My Hebron: the Early years

My Hebron

By David Ramati

I suppose everyone has a special place, and mine is Hebron.  It is where I have spent the last approximately 40 years of my life, which represents a big chuck of my 67 years.

Hebron is, first of all, the Cave of the Patriarchs.  This monument was built about the same time that the second temple was constructed in Jerusalem.  It is considered the second most holy place in Judaism second only to the temple mount.

The Cave of the Patriarchs:  Note:  The large stones were placed during the time the Second Temple was built.  To the left are the remains of the crusader fortress, and the upper light colored addition was done by the Mamluk invaders who turned the crusader cathedral (located inside) into a Mosque.  To the far right is the site of the infamous seventh step.  Any Jew who attempted to go farther than that step could be executed.

Most people do not realize that Hebron was also the first capital of Israel under King David.  His Hebron was centered around a site called “Tel Rumedia” where David ruled for seven years.  This site is also the burial place of David’s father, Jessie.

The author in the Tomb of Jessie with a Sefer Torah.  Daily learning and the saying of psalms take place at this sacred site.    

Ever since the city was returned to Jewish rule in 1967, the Arab and Jewish communities have lived in a pragmatic world.  In the beginning, the cooperation between the two communities was based on mutual self-interest.  Virtually tens of thousands of tourists began to flood the city, and particularly the Cave of the Patriarchs.  I remember seeing as many as 50 tour busses parked in the streets outside of the Cave area on any given day, the tourists, from Israel and all over the world, making a visit to the shrine and continuing on shopping trips throughout the city of Hebron snatching up the famed ceramics, glass, and gold jewelry that the Arab shop keepers had to offer.

This period lasted for years with only isolated instances of violence.  The Jewish community was concentrated in Kiryat Arba, and would shop and pray in Hebron at the many Jewish sites without being in significant danger from the Arab majority. 

The local Arab police forces carried pistols, wore Israeli Police uniforms, were responsible to, and paid by the Israeli national police.  The IDF kept a very minimal presence in the city, depending instead on a Platoon of Border police consisting of Druze, Bedouin and Religious Jews from Kiriat Arba to handle security and terror incidents.  I was honored to have been a part of that team in which I proudly served.

I would walk down every Sabbath with the famed artist Baruch Nachshon, to pray at the Cave of the Patriarch.  The infamous 7^th step had been destroyed with the liberation of this Jewish city of David in 1967 and both Jew and Arab prayed in the same structure without any separations except the requirement by the Israeli Military Government that in the Mosque are itself the Jews could not pray in the quorum of ten or more during Muslim prayer.  For part of the prayer, Baruch and I would leave the Jewish Minyan praying next to the Mosque and finish a part of our prayers in the Mosque itself.

The Arabs took no offense at our praying at the same time and even would leave an aisle open to us by moving their prayer rugs so as not to have to request that we remove our shoes as was customary in Mosques.  This was a sign of the great respect they held for Baruch Nachshon.

As the PLO and HAMAS stepped up their campaign against Israel, both the Jews and Arabs of Hebron began to sense that things would no longer continued in this fashion.  With each Israel retaliation against PLO terror attacks the situation became more and more tense.  When the Kiryat Arba Jews forcibly moved into property that had been held by the ancient Jewish community of Hebron which had thrived until the 1929 Hebron massacre and a forced eviction of the survivors by the British mandate essentially put an end to the community, the Arabs of Hebron took action and together with outside elements of the PLO began the systematic attack and killing of Jews in Hebron.

This eventually led up the Goldstein retaliatory killings in the Cave of the Patriarchs, the division of the Cave into two parts as we see today, and ultimately the division of Hebron into two separate areas, one under control of the IDF and the other under control of the PLO and HAMAS.

In effect, Bibi gave full control to of over 80 percent of the city to the PA/Hamas and formed yet another Jewish/Arab Ghetto in what is referred to as H2 where Jews and Arabs still live together, but where Arabs are forced to leave the Jewish Ghetto of Hebron via IDF and PA checkpoints.

This new situation has only cost more Jewish and Arab lives, a far cry from the earlier days that I remember so fondly.

