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What is the Torah Science Foundation?
The
Torah Science Foundation was founded with the unique mission of creating
a new paradigm for the meeting of Divine teachings and secular knowledge.
Humankind’s
greatest moments lie ahead, when all facets of our species’ knowledge will
come together to catapult the world into a new age of unity and harmony.
This
unity is first and foremost dependent upon the joining
of the wisdom of the Torah with the wisdom of secular art and science.
Armed with
cutting-edge scientific knowledge and with the deepest, most inner wisdom of
our eternal Torah, the Foundation seeks to reveal the inherent unity of all
human endeavor. This will provide the basis for a new figure of man, unified
in his spiritual and mundane pursuits.
This
new paradigm in the relationship between the Torah and
secular wisdom will provide fresh insights and resources for advancing and
developing all facets of the human quest for knowledge.
The Foundation
seeks to help frame novel conceptual schemes needed to usher in a new age in
human affairs and scientific inquiry, whether providing inspiration for
artisans or providing new advanced models for thinking about and solving the
world’s socio-political challenges.
The Torah
can be fully engaged only through the wide myriad of languages spoken by
mankind. These languages may be artistic, scientific, technological,
political or otherwise. Each language serves as a key to unlocking a
different facet of the Torah’s multidimensional content.
The mapping
of the Torah’s inner wisdom to modern scientific language and issues will
provide a critically important conceptual breakthrough in theorizing on all
scientific fronts. This in turn may prove to be a tremendous contribution to
the return of Jewish heritage as the focal point of universal human thought.
Our
conviction is that experimental science does not contradict traditional
Jewish belief and values, but can and does serve to develop and deepen those
beliefs and values. When the mundane is seen to be a reflection of the
Divine, art and science only serve to enrich and embellish our religious
yearnings.
The
Torah Science Foundation is a multi-faceted organization working on many
fronts to bring religious scholars and science professionals together to
cooperate on working for humanity by expanding the limits of our knowledge.
All
Foundation programming and publications aspire to the highest level of
commitment to traditional Torah values and to scientific and academic rigor.
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www.torahscience.org is the Foundation’s official website. Here you’ll
find a cyber-center for all the Foundation’s events, publications,
announcements, etc. The Foundation’s website serves as a meeting place for
those interested in learning and interacting together on-line. In addition,
the website will include forums for exchanging ideas and opinions and for
asking questions about Torah and science. We are also planning a community
area, where interested members can post their biographies and pictures. The
website will also contain a variety of written sources about Torah and
science as well as an electronic version of the Foundation’s journal – Wisdom.
The
Torah Academy is the Foundation’s future academic institute.
Following our basic vision on the unity of Torah and science, the Torah
Academy will be a revolutionary institute of higher learning. It will provide
graduate-level students with a one (or, optionally, two) year program of
intensive study aimed at expanding their conceptual and theoretical thinking.
The rigorous curriculum will strive to offer students a pragmatic, in-depth
knowledge of the major paradigms and models found in the inner teachings of
the Torah and the manner in which they can be applied to modern science.
New
Text focuses on expanding the available science
curriculum for Jewish elementary and high school students in both Hebrew and
English. The Foundation will be publishing enrichment programs and texts in
different areas of ‘secular’ studies for these age groups. The new material
will help decompartmentalize Torah and secular knowledge, providing our next
generation with more synthesized and advanced tools for thinking and
learning.
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One of the most basic
differences separating science from Torah is that science is model-based. In
other words, science tries to formulate models which could account for
phenomena under study. Torah, on the other hand, does not visibly lend
itself to the construction of models capable of providing us with a coherent
rationale of its contents.
One
of the novelties of Kabbalah was the introduction of contextually coherent
universal models for the analysis of the Torah. The most basic model, which
serves as the starting point for any student of the inner wisdom of the
Torah, is comprised of what are known as the 10 sefirot the 10 Divine
emanations. This basic model formed the germ of other, more highly complex
models revealed by the Arizal (Rabbi Isaac Luria) in the 16th centurymodels
which analyze both static configurations and dynamic flow through structures.
