Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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JUDAISM

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Fourth, science is not the source of value, and sci-

ence requires a framework of values whose au-

thority is other than human. Judaism’s moral val-

ues are absolute and immutable because they are

revealed by God.

Orthodox scholars reject biblical criticism and

treat the halachic tradition as an eternally valid

legal system that has its internal mechanisms of

self-interpretation. In terms of the doctrine of cre-

ation, Orthodox Jews, who tend to pursue the

study of the natural sciences but shun the human-

ities and social sciences, argue, not without a tinge

of apologetics, that the Big Bang theory validates

even the details of biblical narrative of creation, al-

though science still fails to explain why the world

was created. That explanation is available only to

the believing Jew who ascribes the creative act to

God’s will. In regard to bioethics, Orthodox jurists

such as Rabbi J. David Bleich and Rabbi Immanuel

Jakobovits, who are informed in contemporary

medicine, bring their extensive knowledge of the

halachic tradition to bear on a host of medical

problems. These include dwarfism, transsexual

surgery, egg donation, and implantation, Tay-

Sachs disease, dental practices, skin grafting, organ

transplantation, hazardous medical procedures, es-

tablishment of death, the treatment of human

corpses, eugenics, sterilization, contraception, the

proper conduct of physicians, gene therapy, and

cloning technology. Though no medical issue is

outside the scope of Halachah, it is the halachic

corpus itself that defines the principles that enable

the Modern Orthodox jurist to determine what is

permissible. To the extent that this endeavor re-

quires a theological justification, the model is

found in medieval Jewish philosophy of Mai-

monides and his disciples. Ultra-Orthodox Jews,

however, do not accept the Maimonidean synthe-

sis, are not interested in accommodation to mod-

ern life, and take a literalist approach to Scripture.

For them, science and Judaism belong to different

realms and their truth-claims are of unequal epis-

temic value.

In sum, while there is no theological impedi-

ment to the study of nature in Judaism, there has

been some unease about the pursuit of science in

traditional Jewish society. Either because scientific

knowledge originated outside Jewish society, or be-

cause scientific inquiry could divert Jews focusing

exclusively on Torah, premodern Jewish culture

harbored suspicion toward the study of nature,

classified as “secular learning.” In the Middle Ages,

especially in Spain and Southern France, Jews cul-

tivated the natural sciences and excelled in mathe-

matics, astronomy, and medicine, but these

achievements were overshadowed by the preoccu-

pation with law and with Kabbalah in the early-

modern period. In the modern period, the dialogue

between science and religion has been configured

in the context of Jewish social integration into West-

ern society and the need to rethink the authority of

Halachah. Reform Judaism, which champions full

integration and denies the authority of the rabbis,

takes for granted that Judaism is rational, and does

not see science as a challenge to Judaism at all.

Conservative Judaism, which promotes allegiance

to the Jewish tradition along with admission that

Halachah evolved over time, is aware of the chal-

lenge but considers scientific theories useful for a

deeper understanding of Scripture and legal deci-

sion-making. Finally, modern Orthodoxy, which in-

sists on the eternal validity of Halachah while being

open to modern life, is most creative in attempting

to respond to new scientific theories and techno-

logical advances. Most modern Jews, who define

themselves religiously, and not only ethnically or

culturally, regard scientific study of God’s created

world positively, while insisting that scientific

means and ends be judged and/or complemented

by Jewish religious and moral values.

See also JUDAISM, CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN SCIENCE

AND

RELIGION; JUDAISM, HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND

RELIGION, MEDIEVAL PERIOD; JUDAISM, HISTORY

SCIENCE AND RELIGION, MODERN PERIOD;

AIMONIDES

Bibliography

Bleich David J. Contemporary Halakhic Problems, Vols.

1–3. New York: Ktav, 1977–1989.

Borowitz, Eugene B. “The Autonomous Jewish Self.” Mod-

ern Judaism 4, no. 1 (1984): 39–56.

Cohen, Naomi W. “The Challenges of Darwinism and Bib-

lical Criticism to American Judaism.” Modern Judaism

4, no. 2 (1984): 121–158.

Dorff, Elliot N. “Artificial Insemination, Egg Donation, and

Adoption.” Conservative Judaism 49 (1996): 3–60.

Dorff, Elliot N. “A Methodology for Jewish Medical

Ethics.” In Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality:

A Reader, ed. Elliot N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

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JUDAISM,CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

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Fisch, Menachem. Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic

Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1997.

Goldstein, Bernard R., “Scientific Traditions in Late Me-

dieval Jewish Communities,” in Les juifs au regard de

l’histoire: Melanges en l’honneur de Bernard Blu-

menkranz (Picard: Paris, 1985), pp. 235-247.

Harvey, Steven, ed. The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias

of Science and Philosophy. Dordrecht, Boston, and

London: Kluwer, 2000.

