24 Tishrei
5775 / October 18, 2014
By: Joel Ackerman
Bereshit 2014
Ages ago, at another time and place,
in a far distant galaxy, I was serving as gabbai in another East Bay
congregation that used the Stone Chumash.
I announced the page number for this parasha by saying “I would like to
tell you that this parasha begins on page 1, but I can’t. It begins on page 2.”
Our sages have said, many times,
that one can learn from all aspects of the Torah, even from empty spaces. So what can one learn from the fact that
there is nothing on page 1 of our Chumash? [Yes, I do know that the text of
many of our works, including the Talmud, begin on page 2, which is supposedly a
printer’s convention, but why should that prevent me from trying to learn
something from the fact that page 1 of the Chumash is blank?]
I suggest that the blank page 1 of the Chumash could teach us
that before or during the creation of our world, G-d could have been carrying
out some other works of creation, the nature of which is not described in the
Torah. I suggest that He could have
created other worlds, with other intelligent beings. After all, the Torah,
being directed to us humans, is necessarily Terra-centric. This parasha describes the creation of our
world – the planet we live on and other items in our world such as the sun,
moon and stars. It was given to our ancestors, in times when it was not
known that other planets existed. The
stars were simply fixtures in our heavens.
We should not really expect it to speak of other worlds, other
intelligent beings.
We certainly cannot believe that G-d
is incapable of doing this. Remember
what He said to the prophet Jeremiah:
“Hineh, ani Adonai Eloheh col-basar, hamimeni yifaleh col-davar?” (“Behold, I am the Lord, the G-d of all
flesh; is there anything too hard for Me?”)
And there is nothing that I could find in the Torah that negates the
above idea. Indeed, why should we
humans be the only intelligent beings that He created? (Note that a number of books appeared in the 1980s
asserting that in fact our planet had been visited and contacted numerous times
by other intelligent beings (“aliens”), citing, among others, the Merhava
vision of the prophet Ezekiel as an attempt to describe a visit by such beings
in terms that a human of those days might be able to express.)
All right, you say, perhaps G-d did
create other worlds with other intelligent beings. After all, our scientists have discovered
that many stars have planets and that some of these planets appear to have
conditions somewhat similar to our own, so that conditions for the development
of intelligent life as we know it seem to exist elsewhere than on Earth. And there is no reason to believe that the
conditions on our planet are the only ones that could support intelligent life. Why couldn’t other intelligent beings be
able to breathe different atmospheres than we, live under different pressures
than we, be primarily water-dwellers rather than land-dwellers, etc?
All well and good, you say, but this
is a mini-drash, not some miscellaneous opinion piece based on nothing but pure
imagination! As they say, where’s the
beef? In other words, where’s the
proof-text?
Well, I have to admit that I don’t
know of any text that definitely supports this concept. Some years ago, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan wrote a
short piece on this question. He cited
several possible sources for the concept, but none of them clearly or
definitively support it. So I don’t have
an authoritative proof-text.
However, I do have some text that
reinforces this concept. It’s from the
Rosh Hashanah machzor, a part that deals with the nature of the kingship of
G-d:
“Elohenu v’eloheh avotenu, m’loch al
col ha-olam culo bichvodecha v’hinaseh al col ha’aretz biyarkecha, v’hofa
bachadar ge’on uzecha, al col yoshvei artzecha.”
“Our G-d and G-d of our forefathers,
reign over the entire universe in Your glory, be exalted over all the world, in
Your splendor, reveal Yourself in the majestic grandeur of Your strength over
all the dwellers of Your inhabited world.”
The text distinguishes between G-d
as ruler of the entire universe (ha’olam) and ruler of our world
(ha’aretz). The machzor states several
times that here on earth, all of His creations (man and animal, at least) are
to acknowledge His kingship. And what
about elsewhere in the universe? The
same. “Reign over all the universe in
Your glory”.
We humans have been seeking for some
years now, through powerful telescopes and the SETI (Search for
Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) project, sending space vehicles and messages to
other parts of the universe, hoping to contact other intelligent life. So far, we have not been successful (although
see the books written in the 1980s on visits by other beings). Our sages have not really addressed the
question of whether the universe contains intelligent life and, if it does,
what it would be like. Of course many of
our other wise men, such as James Blish, James White, Isaac Asimov, Avram
Davidson, and Poul Anderson (among many others) have considered this question
and many of its implications, and you may wish to read some of their writings.
And, of course, it’s interesting to
speculate what such intelligent beings would be like. Would they also believe that the universe was
created by a Supreme Unique Being? Would
they have holy scriptures? If so, would
they resemble our Torah? Would G-d have
delivered to them the same messages as He gave us? Did they receive something resembling the Ten
Commandments? Is there a group among
them that corresponds to us Jews, with our mission? Or, alternatively, will it be our mission to
eventually venture into space, to carry the word of G-d to other sentient
beings elsewhere in the universe?
Enjoy your speculations. Shabbat shalom.
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