Being that today is July Fourth, it is fitting to talk about the amazing thing that happened on July Fourth, many years ago, and the effect it has on us today as Jews living in the 21st Century. But I’m not talking about July 4, 1776, which was pretty awesome and had a significant effect on Jewish history, and especially Jews living in the USA, I’m talking about what happened on July 4, 2012, and it didn’t really have anything to do with the USA.
On July 4, 2012, champagne bottles were popped open and wild celebratory parties were held in major cities all over the world, from Melbourne to London, Paris to Brussels. In Geneva, over 1,000 people waited in line outside one of the parties, hoping they could get inside to revel with the celebrities inside. These parties were geekfests, where particle physicists and other science nerds got together to rejoice in one of science’s biggest accomplishments in 30 years; science finally found G-d.
Sorry, that was a bit of a Freudian slip. What science really found was the G-d particle, the Higgs Boson. They searched for it for thirty years in Fermilab, a particle accelerator in Batavia, Illinois, but they couldn’t find it there; the accelerator simply wasn’t powerful enough. So CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or the European Council for Nuclear Research), spent 13 years and 10 billion dollars building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer long, perfectly circular tunnel, 300 feet underground, where they were able to create 40 million experiments a second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The experiments consisted of taking two particles, each traveling over 180,000 miles per second, smashing them into each other, and recording the resulting explosion. Scientists knew they could never see a Higgs Boson particle; even if the Higgs Boson existed, it would only exist for .000000000000000000000001 of a second, not even long enough for them to capture on camera.
But they hoped to see the signature of its decay in the matter that they could record. Just like someone driving through a tornado-hit street could know where houses used to be based on the hulking basements and the pattern of the debris left behind, so too the scientific community was hoping to find evidence of the Higgs Boson in the debris left over from the explosion that would have created it.
In December, after recording hundreds of trillions of explosions and analyzing the data, CERN scientists began to see evidence of the Higgs Boson (sometimes called the G-d Particle, based on the title of a 1993 book on particle physics by Nobel laureate Leon Lederman). The scientific community began to buzz and scientists working at the LHC were sworn to secrecy. But finally on July 4th, 2012, in a packed auditorium, with live hookups all over the world, and a massive press presence, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the general director of CERN, announced tearfully, “I think we have it! We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature!"
By the way, if you think that once they found the Higgs Boson, the LHC did it’s job, and scientists would stop throwing billions of dollars at the world’s most expensive science experiment, here’s what he said next,"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe." In other words, “We’re just getting started! Send more money!”
So what is the Higgs Boson exactly, and why is it so important to science? Being a bit of a science geek (not the kind that gets invited to geekfests), I’ve read at least 15 articles on the Higgs Boson, and still haven’t found one that explains it in user-friendly terms to my liking. I’ll try to break it down as cleanly as I can, but forgive me for anything that seems confusing, and feel free to email me with any Higgs Boson questions.
A long time ago (mid 60’s) scientists used to think that the Big Bang was an enormous explosion of matter, with “stuff” spewing out in all directions. But the problem was that when they measured all the stuff in the universe, they realized that it couldn’t possibly fit back into the place where the Big Bang happened. So instead they postulated that the Big Bang happened in a state called singularity where no particles exist, and what really exploded outward at the beginning of creation was energy, or light. This may sound familiar to you, as there is a 3,300 year old book called the Torah that also describes the beginning of creation as an explosion of light, that came directly after G-d said, “Let there be light!”
Modern astrophysics teaches that everything in our universe came out of that Big Bang, it just took time for things to take their current form. To anyone who studied Torah even hundreds of years ago, this would have come as no surprise. Rashi, a medieval commentator who lived close to 1,000 years ago, already told us that EVERYTHING was created on the first day, and things subsequently took their form later as the creation progressed (Genesis 1:14).
But the problem is that we live in a world with tables and trees, mountains and mice. How did they all get here, if all that was created in the beginning was light energy? How did we go from a world with no stuff to a world filled with stuff? If there were just quintillions of light rays shooting out into the void, they would all have just continued on their merry way, and we wouldn’t have anything other than light beams!
