Now that Sukkot and Simchat Torah are over, the weekly Torah parsha readings begin again with Bereshit. So this seems like an appropriate time to consider the importance of the teachings of Bereshit, not just to the Jewish people, but to the entire world. In the Jewish Link of December 22, 2022, I wrote an article titled, “Is Hashem Using Scientists as His Agents to Fulfill Torah Prophecies?” There I showed a remarkable agreement of Bereshit’s description of creation with modern day scientific theories. Here, I would like to revisit Bereshit and comment further on some of its messages.
There are two items, known by almost everyone in the world today, that have scientific implications. One is the Einstein equation E = mc2, linking energy and mass. The other is in the first sentence in Bereshit, “and God said let there be light.”
Einstein posited his theory in 1905 in which he linked together two heretofore separate factors, energy and mass. This revolutionized scientific thinking, and also forever changed the course of human history. The conversion of mass into energy was dramatically demonstrated in 1945 when a small amount of U235 was converted into a massive amount of energy, and a single Atom-bomb obliterated the entire city of Hiroshima.
On the other hand, I am not aware that the reverse, or the conversion of energy into mass has been demonstrated by scientists. However, if scientists looked in the Torah, they may have been alerted to that possibility a long time ago. Bereshit clearly describes the conversion of energy, i.e. light, which condensed first into some sort of indefinite “flux,” and then into matter, producing the entire universe we see today. Unfortunately, only after many years passed, did modern day scientists “discover” virtually the same progression. After much debate, they concluded that the universe started with a “big bang,” which was a pinpoint of incredibly high temperature, pure energy, which then cooled, first into an indefinite mass probably consisting of of subatomic particles, and then condensed further into atoms and matter, and the universe we see today.
This is a good example of what I wrote in my earlier Jewish Link article, that scientists are still scrambling thousands of years later to “discover” what has been described in the Torah all along, if they had only looked. And maybe Einstein did. Einstein was 26 years old when he postulated his theory linking energy and mass. I’m sure sometime in his early years he was exposed, at least to some extent, to Bereshit. Almost every child in the Western World is. One can’t help but wonder if that played any part in his subsequent work.
I also wonder what other “new” revelations foretold by the Torah scientists will claim to have discovered next. Stay tuned.
