New (Old) Age of Science
A little-known meeting once occurred between Albert Einstein and Rav Avraham Kook took place in 1925 as the famed physicist visited Israel. He and the great Kabbalist spoke for hours, mostly about the then-recent findings of Einstein’s relativity.
Ancient tradition teaches that humans were created with an incomprehensible degree of spiritual perception and capability. In the Biblical language, Adam and Eve could walk with G_D. I doubt we'll ever fully understand that idea on this side of the World to Come.
Among the most important of capabilities, we could naturally see the connectedness of all things. This was one of the most significant losses humankind suffered after the sin in the Garden¹, one that still haunts us today.
Adam the Giant?
This reading of Genesis views creation from a different perspective in which Adam represents the union of the physical and the metaphysical. To use the ancient language, Adam was a ladder² connecting Heaven and Earth.
Today, we are cognitively defaulted into a world of physicality, time, space, and entropy. Adam, however, had the ability to traverse the upper worlds³. The Talmud preserves a memory of this idea:
The size of Adam the first man was from one end of the world to the other, as it is stated: "Since the day that G_D created man upon the earth, and from one end of the heavens to the other"… - Chagigah 12
The Sages were not saying Adam was a giant in physical terms. They are commenting on what we might call his span of consciousness. In our original iteration, we possessed (and on some buried level, still possess) the capacity to move past the edge of the physical and reach the upper worlds through the mind and soul.
So exalted was this first human that the angels themselves mistook Adam for the Creator⁴.
In modern terms, humans may have had an interdimensional quality.
The Resurrection Reframed
In this frame, our exile from the Garden was not only a moral fall, but a dimming of these spiritual faculties. But we did not lose the software; we simply lost our ability to easily tap into it.
The redemption and the World to Come⁵ is none other than the time when G_D's presence begins to restore these innate capabilities.
Interestingly, the Gospels seem to portray this reality as Jesus, after the resurrection, walks through a physical door. It seems the resurrection may involve some transcendent framework of physics.
A New Age of Science
For centuries, well into our time, the Enlightenment movement convinced us that these capacities were ancient superstition or even delusional. We were taught to ignore our intuition and only trust that which can be measured.
At some point, however, science made a bit of a U-turn.
In the 1800's, a new generation of scientists made some startling discoveries. They began to find that the universe does not behave the way the Enlightenment promised.
This was right on time, according to Jewish tradition⁶.
The findings of this new brand of physics reflected ideas from the ancient Jewish mystical tradition.
It was Albert Einstein's early work that helped crack the door open to quantum physics. He seems to have spent some of his later years recoiling from where it led, even calling these findings "spooky."
Einstein In Israel
During Einstein's only visit to the Land of Israel in February 1923, he met with the Chief Rabbi, Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook⁷, who was a kabbalist and a Giant in his own circles. Apparently, the physicist and the kabbalist spoke at length, much of it about relativity and the overlaps with the Kabbalistic tradition.
Einstein is reported to have remarked that Rav Kook was among the few who truly grasped his theory. Rav Kook stated⁸:
“Your theories perfectly match the concepts believed by our people from the beginning.
…your theories coincide with our beliefs, we were happy to hear that a man of science has uncovered in the physical, material world, things that have always been for us of the utmost spiritual importance. A scientist who deals with the laws of nature is, in fact, dealing with the spiritual world and spiritual laws, too.”
It seems to me that we are not so much entering a new age of science, but recovering one buried from long ago. This newfound perspective might be a light along the back to the perspective that we're all connected, and there is more in the universe than can be measured.
Want to Learn More?
The Hidden Orchard
The Hidden Orchard
The Hidden Orchard
Notes:
¹ Elevating the Sparks, and Tikkun Olam
² Angels Ascending and Descending on the Ladder
⁴ Midrash Genesis Rabbah 8:10
⁵ What Comes After Heaven? A Guide to the World of Souls and the Olam HaBa
⁸ Jewish Mysticism, Scholem, Notes to Lecture 1, Note 18