Chosen Few: Renaissance

By Marshall Onellion Ph.D. Physics  and David Ramati

Marshall Onellion: onellion@wisc.edu or onellion@gmail.com; 01-608-873-7329

David Ramati: david.ramati@gmail.com; Israel # 050-5580439

Preface

Why have Jews contributed disproportionately to intellectual achievement during several periods of history? What has been the significance to humanity of this Jewish intellectual achievement? For almost 2,000 years, Jews have developed both a high value to education that emphasizes questioning.  Jews have a long tradition of mystic- questioning- of epistemology and of what constitutes "knowledge." Such questioning turns out to be highly relevant to understanding 21st century physics, and particularly quantum mechanics and cosmology. Kabbalah- the main part of Jewish mysticism- actually has nothing directly to do with religion nor does not attempt to identify God or Gods beyond an unknown and possibly unknowable physical force. Some of the ideas in science and particularly quantum mechanics connect questions posed at the beginning of quantum theory that are outside of where our everyday experience can be used as a guide. It is this questioning tradition, combined with a strong scholarly work ethic and willingness to sacrifice for scholarship which distinguishes the Jewish accomplishments.

 In the beginning there were no Jews.  In fact there were no gentiles either. Thinking rational beings make these distinctions and there were none.  There was only a pea sized object made up of a super condensed bit of something waiting to explode into an infinity of darkness.

           

Book One

Chapter one: Cosmology & Kabbalah

Kabbalah is very specific about the earliest universe, and remarkably close in ideas to current physics cosmology. As an example of Jewish intellectual achievement it ranks near the top. Kabbalistic analysis of the early universe also stands as a stark contrast to the belief in magic that characterizes so much of mysticism.

Kabbalah and other Jewish intellectual achievements began with how rabbis were educated. Starting approximately during the Babylonian Captivity (597- 538 BC) and continuing to the present, rabbinical education differed in several significant ways from education practiced in Western universities. Most importantly is the attitude toward the sciences. If we look at Jewish education, particularly after the second destruction of the Temple (70 AD), we find that Jews are much more literate and numerate than their gentile counterparts. In a typical Diaspora Jewish community, rabbis were the teachers (rabbi originally meant teacher).

A second factor is that a rabbi had a "day job," in addition to his role as a leader of the Jewish community. As a teacher, the rabbi also led Jewish “home schooling” in Europe where, for many centuries, Jews were forbidden to attend Christian universities or medical schools. Thus Jewish doctors were taught by other Jewish doctors, who were typically also rabbis.

Most Jewish communities viewed science as having practical benefit. The view went beyond medicine; for over a thousand years Jews were viewed as the best alchemists in both Christian and Muslim parts of the world. Unlike today, where alchemy has been supplanted by chemistry and is discredited, up until the 1700s alchemy was regarded as an entirely reputable profession. It included not only what we would call transmutation of elements but much of early chemistry, metallurgy, and pharmacy. Christian and Muslim alchemy students sought out Jewish 'masters' in alchemy and learned from them. This eminence meant that the natural sciences were part of the curriculum of well-educated Jews for at least 1,700 years.

A further factor unique to Judaism among the Abrahamic faiths is the relation between mysticism and science. While myth was actually the first science- here science meant an organized activity attempting to make sense of a complex and bewildering world. For millenia the stars were taken as static, not changing in time- as all scientific measurements until the early 1900s confirmed. There developed the idea that the universe was 'forever' and the heavens perfect and  unchanging. Starting in the 1920s with the work of Edwin Hubble and his colleagues, physics cosmology has developed the idea of a "Big Bang" and the consequences thereof.  Remarkably, Kabbalahic ideas are almost exactly the same. For over 1,000 years Jewish thinkers persisted in stubbornly disagreeing with the dominant cosmology of the world- and had their stubbornness brilliantly vindicated in the last 100 years, It was the well-educated Jews who were instrumental in developing and exploring Jewish mysticism- the Kabbalah.

Starting with the Big Bang we find that energy is divided into 4 general areas:  Temperature, Symmetry, Phase Transitions, and forces.  Interestingly the Kabbalah also divides creation into four general areas: Atzilut (Emanation), Beriah (creation), Yetzirah (Formation) and Assiuah (action).