Jakobovits, Immanuel. Jewish Medical Ethics: A Compara-

tive and Historical Study of the Jewish Religious Atti-

tude to Medicine and Its Practice. New York: Bloch,

1959.

Lamm, Norman. Torah Umadda: The Encounter of Reli-

gious Learning and Worldly Knowledge in the Jewish

Tradition. Northvale N.J.: J. Aronosn, 1990.

Langermann, Tzvi Y. The Jews and the Sciences in the

Middle Ages. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate/Variorium, 1999.

Luxemburg, Jack. “Science, Creationism, and Reform Ju-

daism.” Journal of Reform Judaism 29, no. 3 (1982):

42–49.

Plaut, Gunther W. Judaism and the Scientific Spirit. New

York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations,

1962.

Ruderman, David B. Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The

Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish

Physician. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1988.

Samuelson, Norbert M. Judaism and the Doctrine of Cre-

ation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,

1994.

Schacter, Jacob J. “Torah u-Madda Revisited: The Editor’s

Introduction.” The Torah U-Madda Journal 1 (1989):

1–22.

Tigay, Jeffrey H. “Genesis, Science, and Scientific Cre-

ationism.” Conservative Judaism 40, no. 2

(1987/1988): 20–27.

Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava. “Theology of Nature in Six-

teenth-Century Italian Jewish Philosophy.” Science in

Context 10, no. 4 (1997): 529–570.

Troster, Lawrence. “Love of God and the Anthropic Princi-

ple.” Conservative Judaism 40, no. 2 (1987/1988):

43–51.

Troster, Lawrence. “From Big Bang to Omega Point: Jew-

ish Response to Recent Theories to Modern Cosmol-

ogy.” Conservative Judaism 49, no. 4 (1997): 17–31.

HAVA TIROSH-SAMUELSON

JUDAISM,CONTEMPORARY

ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND

RELIGION

Although the pace of the scientific inquiry has in-

creased tremendously since 1800 and the hege-

mony with which scientific veracities shape culture

has surely increased as well, for religious systems,

texts, and communities, the challenges and ques-

tions posed by science are classic ones. Science as

a theory and practice makes several claims: that

the natural world has order, laws, and causality;

that such order can be apprehended and explained

by human beings; and that the manipulation of the

nameable, quantifiable, and discernable elements

of that natural and tangible world can be achieved

to organize human social and cultural life.

Science and ethics in Judaism: discernment

and discourse

In Jewish thought and tradition, this search for un-

derstanding, the discernment of order, and the re-

ordering of the natural world are not only achiev-

able, but a divinely commanded part of a larger

imperative to heal and to repair the world. For

Jewish philosophers, the freely entered Covenant

that assigns these tasks to an elected people is

what makes ethical norms possible (Hartman

1985). However, moral norms cannot be estab-

lished without reference to a complex legal system

that draws on centuries of case law and textual in-

terpretation. For over two centuries, this system

has been applied in reflection on the dilemmas of

science and of modernity. Science, in particular

natural science, has been wholeheartedly em-

braced as allowing the fullest understanding of the

events and cases in the world in which the com-

munity practices its religion.

Unlike faith traditions that reify the natural

world as essentially sacred and unchangeable, Jew-

ish thought affirms the human ability to alter the

natural world, seeing in this alteration the ability to

create justice and healing as acts of faith and obli-

gation. The relationship between Jewish thought

and scientific understanding varies over different

historical periods. In fact, the intellectual attention

of Jewish tradition had been largely focused on the

moral and social task rather than the actual

achievements of science until well into the Enlight-

enment (H. Levine 1972; Samuelson 2001).

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The structure of Jewish ethics and Halachah

Jewish ethical norms are established via a legal sys-

tem called Halachah. (The root of this word in

Hebrew is related to the word “to walk”; the same

root is also found in Islamic law or sharia.)

Bounded by this system of religio-legal behavior,

the individual Jew, once past the age of thirteen

(twelve for women), is responsible for the per-

formance of mitzvot or divine commandments of

activity and response to God and to the commu-

nity. There are 613 such commandments in the tra-

ditional reckoning, a metaphorical number that

stands for the completeness of obligation. Many

commandments are concerned with the daily de-

tails of ritual and familial life, many are employed

in the service of civil codes, and others set the

perimeters of response to newly arising dilemmas,

such as how to regard cloning, nuclear fission, and

space travel. At stake in the system is not only

whether the intended act is regarded as a prohib-

ited, permissible, or exemplary activity, but how

the activity ought to be carried out, using what cri-

teria for assessment. Jewish ethics is a complex ne-

gotiation with procedural questions and substan-

tive ones.

