Holidays (Yomim Tovim)

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Jewish Holidays

Sukkah: the Portal into the Holy Land

Sukkah: the portal into the Holy Land Sitting with my wife in our sukkah-hut recently, I was struck by a memory from some four decades ago. During Chol HaMoed Sukkot, I visited my mentor and friend, Rabbi Benzion Feldman. I shared with him that, while sitting in our sukkah, my wife and I had discussed the possibility of making Aliyah to Israel. Rabbi Feldman smiled and said, “The reason you and your wife were thinking about Israel while sitting in your sukkah is that the air in the sukkah is the air of Eretz Yisrael.” Indeed, Eretz Yisrael is under constant divine watchfulness, as it says: A land which the Lord your G-d cares for; the eyes of the Lord your G-d are always upon it. (Deuteronomy 11:12) The sukkah also symbolizes G­‑d's protection [...]

By |2024-10-22T10:10:04-04:00October 21st, 2024|Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Sukkot, Uncategorized|1 Comment
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Rosh HaShanah: The Beginning of Change II

Abstract This essay explores the profound connections between language, philosophy, physics, and spirituality in the context of Rosh HaShanah. By examining the linguistic roots of “shanah” (year), “shinui” (change), and “shnei” (two), the essay uncovers a rich tapestry of meaning that addresses the fundamental question: Why is there change rather than permanence? The study traces the metaphysical concept of change from ancient Greek philosophy through medieval Jewish thought to modern physics, highlighting the paradoxical relationship between the Infinite Creator and finite creation as expressed in Kabbalistic and Chassidic concepts of mati ve’lo mati and ratzo va’shov. The essay concludes by proposing a relational view of time and change, aligning Jewish mystical thought with contemporary physics, and presenting Rosh HaShanah as an opportunity for renewing and deepening our relationship with the Divine. Introduction In [...]

By |2024-10-16T10:48:27-04:00October 15th, 2024|Creation, G‑d, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Kabbalah, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Rosh HaShanah, Science, Spirituality, Sukkot, Time, Uncategorized, Yom Kippur|0 Comments
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Rosh HaShanah—the Beginning of Change I

It’s All in the Name Rosh HaShanah is usually translated as the New Year. When translated literally, it means the “Head of the Year.” In this essay, I suggest an alternative (almost literal) translation that reveals a new meaning. The word "rosh" is cognate with "reishit," meaning “beginning.” The word "shanah" is cognate with "shinui," meaning “change.” Therefore, Rosh HaShanah can be translated as the Beginning of the Change. Aristotle equated time with change (Physics). Change itself is unthinkable outside of time as change can only occur in time—first, there was something, and then, it became something else. So, change and time are essentially synonymous. Thus, we can translate Rosh Hashanah as the Beginning of Time.  Moreover, what is the beginning? Any process extended in time has the beginning, the middle, and the end. However, what is the [...]

By |2024-10-31T23:43:24-04:00October 2nd, 2024|Physics, Rosh HaShanah, Science, Symmetry, Time, Uncategorized|1 Comment
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Bet HaMikdash as a Singularity in Space-time

Introduction In this essay, I intend to draw a parallel between the singularity in space-time, such as the putative point of origin of the universe in the Big Bang cosmology, on the one hand, and the Jerusalem Temple (Bet HaMikdash) as it existed on the terrestrial plane before its destruction and as it continues to exist on the celestial plane—in the four spiritual worlds of the Universe of Tikkun. Another unexpected parallel between the cosmological singularity and the Bet HaMikdash as the embodiment of ten sefirot (divine emanations) is that in cosmology and in Lurianic Kabbalah they both play the role of a  “wormhole”—a channel connecting different universes. As a brief introduction, Lurianic Kabbalah is a school of Jewish mysticism developed by Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), also known as the Holly Ari or [...]

By |2024-08-14T22:16:33-04:00August 14th, 2024|Big Bang, Cosmology, Physics, Sefirot, Singularity, Tisha B'Av, Uncategorized, Zohar|1 Comment
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Breaking Symmetry to Inaugurate the Priests

The Torah portion Tzav describes a ritual performed by Moses in consecrating Aaron as the High Priest (Kohen Gadol) and his sons as priests (kohanim): And the other ram was presented, the ram of consecration, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram. And when it was slain, Moses took of the blood thereof, and put it upon the tip of Aaron’s right ear, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot. And Aaron’s sons were brought, and Moses put of the blood upon the tip of their right ear, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot; and Moses dashed the blood against the altar round about. Leviticus [...]