The Kabbalah teaches the existence of four levels of reality.  These four levels, perhaps coincidentally, are thought by many believers in the Kabbalah to be analogous to the four forces mentioned previously and are called Atzilut (Emanation), Briyah (Creation) Yetzirah (Formation) and Assiuah (Doing or action).

To understand the basic motivation of physics to unify forces, which some call the "Theory of Everything", we must weave together four ideas. Two ideas involves the words "energy" and "temperature," the third involves the word "symmetry," and the last introduces the term “phase transition.” Consider these by comparing Physics to Kabbalah.

Energy or Atzilut

Energy measures effort; how much effort, is needed to run one mile, to pick up a bag of dog food, to walk up a flight of stairs and so forth.

 The stars in the sky (often called heaven) puzzled people for at least 5,000 years.  People found that the stars & star clusters moved across the sky in an orderly, predictable, repetitive fashion. These three qualities- order, predictability, and repetitiveness- formed the basis of human thinking in regards to the universe (cosmology).

Then, in the 1920s, a remarkable set of observations made by several scientists, including Dr. Erwin Hubble at the Palomar observatory in California, brought about a revolution in thinking about cosmology. Dr. Hubble and his colleagues reported that distant stars and galaxies were moving away from the Earth. Also, the further away a galaxy is, the faster it was moving. This differed completely from the orderly, predictable, repetitive star patterns that had previously formed the basis for cosmology for millennium. Suddenly, the picture emerged of galaxies explosively hurtling away from some center, which came to be called the "Big Bang."

Both the Kabbalah and current astrophysics teach that in the beginning the Universe was created when an extremely hot and dense dot for some reason exploded into a void; filling that void with light and heat. How did the students of the Kabbalah, without tools or measurements, reach the same qualitative conclusion?

Let us start with Energy. The Kabbalah breaks this stage, called Atzilut into sub stages.  The similarity between Kabbalah and modern cosmology is amazing.  The Kabbalah teaches that the Universe was not created instantly, but rather via a series of stages evolving over time.  This is illustrated in the Kabbalah as the expansion of the ten sefirot.  The first three sefirot contailed within Atzilut are:  Keter (crown), Hokhmah (Thought, wisdom) and Bina (understanding) are considered as existing in a pre-creation state.  In the Kabbalah we learn that these three sefirot are beyond our comprehension; however they represent energies which are necessary for the creation of matter.

Temperature

This is where the ideas of energy and temperature become interwoven. From the 1920s until the 1950s, there was the vague idea of an explosion, but only the distant galaxies moving away were strong evidence. Then, in the 1950s, two American physicists, Drs. Penzias and Wilson at Bell Laboratories, found direct evidence for the remnant of such an explosion. After an explosion in space, the energy moves further and further away from the explosion site, so the energy per volume becomes smaller and smaller. Similarly in Kabbalah, the second group of three called Beriah in the Kabbalah deals with the transfer energy into matter:  Hesed (Grace) representing unity, Gevurah (rigor) which represents the separation of this unity into different parts and then, in combination, producing Tiferet (Beauty) which brings them into a harmony.

Symmetry

In order to explain this, one type of idea scientists tried out involves the word symmetry. In trying to understand the Big Bang, scientists were led to the idea that as the hot pea cooled, the universe repeatedly changed symmetry, going from higher to lower and still lower symmetry. In this respect physics and Kabbalah arrived at very similar conclusion.

The Kabbalah teaches that three more stages are necessary for the creation of our world.  These stages are found within Yetzirah:  Netzah (Victory) representing the unity of all possibilities followed by Hod (Glory), representing the ability of all potentials to separate one from another, and Yesod (foundation) which is the balance between all possibilities. The final and last is Malkhut (Kingdom), the world as we know it, with all the possibilities of creation filled with complex life and beauty and symmetry. 

According to the Kabbalah, the symmetry of all things is found in the Divine Name YHVH, the name of perfect symmetry comprising both the male and female aspects of creation.  This can be seen outwardly as a square but inwardly it forms an endless tetrahedron:

Phase Transition

The reason the idea of symmetry creeps into thinking about the early universe is due to something called a phase transition. When we put liquid water in the freezer and get ice cubes, this is a phase transition. A phase transition is any change in the overall properties of a material.