Here enters Peter Higgs, a British theoretical physicist with a new concept. He says that even empty space is not really empty, and what appears to be empty space is actually a massive energy field. This field became known as a Higgs field. This field would shape our world and turn it from light beams into stuff.
The idea that dark empty space is not simply nothing but a creation of its own may sound familiar, as Isaiah already spoke of G-d “creating darkness” (45:7), and it even became part of our daily prayers where we say “Blessed are you Ha-shem, our G-d, King of the Universe, who forms light and creates darkness...” So from now on, imagine darkness not as a void but rather as this massive pool of black Jell-O.
So now you have light energy flying through this field of energy called “darkness” or the Higgs Field, or black Jell-O. Sometimes, the light just shoots through the Jell-O, but sometimes the light energy interacts with the dark field in a way which slows it down, and deflects it, the way a bullet would be slowed down or curved when shot in a pool of Jell-O. When multiple bullets get slowed in the same area or curve into each other, they form a ball of bullets, and now a ball of bullets is flying through space. That ball of bullets could become a proton or a neutron, the basic building blocks of matter, the mass that makes up 99.999999% of our visible universe from tables to trees and mountains and mice. As protons and neutrons start smashing into each other, they create atoms, and atoms smashing into each other begin to create molecules, and so on and so forth. Essentially, the Higgs field is the black Jell-O world that combined teeny tiny light energy rays to make them into protons and neutrons.
But if darkness is a creation, if the Higgs field is not just a void, what is it made of? It is made of an infinite number of Higgs Boson (bosons are a type of subatomic particles). If you were living in a water world, the fabric of your world would be H2O molecules. So, too, we who live in a Higgs field environment, the fabric of our universe is infinite Higgs Boson particles. This is the equivalent of saying that we are living in a universe of Black Jell-O, and trying to capture the Higgs Boson means trying to isolate a tiny piece of the Black Jell-O.
That is really hard to do because, by definition, the Higgs field and its building blocks, the Higgs bosons, are invisible, and if a Higgs Boson shows its face it will be for only .000000000000000000000001 of a second. But this is what CERN did on July 4th, 2012, when it announced that it had repeatedly (millions of times) captured the signature of the decay of a Higgs Boson particle. Mazal Tov.
If you are still reading at this point, please reply to my email, because I have a feeling that I will have lost almost everyone by now! This is a Shabbos email, not a Astrophysics Weekly scientific journal! And if you’re still with me, I’m glad to have you on board!
Unfortunately, despite this being the biggest discovery in physics in half a century, it won’t do anything to change your life. You will still need to do your dishes yourself, and your car will never run on a tank full of Higgs Bosons. There will be no Higgs Boson treatments for cancer, or supercrops producing fist sized wheat kernels made in a Higgs Boson treated field. As a matter of fact, the only affect you will probably ever see from this discovery will be in your tax bill. The US gives hundreds of millions to the LHC, and will likely continue to do so, so you will probably help fund CERN with a few of your tax dollars each year.
What’s bothering me is that almost every article I read (15+) went out of its way to say that scientists really don’t like it when people call it the “G-d particle.” There is such a clear anti-G-d bias in the theoretical physics world. One of the most prominent CERN scientists, upon making the Higgs Boson discovery, proclaimed, “Thanks, Nature!” clearly indicating whom she was not thanking. Dr. Michio Kaku, one of the originators of string theory and a prominent pop-scientist, used the Higgs Boson discovery as an excuse to get on CNN and say that now science is taking us away from Genesis, Chapter 1.
But to me, this is even greater proof of G-d’s existence! July 4th, 2012 should go down in history as a day in which a deeper level of G-d’s grandeur was discovered. Here’s why: None of the scientists at CERN can explain how the Higgs field got here. They can only explain what it is, and how it works, but not why it works and not how it got there. The fact that this universe filled with void and darkness is not really empty but filled with infinite tiny Higgs Boson particles that make up the Higgs field is all the more proof of a Creator!