The first procedural question that the system of

Jewish ethics addresses is the problem of how to

achieve good ends in a nonteleological system. Ju-

daism answers this in a way that is the unique hall-

mark of the method; it is a method that, while

based in law, draws on a variety of sources both to

create the cases for the law and to resist and query

its assumptions. The basic procedure for the eval-

uation of norms is the mode of argumentation—

commentary, debate, and discussion. Essentially

casuistic, the halachic system uses the encounter

with the Torah text, and the encounter with the

other’s encounter with the text, to create a contin-

uous discursive community. Cases are raised to il-

lustrate points of law and then to illustrate alternate

interpretations of the law. Narrative, in a variety of

literary forms (metaphor, allegory, historical refer-

ence, intertextual mirroring) called aggadah, are

embedded in the text. While the details of the ag-

gadah did not create binding laws, the form was

used to grapple with and embellish the discussion

of the details of the Halachah. The casuistic ac-

count attempts to decipher the particular and spe-

cific human ways the principle has been, or theo-

retically could be, applied. In fact, it is essential to

remember that much of the case law turns on

elaborate constructs that never happened, or could

never be expected to happen, as well as actual

cases that arose in community practice.

Judaism is both a deontological and a casuis-

tic system, rooted in rules, duties, and normative

conduct and concerned with motive and process.

But it is unlike a purely deontological system be-

cause the real world, and the context and out-

come of each case, count in their assessment. Ju-

daism is a modified casuistic deontology.

Consequences, once enacted, are reexamined and

debated. The real world matters: knowledge of

precedence, historicity, the tactile, and the theo-

retical all count in this system. Human reason is

needed both to negotiate the system and to inter-

pret intelligently the sensory natural world. Tal-

mudic methodology was argument structured by

text, history, and community. These three ele-

ments, and the use of reason to decipher them,

modify the deontological method of Jewish ethics.

It was deontological because it assumed Torah law

as motivational, commanded, central, and binding;

it was casuistic because it was also inductive and

case (context) modified.

The central claim of Jewish ethics is that truth

is found in the house of discursive study—the bet

midrash. Such a public discourse is created when

Jews argue, face to face, about the meaning and

relevance of the narrative, symbols, and referents.

Embedded in the problem are issues of context,

causation, agency, norm, and assessment. Each of

these issues must be addressed by whomever is

describing whatever methodology of ethics they

use, with the assumption that methodology in

ethics involves not only a general theory of moral-

ity, authority, and value, but also “middle axioms,”

or the middle ground between general principles

and the details of policy. James Childress and John

Macquarrie, however, consider this a “misleading

term” in the Westminster Dictionary of Christian

Ethics (1967). Perhaps a better description would

be a coinage: “middle processes.” Methodology in

any integral ethical system must address both the

why and the how of a “right act” if it is to have co-

herency and if it can be used in the human hands

and heart of the world, and Jewish ethics is no ex-

ception. Jewish ethics presumes public choices; it

assumes community, human sociability, and em-

bodied dailiness, and that ordinary human acts

have a weight and meaning that ought to be the

subject of urgent discourse.

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A central question: Is there an ethics

independent of Halachah?

The idea that rules and laws form the base of the

system can be agreed on, yet the methodology of

argumentation creates nuances of interpretation.

Since about the mid-nineteenth century, four

branches of Judaism have developed. All acknowl-

edge the role of Halachah, but each gives it differ-

ent weight in the setting of normative standards for

their tradition. For the Orthodox Jew, Halachah is

interpreted by his or her rabbi, who then consults

with leading scholars if the issue is difficult, and

that decision is considered halachically binding.

For the Conservative Jew, Halachah has a strong

voice in the determination of din ( Judgment) by

the rabbinic community. The Conservative min-

hag (custom) is determined by the community.

Jewish law is then integrated with insights from

the social sciences and Western philosophic norms

in making a decision. For Reform Jews, the indi-

vidual is autonomously responsible for his or her

own choices, in light of the “tradition” and the pri-

mary ethical stance of the tradition. This entry will

describe the traditional or halachically grounded

position, although it is crucial to remember that

among Jews there is considerable variance. It is ar-

guable that, even for Jews not bound by its re-

straint, Halachah wields a strong methodological

influence.

The central procedural question for all

branches of Judaism stands in tension with the

praxis. For example, the dilemma of the achieve-

ment of justice is not resolved, and the quest itself

proves key to opening the method. The multivoc-

ity of the form itself insists on the questioning of

the solidity of the text: To name as definitive one

personal interpretation is a violation of the Talmu-

dic method. For many of the proof texts there are

countervailing premises and correspondent inim-

itable truths, and rabbinic decisors who defend dif-

fering positions.

Marvin Fox, writing in Modern Jewish Ethics,

Theory, and Practice (1975), one of the central

works in English on this topic, argued that the ha-

lachic system itself includes an accountability to a

variety of sources. His insight was that the basic

method incorporates science, philosophy, and nat-

ural reality into the traditional texts. The rabbis

used exegesis and interpretation as the most im-

portant device to reconcile the basic and sacred

text with the reality of exile, change, and science.