By |2024-04-02T21:26:16-04:00April 1st, 2024|Biology, Chemistry, Leviticus, Malachi, Parshah, Purim, Sefirot, Standard Model, Symmetry, Tanakh, Tzav, Uncategorized, Vayikra|0 Comments
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Sukkot and the Standard Model

And ye shall take you on the first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook. Leviticus 23:40 During the Holiday of Sukkot (“Tabernacles”), the Jewish people are commanded to take together four species (arba’a minim): etrog (fruit of a citron tree), lulav (a branch of a date palm), ḥadassim (boughs from the myrtle tree), and aravot (branches of the willow tree),[1] and hold them together while waving with them in all six directions (na’anuim). As I wrote in my essay “Unified Field Theory… Theory and Practice,”[2] the four species, arba’a minim, also correspond to the four letters of the Tetragrammaton. According to the Arizal, this relationship is as follows: Letter of the TetragrammatonArba’a MinimYudḤadassimHehAravotWawLulavHehEtrogTable 1. Letters of Tetragrammaton and Arba’a Minim As I wrote in my earlier essays,[3] all four fundamental forces correspond to the four [...]

By |2024-10-16T13:45:34-04:00October 6th, 2023|Kabbalah, Physics, Quantum Theory, Science, Standard Model, Sukkot, Sukkot, Uncategorized|0 Comments
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The Fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz as a Manifestation of Breaking of the Vessels of Tohu

Today, on the Seventeenth of Tammuz, Jewish people fast to commemorate several tragic events in Jewish history.[1] These tragic events include the breaking of the Tablets (Luchot) and the breach of the walls of Jerusalem twice—during the First and the Second Temple.[2] It seems that the confluence of these destructive events is not coincidental—all three are manifestations of the spiritual process called in Lurianic Kabbalah, Shevirat HaKelim (the “Breaking of the Vessels”).[3] Many readers may be surprised by the juxtaposition of historical events that happened in this physical world with primordial events that took place in another universe—Olam HaTohu (the “universe of Chaos”)[4] that preceded the creation of our universe—Olam HaTikkun (the “universe of Rectification”)[5] Indeed, how can something that happened before the creation of our universe can affect historical events in this [...]

By |2023-07-06T23:59:12-04:00July 6th, 2023|17th of Tamuz, Creation, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Mashiach (Messiah), Time, Tisha B'Av, Uncategorized, Zechariah|0 Comments
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The Temple as a Model of a Cell

Introduction Today, on Tisha B’Av—the ninth day of Av, this year commemorated on the tenth day of Av because the ninth is Shabbat, when mourning is forbidden—we mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple—Bet HaMikdash. This day commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, and Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. Aside from its historical significance, why is the destruction of both Temples so tragic that it is mourned even today? What is the significance of the Temple in Jerusalem? The Temple was a building where kohanim-priests offered sacrifices. The sages state that the Temple was a source of life for the Jewish people.[1] This can be seen easily if we examine the parallels between the Temple and [...]

By |2022-08-07T13:43:09-04:00August 7th, 2022|Biology, Kabbalah, Tisha B'Av, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Sefirat HaOmer—A Study in Klal u’Prat

The forty-nine days between Passover and Shavuot are called the days of Sefira or the days of counting Omer—Sefirat HaOmer—when Jews count every day as the first day of the omer, the second day of the omer, and so on until on the Eve of Shavuot, when the last, forty-ninth day is counted. . . . And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the Omer of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete.Leviticus 23:21 Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee; from the time the sickle is first put to the standing corn shalt thou begin to number seven weeks.Deuteronomy 16:9 This period is marked by semi-mourning with observance of such customs as avoiding haircuts, not shaving, not celebrating [...]

By |2022-05-27T19:33:27-04:00May 27th, 2022|Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Husband and wife, Kabbalah, Klal and Prat, Omer, Passover (Pesach), Sefirot, Shavuot, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Collapse and Revelation

The collapse of the wave function is the process of revealing hidden possibilities. Reducing uncertainty reveals information. Until the wave function collapse, the system is in an uncertain state—the state of superposition. The measurement that causes the collapse of the wave function eliminates this uncertainty revealing the state of the system. The collapse occurs as the result of an experiment or observation. It is the discovery of the state of the system. The process of discovery—revelation—in the terminology of Kabbalah—is the process of revealing Alma d’Isgalya (Revealed World) from Alma d’Iskasya (Hidden World). This is why the splitting of the sea can be seen as an allegory of the collapse of the wave function.

