Yes, says a group of scholars, scientists and theologians at Arizona State University.
ASU's Center for Jewish Studies' Judaism, Science and Medicine Group asserts religion and science are not only a likely pairing, but an essential one. Science provides critical information about how the world works, but it is religion that imbues that knowledge with depth and meaning.
"The work of Judaism and science is part of a much larger project," says Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, the center's director and one of the founders of JSMG along with her husband, Norbert Samuelson, Harold and Jean Grossman Professor of Jewish Philosophy at ASU. Tirosh-Samuelson, who specializes in Jewish intellectual history, is the Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism at ASU.
JSMG was initiated to advance that joint project. It is consonant with the vision and mission of the center as an innovative model for the inclusion of the Jewish perspective into relevant academic disciplines, as articulated by Tirosh-Samuelson when she assumed the center directorship in 2008.
The center, formerly called the Jewish Studies Program, includes the academic program that offers an array of courses on Jewish history and culture to ASU students. Its more expansive reach reflects its commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship and collaboration and a vigorous outreach program to engage the local community.
"We want to look at how the Jewish story fits into larger problems," says Tirosh-Samuelson, of the center's purpose, its broad purview touching issues as diverse as migration and dispersion, the environment and the arts.
Last spring, the center sponsored an international conference on the composer Felix Mendelssohn, complete with performances of his work as well as scholarly presentations. This fall, an interdisciplinary conference on Jewish arts in German-speaking countries brought leading historians, writers and theorists from the United States, Germany and Austria to the campus.
Currently, in addition to the initiative to advance the conversation between scientists and others in the broader field of humanities, Derek Penslar, the Albert and Liese Eckstein Scholar in Residence, will speak in February on the politics of Jewish and Israel studies; in March, Jeremy Benstein, of the Abraham Joshua Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, will address the religious roots of environmental activism; and in April, a research conference on refugees in the postwar world will bring together scholars in history, anthropology, political science and international relations; also in April, Israeli author and filmmaker Etgar Keret will present two programs on the arts.
The public programs, at ASU and at a variety of community venues, are free and open to the community.
Tirosh-Samuelson says that a troubling cleavage between Judaism and science - scientists who do not see Judaism as relevant to their work and Jews who are not concerned with contemporary science - inspired the founding of JSMG. Too, she says, an absence or marginalization of Jewish voices in the conversation between scientists and religionists was an impetus for the effort.
JSMG began its work with an initial organizing meeting more than a year ago; a conference in August of this year, which drew 35 scientists, philosophers, historians, physicians, rabbis, theologians and educators from Israel and North America, formalized its vision and mission, which includes creating forums for dialogue, fostering interdisciplinary research, and developing educational materials about the relationship between Judaism and the sciences.
Presenters at the conference included Samuelson, Howard A. Smith from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astro-Physics, and Laurie Zoloth, director of the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society at Northwestern University. Elliot Dorff, an ordained Conservative rabbi who is rector and Sol and Anne Dorff Distinguished Service Professor in Philosophy at American Jewish University in Los Angeles and who has written widely on bioethics, was one of the organizers of the conference, along with Tirosh-Samuelson and Samuelson.
Dorff, speaking by telephone with Jewish News, explains that Judaism provides the fundamental theological imperative that informs scientific endeavor, while science provides Judaism with essential information for confronting the confounding conundrums that arise from scientific and technological advance.
"The classical Jewish understanding is that God gave us the world as trustees," says Dorff. "As God's partners, we have a right and a duty to fix the world and make it better," he says. Judaism not only values scientific advance, says Dorff, "it supports and applauds it."
Conversely, says Dorff, Judaism provides science with an ethical and moral framework and a tradition of probing discourse. "Inevitably, when you do certain types of research, ethical questions arise, and the Jewish tradition has a rich treasure house of ethical insights and methodologies for dealing with moral questions."
They are questions of pressing immediacy, suggests Dorff, such as those currently before the U.S. Congress on the distribution of health care. "How do we allocate scarce resources?" he asks. "Who gets what and under what circumstances?"
On the impact of science on religion, Dorff offers the example of the current controversy in Israel about use of Shabbat elevators by Sabbath-observant Jews who are prohibited from using electricity on the Sabbath. "So what is the technology?" he asks. Science will provide the answers to help resolve the religious question.
"Science helps us to be relevant," says Dorff. "It helps us respond to new issues."
Samuelson, whose book "Jewish Faith and Modern Science: On the Death and Rebirth of Jewish Philosophy," published this year by Rowman & Littlefield, delves deeply into the connection between religion and science, says that science and religion need each other. Religion enlivens scientific inquiry, and science infuses religion with relevant new meaning, he says.
"Judaism as a religion is about all of life," says Samuelson. And science, without religion, is "lifeless," he says.
JSMG hopes to attract more practitioners from both disciplines to engage in conversation, he says. There are currently 70 members.
And Tirosh-Samuelson says she hopes to inspire intellectual conversation that engages both the academic and the general community.
Sherman Minkoff, a retired physician in Phoenix, was one of the participants in the recent JSMG meeting. "Human beings have both an intellectual side and a religious side," he says. "We need to find a way to integrate them and fit them together."
Scientists and religionists, says Minkoff, "need to talk."
That, says Tirosh-Samuelson, is the initial goal of JSMG.
"Judaism has a lot to say," she says. "This organization is dedicated to creating that conversation."
For more information on JSMG and the ASU Center for Jewish Studies, visit jewishstudies.clas.asu.edu or call the center at 480-727-6906.
