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Joseph’s Birth—A View From Quantum Mechanics and Biology

And afterwards she bore a daughter, and called her name Dinah. (Genesis 30:21) In my previous essay, “The Conflict Between Joseph And His Brothers—A Gender Theory,” I suggested that Joseph exhibited some proclivity to feminine behavior in his youth. This impression can be naturally inferred from the verses and supported by traditions in Kabbalah related to Isaac, Joseph, and Benjamin, as we discussed in that essay. To be sure, Joseph outgrew his feminine tendencies (perhaps assisted by the tough love shown to him by his brothers). He matured into a man who was not only a husband, a father, and the de facto ruler of Egypt, but an archetype of masculinity and a paradigm of piety, for which he earned the designation of Joseph, the Righteous (Yosef HaTzadik). Moreover, spiritually, Joseph personified Yesod [...]

By |2020-12-24T20:42:06-05:00December 23rd, 2020|Bereshit, Biology, Collapse of the wavefunction, Entanglement, Genesis, Miketz, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Physics, Quantum Theory, Science, Superposition, Uncategorized, Vayeshev, Vayigash|0 Comments
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The Conflict Between Joseph And His Brothers—A Gender Theory

The confrontation between Joseph and his brothers is one of the most troubling stories of the Bible. Joseph and his brother—twelve sons of Jacob—were the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel. They are described as tzadikim (the righteous and pious men) and prophets. However, as we read in the Torah portion Vayeshev, we are told that brothers hated Joseph: And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. (Genesis 37:3) And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren; and they hated him yet the more. (Genesis 37:5) And his brethren envied him… (Genesis 37:11) The brothers intended to kill Joseph: And they said one to another: ‘Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now [...]

By |2020-12-24T20:54:24-05:00December 20th, 2020|Bereshit, Genesis, Kabbalah, Miketz, Names of G‑d, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Sefirot, Soul, Tanakh, Uncategorized, Vayeshev|11 Comments
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Jacob’s Struggle With a Man: A Metaphor From Neuroscience

So the present passed over before him; and he himself lodged that night in the camp. And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two handmaids, and his eleven children, and passed over the ford of the Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the stream, and sent over that which he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained, as he wrestled with him. And he said: “Let me go, for the day breaketh.” (Genesis 32:23–26)   The story of Jacob wrestling with a “man” is yet another of [...]

By |2020-12-07T17:30:25-05:00December 4th, 2020|Bereshit, Biology, Dreams, Genesis, Neuroscience, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Science, Uncategorized, Vayishlach|0 Comments
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Jacob and Esau—Thermodynamics of Order and Chaos

And these are the chronicles of Isaac… (Genesis 25:19) So Esau went unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives that he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife. (Genesis 28:9)   This Torah portion is called Toledot. In Hebrew, toledot means “generations” or “chronicles.” Indeed, this Torah portion starts with the phrase, “These are the chronicles of Isaac.” This is not the first or the last time this word appears in Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures). It appears for the first time in the opening verse of chapter 2 of Genesis: These are the chronicles of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Eternal G‑d made earth and heaven. (Genesis 2:4) The second time it appears in [...]

By |2020-11-24T11:50:04-05:00November 23rd, 2020|Bereshit, Creation, Exodus (Shemot), Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Physics, Superposition, Symmetry, Thermodynamics, Time, Toledot, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Steering Isaac’s Blessing

And Rebekah spoke unto Jacob, her son, saying: “Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying: Bring me venison, and make me savoury food, that I may eat, and bless thee before the Eternal before my death. Now, therefore, my son, hearken to my voice according to that which I command thee. Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savoury food for thy father, such as he loveth; and thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, so that he may bless thee before his death.” And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother: “Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. My father peradventure will feel me, [...]

By |2020-11-24T22:04:03-05:00November 22nd, 2020|Bereshit, Collapse of the wavefunction, Entanglement, Genesis, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Quantum Theory, Symmetry, Toledot, Uncategorized|0 Comments
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The Primacy of the Prime Numbers

And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying: “We came to thy brother Esau, and moreover he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him.” (Genesis 32:7) On this blog, we primarily focus on structural parallels between Torah and Physics and, more specifically, quantum physics. Today I would like to explore an interesting parallel between this Torah portion and the number theory. In my previous essay on the Torah Portion Vayishlach, “Jacob Meets Esau and his 400 men,” I wrote “Esau and his 400 men together were 401 strong. 401 is a prime number that is the sum of seven consecutive prime numbers (43+47+53+59+61+67+71).” In that essay, I focused on the significance of the number seven. Let us now focus on the significance of the prime number. The structural parallel I see [...]

By |2019-12-15T00:54:15-05:00December 13th, 2019|Bereshit, Genesis, Mathematics, Mathematics, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Randomness, Sefirot, Uncategorized, Vayishlach|3 Comments
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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 [...]

By |2020-11-03T21:24:36-05:00November 17th, 2019|Bereshit, Genesis, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Time, Uncategorized, Vayeira|1 Comment
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Jacob Teaches Wave-Particle Duality

…and he [Jacob] took some of the stones of the place and placed [them] at his head, and he lay down in that place (Gen. 28:11) And Jacob arose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had placed at his head, and he set it up as a monument, and he poured oil on top of it. (Gen. 28:18) And Jacob said to his kinsmen, "Gather stones," and they took stones and made a pile, and they ate there by the pile. (Gen. 31:46) The debate about the nature of matter goes back to antiquity. According to atomist school of thought (Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius), the matter is composed of particles or atoms. The light was also thought to be made of particles – the corpuscular theory of light (Alhazen, Newton). [...]

By |2018-11-18T16:14:56-05:00November 18th, 2018|Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Grand Unification

In physics, we seek Grand Unification, also known as the Theory of Everything. The Standard Model describes three out of the four fundamental forces: the strong (nuclear) force, the weak force (beta decay), and the electromagnetic force. The gravitational force, described by the General Theory of Relativity, does not fit into the Standard Model. Developing a quantum theory of gravity, and unifying gravity with the other three forces is the holy grail of theoretical physics. Jewish people are also in need of Grand Unification. There is a schism that runs through the history: it is the schism between Joseph (Yosef) and Judah (Yehuda). Judah represents a “shtetl yid,” a Jew who lives in a ghetto, who sits in a yeshivah, who learns Torah, and who sees the world outside as hostile, as a [...]

By |2018-12-10T23:07:02-05:00December 23rd, 2017|Bereshit, Chanukah, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Kabbalah, Mashiach (Messiah), Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Physics, Quantum Theory, Resurrection, Science, Uncategorized, Vayigash|0 Comments
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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 [...]

By |2020-11-09T20:52:37-05:00November 2nd, 2017|Bereshit, Collapse of the wavefunction, Genesis, Kabbalah, parallel universes, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Quantum Theory, Uncategorized, Vayeira, Wavefunction, Zohar|7 Comments
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