Torah and Science: Better Together

Torah and Science: Better Together

"One of my fondest memories from my early days studying at the Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) in the early 1970s were the Friday night sessions with Professor Yehuda (Leo) Levi at his home in the Bayit Vegan neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Though JCT now boasts a sizeable institution with three campuses and thousands of students, back when I was a student, there were no more than 40 of us studying in a small, converted apartment building. After the Friday night meal, we would trek over to Professor Levi’s home, and gather around his dining room table in the dim but warm glow of a generator driven lamp to discuss Torah and science.

Professor Levi was the head of the nascent electro-optics department at the College.  In addition to various scientific publications, he had by then also authored a slender volume called Vistas from Mount Moriah: A Scientist Views Judaism and the World (1959), in which he presented a philosophy of science from the perspective of a Torah observant Jew.  He went on to publish additional, more extensive works on the subject, but this book was our text.  And the starting point of our discussions was a statement in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 75a), in which the rabbis derived the obligation for calculating seasonal cycles and planetary courses from the passage in Deuteronomy (4:6), “For this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations.”"