As the James Webb Space Telescope sends back unprecedented images of galaxy formation from the dawn of time, humanity stands in awe of the cosmos like never before. This marvel of engineering—requiring more than 30 years of development, $10 billion in funding and collaboration among thousands of scientists across 29 countries—reflects humanity’s deep-seated drive to understand the universe around us. For many, this remarkable expression of human curiosity prompts challenging questions about the relationship between scientific discovery and religious faith. Should our fascination with understanding the natural world be seen as competing with—or enhancing—our relationship with the Creator?
Traditional Jewish sources since Talmudic times have provided a clear answer: Scientific knowledge and religious understanding aren’t just compatible but deeply complementary. The famed Vilna Gaon expressed this interdependence with striking clarity: “proportional to what one lacks in his understanding of the sciences, he will lack a hundred times in his understanding of Torah.” Yet despite clear endorsements from our most authoritative rabbinic sources—from the Talmud to Maimonides to the Maharal of Prague—many Jews at best view science and Torah as unrelated domains, and at worst see them as contradicting each other, often displaying not just disinterest but even disdain for science.
This disconnect does more than merely depart from our tradition; it actively undermines our ability to fulfill core religious obligations by cutting us off from one of the most powerful pathways to cultivating a deep and abiding relationship with God. Maimonides provides explicit guidance in Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 2:2 on developing love and fear of God: “When a person thinks about His works and His great and wonderful creations and sees in them His inestimable, infinite genius, one will immediately love and praise and exalt [God] and be filled with a great desire to know His Great Name.” Today’s unprecedented views into the cosmos offer us extraordinary opportunities to fulfill this directive.
As we delve into nature’s universal laws and fundamental building blocks—whether through images of distant galaxies or studies of subatomic particles—we begin to perceive an underlying unity, elegance and interconnectedness that permeates all of Creation. This revelation resonates powerfully with Judaism’s deepest tenet: yichud Hashem, “the perfect oneness of God.” From the mind-bending physics of black holes—where the very fabric of space and time is stretched to its limits—to the celestial mechanics that guide our prayer times, each natural process reveals the extraordinary wisdom with which God crafted our world.
Modern scientific discoveries reveal and reinforce these spiritual realities in profound ways. The second law of thermodynamics affirms that disorder inevitably increases unless energy is continuously invested to maintain order, mirroring the reality that our spiritual growth and relationship with God require constant effort to sustain. Many recent scientific discoveries point to a Creator as the only rational explanation for our universe’s incredibly fine-tuned physical constants and natural laws. Quantum mechanics shows that at its most fundamental level, relationships between particles are as essential to describing the nature of the universe as the particles themselves—fitting for a creation whose very purpose was to enable a relationship between finite beings and the Infinite Creator. Perhaps most strikingly, physics demonstrates that true infinity cannot exist within the physical universe—there are always limits, boundaries, and constraints. This scientific fact reinforces the profound Jewish understanding that only God, who exists beyond the physical universe, can be truly infinite.
These insights transform not only our abstract conception of God and Creation but also our direct experience of the mitzvot. Just as the Webb telescope’s infrared sensors reveal previously invisible aspects of distant celestial bodies, scientific understanding unveils deeper meanings in our everyday religious practices. Consider the berachot prescribed for us to recite over zikin—meteors and comets streaking across the night sky. Understanding these phenomena—ancient chunks of rock and ice hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour, creating spectacular displays as they burn up in our atmosphere or grace our skies with luminous tails—enables us to witness these wonders with profound and genuine awe. NASA’s Stardust mission gave us unprecedented revelations about these cosmic wanderers, showing how they carry the building blocks of life throughout our solar system, adding another dimension to our appreciation of God’s might when reciting these brachot.
The impact of scientific insight extends far beyond isolated phenomena like the rare evening on which we make a blessing on a shooting star. When we study the physics of twilight—how sunlight scatters through atmospheric particles during the transition from day to night—we gain more than technical insight into the Talmud’s discussion of the evening Shema. Just as modern telescopes reveal the hidden structure of nebulae and star clusters, understanding the physics behind twilight reveals God’s meticulous design of our everyday world.
There is one more indispensable benefit to a proper scientific education: It enables us to fulfill one of our fundamental religious obligations as human beings.
God’s first mandate to humanity was to gain mastery over the world and serve as its custodians “to cultivate and to protect it” (Genesis 2:15). In the contemporary world, this mandate has taken on new urgency. The Hubble, James Webb, VLT and other powerful telescopes have already demonstrated the rarity if not uniqueness of our own precious life-supporting planet among the thousands of exoplanets (planets orbiting around other stars) discovered so far. Their detailed analysis of exoplanet atmospheres will help us better understand our own climate crisis and the climate’s catastrophic tipping points. Addressing pressing issues like global warming, disease prevention, food security and environmental degradation requires sophisticated scientific expertise.
While not every individual must become a scientist, collectively we must embrace scientific knowledge to be proper stewards of God’s creation. The path to knowing and loving God runs not only through the beit midrash but also through understanding the intricate workings of His creation. As God gives us the knowledge to peer ever deeper into space and time, each discovery offers new opportunities to fulfill Maimonides’ directive for developing love of God. When embraced fully, science and Torah illuminate each other’s profound wisdom—just as the Vilna Gaon maintained. To ignore these unprecedented opportunities for understanding creation isn’t merely a departure from our tradition—it’s a failure to grasp the very tools God has provided for developing the relationship that our tradition teaches is the purpose of creation itself.
The authors have recently published “The Science Behind The Mishnah” (Mosaica Press), exploring these themes through a commentary on Tractate Berachos. Learn more at: www.ScienceBehindTheMishnah.com.