Vayeira

Parshat Vayeira. Genesis 18:1-22:24, וַיֵּרָא

The Exclusion Principle

Like most Jewish families worldwide, last Shabbat, the conversation revolved around the situation in the Middle East and the war in Gaza. The question was, what is the end game? How will this war end after IDF destroys Hamas? The United States, no doubt, will push for the Two-State “solution.” But will such a solution be viable? My wife, Leah, ’שתחי, chimed in, “The two-state solution is not viable because the exclusion principle forbids it.” I immediately understood what she meant. It was a deep insight that captured the very essence of the problem. Leah was also trained as a physicist (in fact, we met at a physics conference). Although she specialized in biophysics, she is familiar with quantum mechanics and spoke to me in the language we both understood. What is the [...]

Israel’s Security Lapses as a Reflection of Lot Consciousness

The October 7th attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel was a double surprise. The brutality and barbarism of the attack, the unspeakable cruelty of the terrorists that stunned the civilized world, was shocking but hardly a surprise. The stunning failure of the Israeli intelligence services to anticipate the attack despite the writing on the wall was a surprise. The complete and shocking unpreparedness of the IDF, which took many hours to mount an organized response, after terrorists breached the security fence, killed many hundreds of civilians, and took many hostages, was another surprise. The Israeli intelligence was blissfully unaware of year-long preparations by Hamas and the Israeli army that was caught with its pants down, unprepared to defend Israel’s border with Gaza. The Torah describes three stages of the development of Mashiach consciousness. [...]

By |2023-11-03T11:20:50-04:00November 3rd, 2023|Bereshit, Parshah, Uncategorized, Vayeira|1 Comment

The Circumcision—The Interference of Parallel Universes

This is My covenant, which ye shall keep, between Me and you and thy seed after thee: every male among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt Me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations. . . . and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. (Genesis 17:10–3)   Sages tell us that Abraham and other patriarchs knew the Torah prophetically before it was given to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai some 364 years after the Akeida took place.[1] Moreover, sages tell us that Abraham “observed” all of the Torah commandments. However, Abraham’s observance of the Torah commandments [...]

Akeida in Parallel Universes

Michael Frayn’s 1998 play, Copenhagen, concerns a meeting between two great physicists, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in 1941 in Copenhagen. In this play, the spirits of Heisenberg, Bohr, and Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, come together in the afterlife to answer Margrethe’s question, “Why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen?” Bohr and Heisenberg worked closely together in Copenhagen in the 1920s while developing atomic physics, resulting in the formulation of quantum mechanics. Bohr was already an accomplished scientist when the young German Heisenberg joined his group, and Bohr began mentoring him. Heisenberg became one of the leading figures in formulating the new quantum mechanics. Later, Heisenberg joined the group of German physicists developing nuclear weapons for Nazi Germany. Why did Heisenberg return to Copenhagen in 1941? Denmark was at that time already occupied by Germany. [...]

The Akeida — The Binding of Isaac

And He said: “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” (Genesis 22:2)   The Akeida (the Binding of Isaac) is one of the most enigmatic and troubling stories of the Bible. Its utmost importance is underscored by its inclusion in the daily morning prayers and its central role in the Rosh Hashanah services.[1] In summary, G‑d commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in the land of Moriah. Abraham hurries to fulfill the command and travels with Isaac to Mount Moriah, where he builds an altar, binds Isaac, and raises a knife, ready to sacrifice Isaac. At the last moment, an angel [...]

Three Angels: Past, Present, and Future

And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre, as he sat in the entrance of the tent in the heat of the day; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, three men stood over against him… (Genesis 18:1-2)   In the Torah portion Vayeira, three men appeared to Abraham as he was sitting at the entrance to his tent. The Talmud states that these three men were angels: Michael, Gabriel, and Rafael. Michael came to tell that Sarah will give birth to a son; Raphael came to heal Abraham after his circumcision; and Gabriel came to destroy Sodom. However, on a metaphorical level, it appears to me that these three angels personify three aspects of time: past, present, and future. Here are several clues that hint at [...]

Stress-testing the judgment

And Abraham drew near, and said: 'Wilt Thou indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Perhaps there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt Thou indeed sweep away and not forgive the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous should be as the wicked; that be far from Thee; shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?' And the Lord said: 'If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will forgive all the place for their sake.' And Abraham answered and said: 'Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes. Perhaps there shall lack [...]

Abraham Meets Abraham From a Parallel Universe

And he [Abraham] lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him…  (Genesis 18:2) On this blog, we often discuss the collapse of the wavefunction as the result of a measurement. This phenomenon is called the “measurement problem.” There are several reasons, for which the collapse of the wavefunction—part and parcel of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics—is considered a problem. Firstly, it does not follow from the Schrödinger equation, the main equation of quantum mechanics that describes the evolution of the wavefunction in time, and is added ad hoc. Second, nobody knows how the collapse happens or how long the wave function takes to collapse. This is not even to consider that any notion that the collapse of the wavefunction is caused by human consciousness, as proposed [...]

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