 Some phase transitions, such as ice-to-liquid water or liquid water-to-steam, involve changes in the total energy of the water, and are called first order phase transitions. Now these would not apply to the Big Bang, because the total energy of the universe did not change during the Big Bang. We want phase transitions in which the energy remains constant across the phase transition, what are called second order phase transitions.

As best we can tell, when the Big Bang occurred the Universe was small (smaller than the size of an atomic nucleus), hot (10³⁵ K) and dense, since all the mass & energy we find in our present Universe was packed into this incredibly small volume. What scientists did was to try out different possibilities as this small, hot ‘pea’ expanded and cooled during the Big Bang. One set of possibilities involved changes of symmetry- that is, second order phase transitions.

To understand we need to remind ourselves of what we see now in our present-day, comparatively cool Universe. We have found four forces- a ‘force’ being any way that enable objects to influence one another. These four forces, which are separate and distinct in our present-day Universe, include:

* Electromagnetism: The force involved with magnets and with electrical charges. This force decreases gradually when objects are further and further apart; for that reason electromagnetism is described as a “long-range” force;

* Gravity: The force that attracts objects with mass toward each other. This force also decreases with distance, in the same way as electromagnetism, but although gravity affects all objects with mass it is much weaker than gravity. A simple example is that a tiny refrigerator magnet will stick to the refrigerator door and not fall to the floor, even though it is attracted by all the mass of the Earth;

* Strong interaction: Atomic nuclei include protons (all positively charged and thus electrostatically repelling each other) and neutrons (no electrical charge). In spite of this electrical repulsion nuclei are stable. What keeps the nuclei together? Today we call this the “strong” interaction, which is very short ranged but much stronger than electromagnetism;

* Weak interaction: Sometimes particles- neutrons are one example- decay with the emission of very light particles called neutrinos. The weak interaction is also responsible for fusion in stars; what causes stars to shine.

This is what we see in today’s Universe. The question that cosmologists have posed is how the hot pea changed to what we observe today. All the models developed, although they differ in some details, include the idea that the physical creation of our present-day universe occurred in a series of constructive stages, each stage defined by its temperature. The models predict that the hot pea was so hot and dense that all four forces merged together to make a single force. So what happened when the Big Bang exploded? The models predict the following sequence of four changes:

* First, gravity separated from the other three forces. This means a change of symmetry- that is, a second order phase transition. Physicists say this occurred on the Planck time scale, named after Max Planck, an early 20th physicist and a pioneer in developing quantum mechanics;

* Next, the strong force becomes distinct from the weak and electromagnetic forces, which means another second order phase transition. This occurred very quickly after the Big Bang explosion; around 10^-35 seconds. Scientists call these phase transitions “symmetry breaking” and the universe expands rapidly once this occurs. The expansion of the universe during this period is called inflation.

* Inflation ends and a third period, lasting about 300,000 years, ensues, during which matter as we know it today is gradually formed. The weak interaction and electromagnetism become separate forces, so there is yet another second order phase transition;

* The final period is characterized by neutral matter and started when temperatures in the universe had cooled to a few thousand degrees, cool enough to allow neutral atoms to exist.  This era has lasted approximately 13.7 billion years and has led to galaxies, stars, and life.

This current thinking in astrophysics cosmology as to the initial development of the universe is in remarkable agreement with the Kabbalah which teaches that the Universe and all that is in it goes through a process of expansion and contraction.  The point of maximum density is called in Hebrew the nikoda Ha Emtzae or the one contracted point of absolute density formed as a result of contraction which is the term of the Kabbalah is called Tzim Tzom.  When this absolute density happens there follows a rapid exploding expansion until a maximum is reached as this process of contraction and expansion is repeated over and over again.  The Kabballic theory of expanding and contracting universes goes as far back as the origins of the Kabbalah can be traced. In this respect the Kabbalah is inconsistent with current cosmology, which does not postulate any such cyclical theory.  However the Kabbalah stipulates the final edition of the Universe will not contract but continue to expand forever.