Fox further noted that the incorporation of “exter-

nal to Sinitic” sources was always a part of the dis-

course. He argued that Maimonides (c. 1135–1204)

assumes math, astronomy, and “speculative reali-

ties” are better known by the Arabic world than by

the rabbinic sages and that Jews need to “accept

truth from any source.” Fox noted Judah HaNasi’s

confession that, in some arguments, the Gentile

sages “vanquished the sages of Israel.” This was

cited in the tradition as a case of how best evi-

dence and best argument from whatever source

ought to prevail.

Saadya Gaon made this point, according to Fox,

even more forcefully by insisting that reason ex-

isted both prior to and after Sinai. Further, Fox

noted that interpretation has always varied widely,

even at the heart of basic texts (like the Moses story,

the Ruth story, the view of the Nazarite vow, and

the problem of creation itself). Additionally, he

pointed to the flexibility of the aggadah as indica-

tive of the freedom at the heart of Jewish method it-

self. Fox reminded us that tradition has each Jew at

Sinai now and for eternal generations and noted the

rabbinic Midrash that says each Jew hears the reve-

lation through his or her own body and experience.

Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchik, the late leading

contemporary halachist, wrote extensively regard-

ing the relationship between the method of ethical

discernment and the scientific method itself, find-

ing in physics a way of understanding the structure

of human understanding. He argued that physics

and the theory of relativity teach that truth can be

viewed from many perspectives, and that the uni-

verse is not a Newtonian machine, but a complex

of related happenings. One’s perspective, then,

will determine the “true” view of the object. One

can see a stream and note its beauty, its physical

properties, or its ritual use, for example. All are

“real” views of the same phenomena. Further,

Soleveitchik understood that human perception is

a function of the truth that each person perceives,

as each person individually views the “real” from

the perspective of a particular and chosen order.

What is seen as actual is a chosen fact pattern

based on a system of value and belief. Soleveitchik

posited the notion that to be religious or to be sci-

entific, while they may represent radically different

worldviews, was not only to value the world dif-

ferently, but to experience and to see the phe-

nomena of the world differently as well. That no-

tion was entirely consistent with the concept of

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truth understood as “plural truth,” and it served to

explain how specific events could be seen as mir-

acles or a function of the events of the causative

natural world.

Science: the epistemic questions

Scientific inquiry is based on the application of

human observation and human reasoning to

events in the observable world. As such, it might

seem that science offers a primal threat to faith tra-

ditions due to the unseen and unprovable truth

claims of faith. However, Jewish tradition has long

been able to incorporate secular knowledge from

medicine and science into ethical norms. New in-

sights are evaluated as cases to be compared to

historically precedential ones. Scientific insights

and achievements can thus be incorporated.

Hence, post-Darwinian writings reinterpreted the

“six days of Creation” as occurring in “six periods,”

or six divine “days,” and electricity became legally

bound by the rules of the Sabbath by understand-

ing it as a form of “fire-making.” “Science” or sec-

ular knowledge in general was often used to rep-

resent “a vehicle for a certain cluster of liberal,

democratic values” argued as central to Western, or

American values, a metaphor for the use of objec-

tivity, impartiality, and civic order (Holliger). The

methods of science, the use of clinical trials and

controls and the use of animal models were also

strongly embraced by Jews. In general, Judaism

makes the assumption that the order of nature is

accessible to human reason, and that nature, while

offering some suggestive models for human be-

havior, is not the source of moral authority.

While social conditions, exclusion from the de-

veloping academy, constraints on employment, and

isolation in European ghettos left Jewish intellectu-

als behind in the development of science in the

early modern period, the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries were marked by an enthusiastic embrace

of and a mastery of many fields of scientific inquiry.

Science: substantive questions

Astronomy and cosmology dominated early reflec-

tions in Jewish thought because of the importance

in calculations of calendar holidays, and, as Hillel

Levine notes, because of the rabbinic attention to

time rather than space after the destruction of the

Second Temple (Levine, p 856). Levine further

remarks that Jews, in their capacity as traders be-

tween different Jewish communities, acted as inter-

preters of the insights from Islamic and renaissance

Christian civilizations. Medicine, as a commanded

obligation of Jewish communities, was often a

venue for investigation in science. Jewish physi-

cians were often called upon to assume the rela-

tively high-risk activity of caring for the sick, in part

because they had a access to the large armamen-

tarium of knowledge. Scientific discovery came

later to the large Jewish community. A complex in-

terest in kabbalistic beliefs and rituals, a renewed

emphasis on spirituality, and compelling disputes

about how to resist persecution and about how to

engage modernity politically or communally, dom-

inated Jewish views on the “new science” of the

Enlightenment in the sixteenth through the eigh-

teenth centuries. To the extent that science was

posited as opposed to faith, it was regarded in tra-

ditional communities as suspect. It is Levine’s con-

tention that Jews in that period did not view sci-

ence as “universally valid, but simply as the source

of religious persecution in a new key” (p. 860).