Imagine you woke up one morning and found a beautiful wooden bench on your front yard. You and your scientist neighbor get into an argument. He says that it’s possible that it just got there randomly by a very unlikely but possible confluence of events involving a tornado ripping limbs off a tree, those limbs smashing into other limbs until they are the perfect shape, and then nails that were sucked out of a roof getting lodged into the wooden planks. The tornado carried it through the air, and then deposited it on your front lawn on what happens to be your birthday.
You, on the other hand, say, “I think this is a gift from my father; he’s really good with wood, and he loves giving me nice presents.” But your neighbor scoffs, he says, “You really think it’s from your dad? I don’t see him! I can’t smell him! No, it must be from a tornado. I’ve seen them on the Discovery channel and I know they exist, but I’ve never seen your dad!”
But then you go down for a closer inspection and you see that the wood is actually finely patterned with a delicate paisley design, your favorite. Now you are even more convinced that your father made it, because it is much more complex than you ever imagined, and the greater the complexity, the greater the probability that something was made by a purposeful designer, not by itself.
For years people argued over whether this incredibly complex universe got here by the word of a creative G-d or by random chance. The evidence never looked good for those who saw it as a random event. The probability of a single enzyme assembling itself is 1/1000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, not good odds for the betting man as it is. On top of that, us humans have about 20,000 types of bacteria living inside of us (some helpful, some harmful) and each of those bacteria is made of about 2,000 different enzymes! Dot the math if you would like, but suffice it to say that you have to add a bunch of zeroes to the previously gigantic number. Things were looking pretty patchy for those who would believe that all that was just random.
But on July 4th, 2012 we just got a much closer inspection of the world, and we see that it is covered in an infinite covering of the finest of tiny and delicate paisley designs. It is made of an infinite number of Higgs Bosons. The world is so much more complex than we ever thought before. But the scientific community looks at these paisley designs, and proclaims “Thanks, nature!” They have no idea how the Higgs field got here, they have no idea how the Higgs boson got here, but they are ready to thank “nature.” (The very idea of thanking nature is in itself ridiculous, if everything is random, and nature just “happened,” there is no one to thank!)
But it’s even crazier than that. The Sages of the Torah, already knew that there was a Higgs field thousands of years ago, and described it, but just didn’t name it a Higgs field. The Mishna in Ethics of Our Fathers says (5:1), “With Ten Statements G-d created the World.” The gemara (Rosh Hashana 32A) explains that these are the ten times in Genesis Chapter 1, where it says, “And G-d said, let there be light!” “And G-d said, let the waters recede and the dry land show” “And G-d said let vegetations sprout forth.” Etc. But the Talmud asks, that if you count all the statements of “And G-d said” you will see that there are only nine! To which the Gemara answers, the word Bereishis itself was a statement of G-d. This means that before G-d said “Let there be light,” G-d created something else that was necessary to have there BEFORE the light was created!
Over 1500 years ago, the Sages of our Talmud, knew that there was something preceding “The Big Bang” when Hashem created all the light that would later transform into everything else we have in the universe. The scientists, who can only rely on data they find in labs and Large Hadron Colliders took thousands of years to finally discover the Higgs field. Our Sages who heard from prophets who heard from the Creator Himself, knew this thousands of years ago.
July 4th, 2012 was a day when Yidden living in the 21st century were able to be reminded powerfully that we have the Truth of the universe in our Torah. And when scientists try to deny the reality of G-d because they would rather be the All Knowing Gods at the top of the human totem pole, we can laugh, knowing that our wisdom far predates theirs, our G-dly wisdom is more accurate than theirs, and on top of that, our G-dly wisdom gives us the path to the happiest and most fulfilled life, something the discovery of the Higgs Bosun could never do.
So let’s grab a cup of cold H2O and make the following blessing with great intent:
Blessed are you Ha-shem, our G-d, King of the Universe, that EVERYTHING was made with His word!
Parsha Dvar Torah
In this week’s parsha, Chukas, we read about the story of Moshe hitting the rock to bring forth water. For forty years, a rock had miraculously followed the Jewish people throughout their travels and provided them with water. This was in the merit of the prophetess Miriam. In this week's parsha she passes away, and the water stops. G-d tells Moshe to gather the people and to speak to the rock before them, so that everyone will witness the miracle of water gushing out of the rock. Moshe, for reasons discussed in last year's email, hits the rock instead, and water comes forth. However, Moshe is punished severely by G-d for disobeying His command before all the people.