As implemented by the Arizal and his students, these models can serve as
powerful tools for the analysis of even the most complex issues in Torah.
The
innovation of Hassidut was the application of the Arizal’s models to
analyze the human psyche (nefesh). This, alongside
with the Ramchal’s (Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzatto) use of the same dynamic
models to study human history, opened the path for applying the inner wisdom
of the Torah to the study of human and natural phenomena.
In
keeping with the order of organized study of the inner wisdom of the Torah, the
first stage of analysis of the various areas of Divine and natural knowledge
is based on the basic model of the 10 sefirot. This analysis begins with identifying the
direct ‘parallels’ (the word Kabbalah itself stems from the adjective meaning
‘parallel’) between the various fields of inquiry and the sefirot. This provides us
with only a static model. Our homepage reflects this first stage of analysis
where the various scientific fields are ordered according to their
correspondence with the sefirot.
A
more ambitious goal of this analysis is to reveal the dynamic flow of
‘energy’ through this static model, thus revealing ‘parallels’ to other
disciplines and areas of science, including the Humanities, and more
importantly, providing insight into the possible relationships between the
different areas of human knowledge.
The
next step is to apply models from Kabbalah to specific areas of knowledge.
Examples of this can be found in the various articles appearing on our site.
Application of Kabbalistic models, especially the multi-dimensional ones of
Lurianic Kabbalah is no mean task. However, when models have been applied
correctly they serve to open up fresh understandings of the current
knowledge, and point the way for new directions in research and development.
Ultimately,
we believe that most scientists will seek to gain an understanding of
Kabbalistic and Hassidic models, as they provide the most complex,
rigorous, and well-suited conceptual schemes for the study of every area of
human life.
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To
appreciate the significance of the Foundation’s logo we need to take a look
at the following sources:
In the sixth hundredth year of Noah’s life... all
the fountains of the great depth were broken apart, and the windows of heaven
were opened...
- Genesis 7:11
In the six hundredth year of the sixth
[millenium], the gateways of heavenly wisdom and the fountains of lower
wisdom will be opened, and the world will be uplifted to prepare for the
ascension of the seventh [millenium]...
- Zohar I, 117a
Heavenly wisdom is the wisdom of the Torah, lower
wisdom is secular wisdom...
- Ashmoreth Haboker, ibid.
The Zohar,
one of the basic books of the inner wisdom of the Torah, analyzes human
wisdom in two distinct areas: revealed (Divine or heavenly) and scientific
(secular, or lower). From the writings of the Hassidic masters we
learn that the terms for these two types of wisdom are higher waters ( ,mayim elyonim) and lower waters ( ,mayim tahtonim).
The Zohar quoted above predicts that human knowledge, and hence the entire human
condition, will go through a paradigm shift when these two types of wisdom
are unified – when these two waters are brought together.
The
Foundation’s logo is the Hebrew letter  (aleph ) which is
graphically constructed from three other Hebrew letters: two symmetric  (yud) and a  (vav) dividing them. It is explained in the Arizal’s
writings that the top corresponds to the
higher waters, the bottom to the lower waters,
and the that separates them
to the firmament that separated them during creation (“And G-d said: Let
there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide water from
water”, Genesis 1:6). As the top corresponds to
Divine wisdom, which becomes less palpable as it ascends – the top in our logo starts (at the ) from a mid-blue coloring and fades out
into whiteness and finally becomes completely transparent. As the bottom corresponds to mundane, scientific wisdom, which
becomes more and more factual as it descends, it begins (at the ) with a mid-blue coloring and
‘solidifies’ into blackness and opaqueness.
Whereas the
firmament only served to separate between the two types of wisdom, the letter (vav) is the Hebrew conjunction ‘and’. It
thus serves to bring the two waters back together again into a unified
whole of human knowledge, fostering growth and respect between the Divine and
the mundane.
Thus the
Foundation’s logo symbolizes the unification of the higher and lower waters; revealed and scientific wisdom.
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