But the search for the truth grounds moral rea-

soning. By the nineteenth century, the truth claims

of science had been well established. Descriptive

science such as the cataloging of species, germ

theory, and the use of instruments of observation

were eagerly taken on by the Jewish intelligentsia.

In the twentieth century, Jewish commentators

turned their attention to the problems of interven-

tion, prevention, and cure, as well as the search for

origins. Finding little to prohibit basic research,

and reasoning from principles that stressed stew-

ardship and ordering of the natural world, Jews

were easily able to reconcile new discoveries, sup-

porting the sense not only that the natural world

was knowable, but that it ought to be. It should be

mentioned here, of course, that Nobel Prizes in the

sciences and medicine have been won by Jews in

numbers far greater then their presence in the

world population.

Halachah, too, has advanced to address new

science. Science disrupts categories of being. An es-

sential premise of the method is that events are best

understood by disassembly into knowable parts—

ever smaller, ever more essential. For a halachic sys-

tem, this offers an opportunity to renegotiate the

borders of permissibility at each component piece,

commodity, or event. Modern halachic authorities

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such as Orthodox rabbi Faitel Levine openly strug-

gle with the challenge that new science brings to a

textual tradition governed by law. Levine, a tradi-

tional rabbinic poskim (a rabbi to whom specific

legal questions are directed) specializing in new

technology, writes in Halacha, Medical Science,

and Technology (1987): “Once reality was relatively

constant, unchanging . . . in the objective world in

which halachah operates . . . But things have

changed. In today’s world, reality itself is undergo-

ing repeated, fundamental changes. Objects which

have little in common with traditional objects are

constantly produced . . . consequently, our contem-

porary world in evading the control of traditional

terms and concepts. But Torah is eternal!”

Recent controversies in the field of reproduc-

tive health and genetic medicine have often domi-

nated the debate between religious communities

and scientific investigators. In these debates one

can see how the concern for healing, the obliga-

tion to repair the world, and the view that human

life is fully ensouled only in developmental stages,

rather than at the moment of conception, has al-

lowed for a robust acceptance of basic research in

biological sciences.

The acts of practice in traditional Judaism re-

volved around two centralities. The first is study of

text, and the second is commanded acts that create

a just society. Central to Jewish texts is the recogni-

tion of the as yet unredeemed quality of the

world—even the natural world as understood by

science. Just as circumcision is one mark of the

covenant, a mark of a human response to birth,

and a refinement of the natural world, so too is the

notion that advanced scientific inquiry is a part of

tikkun olam, the mandate to be an active partner in

the world’s repair and perfection. In the world of

suffering and injustice, much, although not all, of

clinical and business scientific research can be un-

derstood as an opportunity to address this injustice.

This justice consideration is made actual by a sup-

port for science, medical advance, and the freedom

of inquiry, all ways that human work to perfect the

world can be fully embraced. While texts warn of

the possibility of hubris, and there are many texts

that teach of the danger of confusing the quest for

learning with the temptation to control, the struggle

to understand and to interpret the covenantal rela-

tionship includes extending the duty to heal. In this

way, Jewish thought has long turned to science as

a critical way to lay the groundwork for the study

and the repair of the world.

See also JUDAISM; JUDAISM, HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND

RELIGION, MEDIEVAL PERIOD; JUDAISM, HISTORY

SCIENCE AND RELIGION, MODERN PERIOD

Bibliography

Childress, James, and Macquarrie, John, eds. The West-

minster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia:

Westminster Press, 1967.

Fox, Marvin, ed. Modern Jewish Ethics, Theory, and

Practice. Columbus: Ohio State University Press,

1975.

Holliger, David. Science, Jews, and Secular Culture:

Studies in Mid-Twentieth Century American Intellec-

tual History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1995.

Levine, Faitel. Halacha, Medical Science, and Technology:

Perspectives on Contemporary Halacha Issues. New

York: Maznaim, 1987.

Levine, Hillel. “Science.” In Contemporary Jewish Religious

Thought, ed. Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flor.

New York: Free Press, 1972.

Samuelson, Norbert M. “Rethinking Ethics In the Light of

Jewish Thought and the Life Sciences.” Journal of Re-

ligious Ethics 20, no. 2 (2001): 209–234.

Soleveitchik, Joseph B. The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on

Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought. New York:

Seth Press, 1986.

LAURIE ZOLOTH

UDAISM,HISTORY OF

CIENCE AND RELIGION,

EDIEVAL PERIOD

Interest in science among medieval Jews, which

began in the ninth century, was a consequence of

the unprecedented rise of a scientific culture

within Islamic civilization a century earlier. Tradi-

tionally, Jewish intellectual life was self-contained.