Let us focus on an interesting discrepancy between the verses describing water coming out of the rock. In verse 20:8, when G-d commands Moshe to talk to the rock G-d says "Take the staff and assemble the community, you and Aharon your brother, and speak to the rock in their presence that it may give forth its water; you will then bring forth for them water from the rock, and give drink [to] the community and their livestock." Yet, after Moshe hits the rock and water comes out, the Torah testifies that "And Moshe raised his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice; water rushed out abundantly, and the community and their livestock drank" (Num. 20:11)
What is the difference between these two verses? Go ahead, look back, play a Talmudist for a minute, and find a small detail that is different. O.K. now it’s my turn. The difference is that when G-d commands Moshe to do it, He just says that water would come out, yet when Moshe actually hits the rock, the Torah tells us that abundant water came out. Why does the Torah go out of its way to tell us this?
The Meshech Chochma, a prominent commentator from 20th century Eastern Europe, offers the following explanation. There are two ways something can be blessed - in quantity and in quality. When something is blessed in quality it is much greater than something blessed in quantity. For example, one internally flawless, D color, perfectly cut, 2 carat diamond is worth more that 20 carats of dirty flawed diamonds. Another example is the manna, the miraculous food the Jews ate in the desert. A person would eat just a bit and feel full, besides getting his Recommended Daily Value of Vitamins A through Zinc, and would have no waste products. Small doses of high quality manna are clearly better than large quantities of regular food.
When G-d originally gave the commandment to Moshe to bring forth water, it was supposed to be of such superior quality that abundant water wouldn't be necessary. People would be able to drink a small amount of this water and have all the liquid they needed. However, after Moshe sinned and hit the rock instead of talking to it, he was still able to produce water, but it was of inferior quality to the point where abundant water was necessary in order to provide for the needs of the people.
This idea is fascinating because it shows that more is sometimes not better, but worse. It teaches us that we can have success with more and abundance, but the ultimate goal is to learn to take less, and transform it into better quality. This can be applied in many areas of life. One prominent example that comes to mind is time spent with our children. We can spend abundant time around them, but if we are busy doing "our thing," such as reading the paper, watching TV, or talking on our cellphones, then it is quantity not quality, We would be better off giving each child less time a week, but quality time, undivided attention, with cell phones off, TV's and papers away.
Everyone can find many examples of where this concept applies to their own life, but instead of finding abundant examples, let's try to find just one example and really focus on changing that one area from the lesser blessing of quantity to the greater blessing of quality.
Parsha Summary
This week's parsha, Chukas, begins with the laws of ritual impurity contracted by contact with a corpse. Corpses impart impurity to those who come in contact with them because they represent the loss of potential as life = potential. Capability being wasted is the essence of impurity, just as potential being actualized is the essence of purity. The Torah describes the purification process, which involves being sprinkled with water mixed with the ashes of a completely red heifer. This mitzvah is considered the quintessential chok, a law we can’t understand. The most puzzling aspect of this law, is that the pure person who purifies the impure person, ends up becoming impure himself. It is important for humans to accept that we cannot fully understand G-d. By keeping mitzvos we don’t fully understand we show that we live as we do not just because we think it’s moral or healthy, but because G-d told us to.
The Torah now shifts its narrative forward by close to forty years. The years that the Jews wandered in the desert were peaceful and relatively uneventful, and this is the first mention of the events that occurred to them at the end of their wandering. The Torah describes the death of Miriam and the subsequent drying up of the Well of Miriam which had provided the Jews with water for all the years they were in the desert. It is at this point that G-d tells Moshe to speak to the rock and bring forth water - Moshe hits the rock instead. (See the Dvar Torah from last years email for an explanation of this, if you still have it, or email me and I will send it to you.) G-d then punishes Moshe by not allowing him to lead the nation into Israel.