So how did this study of Jewish mysticism, this Kabbalah, turn to ideas of the origin of the universe? In part it was the same impulse people have had for thousands of years, to answer big questions such as where we and the universe come from. The original creators of Kabbalah looked for hints that can be found in the Hebrew Language.  

The Hebrew “bible” doesn’t begin with the letter A or Aleph as one might think, but begins with the letter Bayt of B which is the equivalent of the Greek Beta.   It is written thus:  ב and later, when vowel sounds needed to be added we see the addition of a small dot inside the curved part of the letter:   בְּרֵאשִׁית which means, “In the Beginning” and the Bayt has a small dot inside of it signifying that the world started from a single point and that it had happened before.

The fact that the letter bayt started the creation story and all it signified was also the beginning of an idea of a continuing cycle.  Hebrew is both a picture of the world and a form of mathematics.  The Kabbalah neither describes a creator nor limits the forces of the universe to physical manifestations.  It was a way to reason and observe, within the then limited scope of mechanical devises available at that time. The very first idea of an expanding and contracting universe is attributed to Shemon Bar Yohai around 100 AD, and was certainly later published when the printing press became available to scholars in the 14th and 15th centuries.

 Let us assume that there was a ‘hot pea,’ a certain point that the Kabbalah student calls the central dot and which physics cannot explain.  For some reason something set it off. Science has yet come up with an answer as to what caused it.  In this aspect the world of physics is just as speculative as the world of Kabbalah.  For want of a better explanation the Kabbalah describes the happening in this way:

“Darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

The key to this is the forms of the name for god.  This god is plural which means the natural forces focused on the “darkness” that we understand in the Kabbalah is the negative or black energy (unseen) and caused a natural ignition of the compressed universe, striking it and producing the explosion the Kabbalah called light, expanding and filling the universe.  This was, of course, not very scientific. On the other hand, given it was developed around 100 AD, it was definitely ahead of its time, since modern cosmology leading to the Big Bang did not develop for another 1,800 years.

The premise that the Kabbalah would suggest to us is that  because all things were created by the one undefined and unknowable event then it follows that all things are  related and the imprint of that event must exist in all the elements that were created by it, both matter and energy. The Kabbalah declares that that since everything is expanding from a common point then everything is a part of God (or everything else, the precursor of the Unity Theory).

The Kabbalah also suggests that this expansion may finally stop accelerating and then, if this is so, there will come a time when the process will reverse itself and all things will again (having reached the maximum) contract into a maximum density plasma point in which no “light” can escape until another catalyst will naturally cause this unexplainable rapid expansion we call, in Kabbalah, the light of the unending (Or Ain Sof) to rebuild the Universe. The basic law of the Kabbalah is that if and when maximum expansion is reached, all things implode, and then are “blasted” or “shattered” and the process begins anew.  In the terms of the Kabbalah when the desire to receive is only to receive, the light (energy of expansion) leaves the vessel and all things contract into a central point.  At this point the light (energy) fills the vessel and it shatters into stars, worlds, and so forth, harnessing this light (the desire to create and influence) in a physical universe.  Again, the Kabbalah masters had no way of physically proving the theory and based everything on observation and intellectual extrapolation, analysis and synthesis.  In this sense, “god” (in singular form) would seem to be endlessly creating, un-creating, and re-creating itself.  The physicist can feel free to replace the word “god” with any concept he chooses, but the outcome seems to be the same when we re-engineer the big bang.  Something caused it.

Today many scientists believe that, based on new information, the Universe is accelerating and will do so forever.  This concept is also quite acceptable to the Kabbalah student since it suggests that creation has no boundaries and no end and this concept is in complete harmony with what they call the “Ain Sof” which is another of the names of the G-d concept.  In order to further explain this, the student of the Kabbalah takes it as a given that the Universe was explosively created.  He also believes that this process had been done before, therefore the premise that it could be done again (the expanding and contracting Universe).  However, since the entire purpose of the creation of a Universe is to obtain perfection (which in the terms of the Kabbalah is the desire to receive in order to influence or pass on) the possibility of a perfect constantly expanding Universe is not only possible, but desirable.  A Universe only collapses when that desire to receive is only for the purpose of receiving, at which point the light of the Ain Sof is withdrawn and matter collapses to the primordial dot.