It revolved around a canonic corpus of texts, no-

tably the Talmud and the midrash in Hebrew and

Aramaic; cultural goods existing beyond this cor-

pus were considered as threatening “foreign sci-

ences.” But having adopted Arabic (or rather

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Judeo-Arabic) as their cultural language, Jews be-

came acquainted with the surrounding Arabic cul-

ture. This set in motion a process of reception, as-

similation, and transmission of knowledge, leading

to the constitution of the medieval Jewish rational-

ist culture, first in Arabic and then in Hebrew.

The first influential Jewish writers to discuss

philosophy in Arabic were Saadia Gaon (882–942)

in Baghdad, and Isaac Israeli (855–955) in

Kairouan (present-day Tunisia). Both drew heavily

on contemporary scientific theories and thereby in-

troduced their Jewish readers to them, ipso facto

also legitimizing them. In the next century, the

center of gravity of the philosophic-scientific activ-

ity of Jews switched to Spain: Salomon Ibn Gavirol

(c.1020–1057), the well-known poet, was followed

by a number of scholars who wrote books on reli-

gious Jewish philosophy: Baya Ibn Paqudah (sec-

ond half of the eleventh century), Juda ha-Levi

(c.1075–1141), Joseph Ibn Zaddik (d.1149), Abra-

ham Ibn Daud (c.1110—1180), and others. Beyond

their great ideological differences, all these works

naturally drew on contemporary scientific and

philosophical theories, testifying that these theories

were familiar to, and accepted by, the educated

Jewish reader. These same works were translated

into Hebrew a century or two later for the benefit

of readers not knowing Arabic, thereby introduc-

ing Greek and Arabic science into the traditionalist

communities of Southern France.

Maimonides

Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), the central me-

dieval figure of both Jewish thought and Law, was

born in Córdoba, Spain. Owing to persecutions by

the Almohads, who forbade Jews or Christians to

profess their religion openly, Maimonides left Cór-

doba and eventually arrived in Egypt, where he

settled in the 1160s. Maimonides’s two most im-

portant writings are the monumental Mishne

Torah, a code of the Jewish law composed in He-

brew, and the Guide for the Perplexed, the major

Jewish work of religious philosophy, written in

Arabic. Maimonides possessed charisma, a natural,

unquestioned authority accepted near and far. The

opinions Maimonides expressed with respect to

the value of the study of science and philosophy

are therefore of crucial importance for an adequate

understanding of the Jewish attitudes toward them

from the thirteenth century onward.

The Aristotelian sciences and philosophy are

an integral part of Maimonides’s worldview. The

Mishenh Torah, although a legal work, opens with

a concise account of the Aristotelian cosmology, in

which Maimonides indicates that the first com-

mandment is to know—not believe—that there ex-

ists a First Being who endows with existence all

beings. In the Guide for the Perplexed, scientific

theories are woven into the very substance of most

arguments. Maimonides also repeatedly states ex-

plicitly that the study of the sciences and of phi-

losophy is strictly indispensable for a knowledge

of God, which is the goal of human existence.

Maimonides regards a contradiction between

the truths established by the philosophers (i.e.,

Arab Aristotelianism) and the Scriptures as an im-

possibility. He holds that the scientifically estab-

lished tenets of Aristotelian philosophy being nec-

essarily true, whatever statements in the Scriptures

appear to be at variance with them must be inter-

preted so as to make the Scriptures conform. This

means that whoever naïvely reads the Scriptures

without the input of science and philosophy nec-

essarily errs and ends up in heresy; only the stu-

dent of Aristotle can correctly grasp the meaning of

the Scriptures. For Maimonides, acquiring scientific

knowledge is therefore a religious obligation: “lis-

ten to the truth from whoever says it,” Maimonides

repeatedly urged. Only reason, not tradition, was

to determine which knowledge-claims were to be

accepted within Judaism and which not. Mai-

monides thus deserves the credit for having

opened the gates widely to the study of the “for-

eign sciences” within Judaism.

This statement must be qualified, however. For

Maimonides, the study of the sciences is never an

end in itself: It is always propaedeutic, preparing

the student for something more noble, namely, the

metaphysical knowledge of God. In this respect,

Maimonides’s stance differs fundamentally from

that of the Muslim scientists and philosophers of

his day, with whom he is often compared: Mai-

monides and his Muslim contemporaries construe

the social role of the man of knowledge in very

different terms.