Even though Moshe knows he will die before the Jews entered Israel, he does not try to delay them, but continues to help them get to the Holy Land ASAP. The path to Israel is blocked by the nation of Edom. G-d instructs Moshe to ask the Edomites if the Jews could peacefully traverse their land to reach Israel, but Edom refuses. Even though the Jews would later invade a different country when the inhabitants didn’t allow them peaceful access to Israel, this time G-d commands them to simply travel around Edom rather than fight them, as they are their cousins. (Edom is descended from Esau, brother of Jacob.)
It is on the border of the ancient country of Edom, that Aaron, the Kohen Gadol and brother of Moshe, passes away. (Aaron’s grave is still around, at the top of a mountain directly above the world famous ancient city of Petra in Jordan. I was there, and I could see the little building in which the tomb lies. Due to time constraints, I was unable to go up since it is a 3 hour donkey ride each way. However, I was able to look at his gravesite and pray. It was quite an awe-inspiring moment.) After Aaron’s death, the job of Kohen Gadol is given to his son Elazar. The entire Jewish nation mourns Aaron for thirty days, something rare for someone in such a high position. Aaron merited this incredible honor by devoting his life to bringing peace between man and his fellow. (Note to Self: If I want people to mourn me when I die, and not rejoice privately, be nice to others and promote peace in the community, and then people will actually miss me!)
After the nations see the Jews mourning Aaron’s death, they know that a leader of the Jews died and figure that this would probably be a good time to attack them. So along comes their arch-enemy Amalek, and attacks the Jews, while they are down and unprepared. (Same modus operandi as the Yom Kippur War, they never stop being slime!) But G-d delivers the Jews from their hands, and they made short work of them.
Then, believe it or not, some of the Jews complain again about the manna (the spiritual food they ate in the desert). This time, G-d sends serpents which come into the camp and start inflicting fatal bites. G-d tells Moshe to make a copper serpent, put it on a high pole, and to tell anyone who was bitten to look up at it and be healed. (The sages say that the serpent wasn’t what healed, rather, when the Jews looked heavenward to gaze at the serpent, they remembered their Father in heaven and repented, and then deserved to be saved)
The Jews travel on toward Israel. Two lepers who are at the back of the camp notice a strange sight (no, not glowing discs in the horizon), and bring it to the attention of the Jews. Upon investigation, the Jews discover the following story. The Canaanites, aware that the Jews were marching toward their country with the intent of settling there, tried to ambush the Jews, They hid in caves along one side of a thin canyon waiting for the Jews to pass through, after which they would attack and mercilessly slaughter them (it seems like no one is willing to take us on head to head - they all have some sneaky plan!). What they didn’t know was that the Clouds of Glory traveling before the Jews prepared the way for them by flattening out their path.
As the Jews approached the canyon, the Cloud squished the two sides of the canyon together, thus making all the Canaanites waiting in ambush into mashed potatoes. The Jews would have never even known about this if not for the two lepers who were walking far behind the camp and saw the river turn red with the blood of our would-be attackers. When the Jews see this sight, they make a special song of thanks because they realize that there are countless times that G-d protects them without them even knowing about it. (In Israel, the army claims that 95% of terrorist attempts are foiled without the knowledge of the citizens. That shows that even today we don’t realize how much G-d is protecting us!)
The last part of the parsha tells us the story of Sichon, a kingdom to the west of the Holy Land. The Jews ask the people of Sichon permission to cross through their land peacefully on their journey to Israel. Sichon, emboldened by Edom’s refusal (which worked, but only because G-d commanded us to leave them alone), reject their request and even mass their troops at the border, as if to say, “over my dead body!” This is exactly what the Jews do. They beat them in battle and move calmly towards Israel over their dead bodies. That's all, Folks!
Quote of the Week: Take risks! If you win, you will be happy. If you lose, you will be wise. ~ Samuel Fremont
Random Fact of the Week: In the average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator. (My sister added: and if you live in Israel, make that eight!!!)
Funny Line of the Week: Four thirds of people don't understand fractions.
Have a Dandy Shabbos,
R' Leiby Burnham