For scientists, the images from the
Webb Telescope are representative of
the new opportunities for seeing the
universe, as well as a refl ection of the
culminating eff orts to achieve scientifi c
advancement. For spiritual leaders, the
reaction is similar.

Th ough religion and science are some-
times pitted against each other and treated
as contradicting ideologies, the reactions
raised Jewish. “So we’re going to learn
an awful lot about how the Milky Way
and things like it came to be.”
Th ough in awe of the new fi ndings
about space, Bernstein doesn’t feel the
need to attribute the vastness of the
universe to a deity, though he says some
members of the scientifi c community do.

“For me, and maybe — probably — a
majority of the people working, we don’t
feel the need for an agent in nature,”
Bernstein said. “I can be awed by what I
see there because it’s just what the uni-
verse produces.”
“Even on a more basic level, it’s just
realizing that the human scale of things
is so limited,” he added. “Our expe-
riences are very limited compared to
what’s in the whole universe.”
Th ough Bernstein does not have a
strong belief in God, his overall sen-
timent about outer space aligns with



rabbinic thought.

Rhawnhurst Congregation Bais
Medrash Harav B’nai Jacob Rabbi
Yitzchok Leizerowski shared a similar
belief about the significance of the Webb
images: “Jewish tradition is replete with
references to the vastness, incompre-
hensibility of the cosmos.”
Greater evidence of the vastness of
space serves as a lesson in humility,
Leizerowski said. It’s a way to teach
modestly and about an individual’s lim-
itations. Rabbi Abi Weber of Temple Beth
Zion-Beth Israel cited a midrash about
a Chasidic rebbe who believes an indi-
vidual should keep two slips of paper in
either of their pockets.

In one pocket, the slip of paper says, “I
am but dust and ashes;” the other, “The
universe was created just for me.”
“We are teeny tiny specks. We are
nothing,” Weber said. “And we have
to hold within us this great truth that
for each of us, the world was created
because each of us has a universe in and
of ourselves.”
Leizerowski, strong in his belief in a
deity, offers flexibility in the language
one can use to describe scientific phe-
nomena. He uses the phrase “first cause”
to describe the genesis of the universe,
opting against using “God,” which can,
for some people, conjure up images of a
man with a long, white beard and crown.

“Whatever name you’re going to give
it ... We cannot grasp this purposeful
first creation,” Liezerowski said.

One purpose of religion is to prescribe
meaning to unexplainable happenings
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in the universe — to find order in chaos.

“If you want to try to make some sort
of sense, some type of order, out of real-
ity, religion provides a certain answer,”
he said.

Judaism and astronomy have
gone hand-in-hand for centuries,
asserts NASA astrophysicist Jeremy
Schnittman, who studies black holes
and gravitational waves.

“In the ancient world, astronomy had
a very practical application,” Schnittman
said. “And then we see the Jewish liturgy —
and also all forms of classic literature and
legends, mythologies — that people would
just be really fascinated with the sky.”
Astronomy was used for navigation,
using the stars to determine direction-
ality, and agriculture, determining what
crops to plant by using the cycles of con-
stellations in the sky. Moon cycles have
allowed Jews to track the beginnings of
new months.

A religious Jew and scientist,
Schnittman holds onto the idea that
science and religion are not mutually
exclusive. He believes that the love of
God is so strong, that not only did
God create the universe, but also allow
humans the tools to begin to compre-
hend it.

“Why should equations math, multi-
plication and division somehow explain
the actual mechanics of the entire uni-
verse?” Schnittman said. “This idea that
God made a world that is — it’s really a
window into his own life as it were —
It’s just, to me, it’s an incredible gift.” JE
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