The place that Maimonides assigns to science

is limited also on the epistemological plane, for he

sets severe limits on the possible bearing of the sci-

ences. Maimonides thus argues that, contrary to

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— 489—

what Aristotle himself believed, Aristotle did not

succeed in demonstrating that the world was eter-

nal. Maimonides also argues that upholders of cre-

ation ex nihilo have not been able to demonstrate

their own claims either. For Maimonides, the ques-

tion of the eternity of the world is thus undecid-

able (i.e., it cannot be scientifically decided). Mai-

monides then says that he himself opts for the

thesis of creation, but for theological and social,

not scientific, reasons. Thus, although Maimonides

affirms that without science the Scriptures cannot

be correctly understood, in the end he assigns to

science a severely curtailed scope. Maimonides

is thus fundamentally ambivalent about the role

of science.

This ambiguity of Maimonides’s message was

exacerbated by the fact that Maimonides affirmed

that his Guide was an “esoteric text,” one compris-

ing certain “secrets” that only the wise and learned

reader would be able to uncover. Some readers

took this statement as signaling that Maimonides’s

true beliefs were the opposite of those he ostensi-

bly affirmed, and that in truth he held radical the-

ses—notably that of the eternity of the world—

which he did not wish to state openly. Some

Maimonideans therefore found in the Guide mes-

sages that were the precise opposite of the literal

messages.

Maimonides’s philosophy was a decisive turn-

ing point: It legitimized the study of the Greek-

Arabic sciences as a permissible, indeed, an oblig-

atory activity. Still, at the same time, the scope of

the sciences and their authority relative to that of

the traditional disciplines was not defined un-

equivocally. This remained a subject of controversy

for the centuries to come.

Transmission of science and philosophy into

and Northern Spain and Southern France

The reception of science and philosophy within

the Jewish communities of Northern Spain and

Southern France, whose only cultural tongue was

Hebrew, can usefully be divided into three phases,

The first phase of the transmission began early in

the twelfth century when Spanish scholars com-

posed in Hebrew (or translated from Arabic) sci-

entific works for Jews living north of the Pyrénées.

During the first half of the twelfth century, Abra-

ham bar Hiyya (died c. 1145) of Barcelona, a po-

litical leader and scholar who was very well versed

in the sciences of his day, wrote a number of

works summarizing the sciences in Hebrew. He of-

fered basic courses in such immediately useful dis-

ciplines as practical geometry and astronomy, and

also composed an encyclopedia affording “general

culture” with no immediate practical utility. Also

influential was the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra

(1089–1164), who left Spain and traveled through-

out France, Italy, and England, spreading his ideas

and writings. In addition to his astronomical and

astrological works, Ibn Ezra composed numerous

Biblical commentaries that often invoked scientific,

philosophical, and astrological notions. Ibn Ezra

thereby suggested that these scientific theories

were indispensable to uncover the true meaning of

the Scriptures. Owing to the great popularity of

these commentaries throughout Europe, they con-

tributed much to the spread and legitimization of

“Greek learning.”

The second phrase of the process gathered

momentum when, in the second half of the twelfth

century, Andalusian Jewish scholars immersed in

Arabic culture fled to Provence to escape the Al-

mohad persecutions in Spain, enhancing consider-

ably the process of translation into Hebrew of

philosophical works. A number of erudite Jewish

families settled in Provence during the late 1140s,

bringing with them a culture that was altogether

different from that of their brethren. Whereas the

latter were absorbed in traditional, Talmudic learn-

ing, the immigrants were comfortable with Arabic

poetry, literature, grammar, philosophy, and sci-

ence. This led to a massive translation movement

that was to last for some two centuries, during

which the newcomers and their descendants ren-

dered a rich body of literature from Arabic into

Hebrew. The first translated works were mostly

Jewish religious philosophy, but gradually works

of general philosophy and science by pagan and

Muslim writers were translated as well.

The third phrase began after the transmission

process got a new and decisive impetus when Mai-

monides’s writings, notably the Hebrew translation

of the Guide of the Perplexed (1204), became influ-

ential in southern France. Jewish scholars imbued

in Arabic culture composed a number of encyclo-

pedic works with the aim of affording Jews who

could read only Hebrew an overview of the sci-

ences of the day. In parallel, scientific and philo-

sophical works were translated systematically and

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— 490—

professionally. Many of the translators were schol-

ars belonging to the Tibbonid family: Yehudah

Ibn Tibbon (c. 1120–1190); his son Samuel

(1150–1230), the translator of the Guide; and

Samuel’s son Moses (c. 1240–1285). A number of

other translators of scientific and philosophical

texts were active too. Together, these scholars cre-

ated the Jewish medieval philosophical-scientific

bookshelf. This bookshelf includes the basic works

of the exact sciences, beginning with Euclid (math-

ematics) and Ptolemy (astronomy), and numerous

further mathematical and astronomical texts. It also

comprises the basic works of the “qualitative” sci-

ences (natural philosophy, biology, medicine, psy-

chology, metaphysics, etc.). Most important in this

respect are Averröes’s systematized presentations

of the Aristotelian doctrines, which became for the

centuries to come the standard textbooks studied

by Jewish scholars.