The Big Bang theory depends on two major assumptions: the universality of physical laws, and the cosmological principle. The cosmological principle states that on large scales the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic.  It also assumes (physical cosmology) that the “Big Crunch” is one possible scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the expansion of space eventually reverses and the universe re-collapses until it ultimately ends as a singularity.  Recent evidence based on the observation of supernova and cosmic microwave background would lead one to speculate that the expansion of the universe is not being slowed down by gravity, but it is rather constantly accelerating.  We have yet to understand the nature of this dark energy that provides the acceleration of the Universe, but the Kabbalah teaches that “The Spirit of G-d (plural form) hovered over the face of the waters (which the Kabbalah understands to be a dark void).  And G-d (again the plural form) said let there be light and there was light”. The Torah, or the Bible, has always had a problem with the idea that God filled a void, as if the void predated God in some way and was not a part of G-d’s self.  The Zohar explains this when discussing Tzimtzum.  The Kabbalah describes how, at the beginning of time, God’s presence filled the universe. Therefore there was no room for creation, and God had to contract Himself (a process known as Tzimtzum) in order to create a space for creation. Implicit in this understanding of Tzimtzum is the existence of a covenant between God and the future creations which he made possible by contracting Himself.

“And the Lord G-d (for the first time the singular YHVH appears in Genesis) formed man out of the dust and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (here man is the generic term for sentient beings which evolved from the building blocks found in the creation).

 It is interesting to note that the Hebrew Divine Name, of YHVH is a singular name comprised of four distinct letters, each one representing a different flow of time in the creation.  We see four distinct periods of time defined, essentially, by heat (which the Kabbalah would define as light).

If we look at the Hebrew YHVH  in its geometric form we see that the name  forms a series of four tetrahedrons.  The ancient Hebrews had a very good grasp of geometry and especially the tetrahedron (and this was probably due to the fact that they spent a prolonged time in Egypt working in the building industry).

The Human DNA also forms similar geometric shapes, based on this building block of life or, in terms of the Kabbalah, the world of Asiya (which is the physical).:

 Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh (a renowned  Kabbalah student and teacher residing in Israel)  provides a particularly interesting way to view the relation between Kabbalah and science. To paraphrase Rabbi Ginsburgh:

Science, in its quest to reveal the underlying unity within nature, constantly finds itself returning to the origins of the universe -- to the primordial "day one" (yom echad) of Creation. The universe, in its present state, is too cool and solid for one to find within it an intimation of such unity. Only amid the energy and heat that reigned at the very inception of time and space, could all the forces and elements of nature meld into one. Such are the premises that underlie the unified field and "big bang" theories. Should one seek the even deeper unity that binds "existence" to "non-existence," then it becomes necessary to propose even more obscure theories -- such as string theory -- which exude an almost meta-physical character.

 The assumption of an underlying unity within Creation brings with it the concomitant belief in a consummate state of symmetry having characterized the incipient universe.  As the stages of creation progress, this initial state of symmetry in the universe appears to break down. Thus, any return to the primordial unity of creation would seem to imply a corresponding return to maximal symmetry.

The uncertainty principle is a good example of how the fundamentals of modern physics can contradict the axioms of common sense. Before the advent of quantum physics, science believed that determinism ruled the universe. Now, with the principle of uncertainty, it has become clear that nature cannot be explained in purely causal mechanistic terms. The most we could talk about is  "probability.”

We paraphrase Rabbi Ginsburgh for several reasons. His description corresponds remarkably well to both the ideas of creation contained in Kabbalah and our current thinking of the Big Bang era of cosmology. Clearly, the authors who contributed, and still contribute, to Kabbalistic thinking used the Hebrew language, which is a mathematical language unlike anything else in the world, to develop their ideas. Scientists have found mathematics particularly useful for developing quantitative, testable ideas, values that they feel no written language can match. On the other hand, the qualitative agreement between Kabbalah and several aspects of astrophysical cosmology is surprisingly good. The ideas developed in the Kabbalah have influenced thinking of both Jews and gentiles for centuries and illustrates the synergy and value of Jewish mystical thinking, in addition to more ‘mainstream’ Jewish intellectual contributions.