Assessment of scientific contributions of

medieval Judaism

The introduction of these works of Greek and Ara-

bic science into Judaism triggered a production of

scientific works in Hebrew. This movement devel-

oped on the basis of texts available in Hebrew, for

it was fairly (although not totally) isolated from the

Latin scholastic university culture. Whereas, from a

cultural point of view, this literature had great sig-

nificance for Jewish intellectual life, it is not com-

parable in terms of originality and intrinsic impor-

tance qua science to the literature of medieval

Arabic or Latin cultures. Astronomy is, however, a

significant exception to this rule, and Jewish as-

tronomers performed as well as (and occasionally

better than) their contemporaries. The reason for

this relative underdevelopment of medieval He-

brew science was arguably the social role that Mai-

monides had assigned to science as (merely)

propaedeutic to the study of God. Two towering

figures stand out as exceptions, however. Levi ben

Gershom, or Gersonides (1288–1344), lived in

Provence and wrote treatises on logic, mathematics,

biblical exegesis, philosophy, and astronomy. In all

these domains his contributions are eminently orig-

inal, and the fact that he made numerous astro-

nomical observations, using instruments he himself

invented, must be particularly emphasized. Ger-

sonides also had disciples who studied commen-

taries by Averröes with him and engaged in a writ-

ten debate over purely scientific issues. The second

figure is Hasdai Crescas (c. 1340–1412), who re-

garded Jewish adherence to the philosophical doc-

trines as a threat to the coherence and very exis-

tence of the community. This stance motivated

Crescas toward a radical and highly insightful criti-

cism of Aristotle’s physics, which contributed to

the rejection of Aristotelian philosophy during the

Renaissance.

The introduction of the study of the sciences

into the Jewish discourse did not go unchallenged.

Even before Maimonides, Juda ha-Levi’s Kuzari

(1140) had criticized the philosophical project and

contrasted the traditional “God of Abraham” with

the philosophers’ “God of Aristotle.” Maimonides

was vehemently attacked during his lifetime and

the split, indeed the confrontation, between tradi-

tionalists and their adversaries over the study of

the profane sciences was to continue during the

centuries to come.

The thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries

were the heyday of Hebrew science and of the ra-

tionalist Jewish culture in general. The rise of Kab-

balah and the expulsion of the Jews from the Iber-

ian peninsula in the 1490s were followed by a long

period in which few Jews engaged in science or

philosophy. The influential astronomer Abraham

Zacut (late fifteenth century) is an exception. Still,

here and there during the sixteenth and seven-

teenth centuries, some Ashkenazi rabbis in Ger-

many and Poland continued to study the texts of

the medieval Hebrew bookshelf. In the early eigh-

teenth century, this dormant tradition was to bear

new fruit and provide an important impetus to the

Haskalah ( Jewish enlightenment movement).

The cultural dimension of the reception of

the sciences

The reception of science and philosophy within

medieval Judaism had implications far beyond the

mere sphere of science: It was nothing less than a

theological upheaval. On the one hand, Mai-

monides’s consequential synthesis legitimized the

profane books as a source of knowledge, in addi-

tion to the traditional, sacred ones. On the other,

the espousal of philosophy and science implied

the acceptance of formerly unheard-of religious

teachings: The Maimonidean God had very little in

common with that of the Talmudists or the kabbal-

ists, and, in addition, the intellectual activity of

those who sought felicity (immortality of the soul)

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— 491—

through philosophical knowledge was incommen-

surable with that of the fideists, for whom the Jews’

afterlife depended solely on respecting the com-

mandments and on erudition in the Talmud. In

Even Bohan (The Touchstone), his satirical

maqâmah, the early fourteenth-century scientist,

translator and poet Qalonimos ben Qalonimos

acutely noted: “Our Gods are as numerous as our

towns.” This upheaval thus implied a profound

transformation of the definition of what it meant to

be Jewish. The depth of the resulting fragmenta-

tion of Jewish society is perhaps comparable to

that of the contemporary split of Judaism between

Reformist, Conservative, and Orthodox.

See also JUDAISM; JUDAISM, CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN

CIENCE AND RELIGION; JUDAISM, HISTORY OF

SCIENCE AND RELIGION, MODERN PERIOD;

AIMONIDES

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GAD FREUDENTHAL

JUDAISM,HISTORY OF

SCIENCE AND RELIGION,

ODERN PERIOD

Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) wrote at the be-

ginning of his comprehensive code of Jewish law,

the Mishneh Torah, that the most fundamental

commandment in Judaism is to believe in the cre-

ator deity, that no one can believe in the creator

who does not understand creation, and to under-

stand creation requires knowledge of the sciences,

especially physics and astronomy. All medieval

rabbis agreed that the proper worship of God in-

volves commandments to do what is good and to

believe what is true, and many of them agreed

with Maimonides that scientific knowledge was a

critical way to fulfill this religious obligation.

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