By |2024-01-25T22:44:15-05:00January 29th, 2021|Beshalach, Collapse of the wavefunction, Exodus (Shemot), Kabbalah, Passover (Pesach), Pentateuch (Chumash), Quantum Theory, Sefirot, Superposition, Uncategorized, Wavefunction, Zohar|4 Comments
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Shavuot (in Russian)

Шавуот Праздник Дарования Торы Aлександр Полторак    Закончился праздник Песах.  Все евреи поспешно убрали пасхальную посуду в особые шкафы или на чердаки до следующего Песаха.  В домах появились после восьмидневного перерыва свежеиспечённые булки. Наступили будни... Прошедший праздник оставил во рту приятный привкус подгоревшей мацы, воспоминания о Седере, проведенном в кругу семьи, рассказы об Исходе. Но закончился ли на этом Песах? Мораль и Свобода Выбора Вспомним, что главная идея Песаха это идея свободы, свободы от рабства Египетского или иного, физического или духовного. Итак, Бог вывел еврейский народ из Египта, сделал нас свободными людьми. Но стали ли мы свободными, освободившись от гнёта египетских надсмотрщиков?  Подчас, раб, освобождённый своим хозяином, остаётся у него добровольно, ибо некуда и незачем ему идти, нет у него ни места, ни смысла жизни...  Что же это всё-таки такое, свобода? О свободе [...]

By |2020-05-19T19:00:17-04:00May 19th, 2020|Freedom, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Passover (Pesach), Physics, Shavuot, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Counting Weeks and Days

There is a Biblical Commandment to count the days between the Passover and Shavuot, the "Feast of Weeks" (a.k.a. Pentecost). We start counting on the second day of Passover (the first day of the barley harvest in the land of Israel, when the wave-offering of the omer, i.e., “sheaf,” of ripe barley was made in the Jerusalem Temple) and finish on the eve of Shavuot—the day when two loaves of bread made of wheat were offered at the Temple. There are exactly seven weeks (forty-nine days) between these two holidays; we are commanded to count the weeks and the days. These forty-nine days are called days of Sefirat HaOmer (the days of “counting the Omer”) or, simply, days of Sefirah ("counting"). This commandment is given in the following verses of the Torah: And [...]

By |2024-05-17T18:10:51-04:00April 28th, 2020|Fractals, Kabbalah, Mashiach (Messiah), Omer, Sefirot, Shavuot, Spirituality, Sukkot, Uncategorized, Zohar|2 Comments
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Sukkot — Bringing Time into Space

Jews have a very strange custom to take four species (Heb. arba’a minim)—a fruit of a citron tree (etrog), a branch of a date palm (lulav), boughs from the myrtle tree (chadassim), and branches of the willow tree (aravot)—and wave them in all six directions (na’anuim) while holding the species together. The precise movements involve bringing the bunch to one’s heart, then moving them to and fro in all six directions, three in each direction, every time returning the bunch to the heart. A strange sight indeed… what could it possibly mean? I’ve written before that Sukkot has to do with bringing holiness into time and space. The seven days of dwelling in the sukkah-booth (a.k.a. tabernacle) is related to the most important cycle of time – 7: there are seven days in a week, seven years in a Sabbatical cycle (shemita), seven [...]

By |2023-10-04T19:50:48-04:00October 18th, 2019|Sefirot, Space, Sukkot, Sukkot, Time, Uncategorized|3 Comments
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Chol Hamo’ed — Days in Superposition

Today is Chol Hamo’ed Sukkot – the intermediate days between the first and the last days of the holiday of Sukkot. These days are not quite holidays, but they are not ordinary days either. They are a strange hybrid or a mixture of a holiday and mundane days. In physics, we have a word for that – the state of superposition. I’ve written about it in my article Pesach Sheini – in a State of Superposition. Not to repeat myself, I refer the reader to that article for background information. In short, in physics, we speak of states of the system. Say, one state of a dreidel may be spinning clockwise. Another state would be spinning counterclockwise. These are pure states. In quantum mechanics, a system could be in a mixed state. Say, [...]

By |2019-10-17T17:10:06-04:00October 17th, 2019|Collapse of the wavefunction, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Quantum Theory, Sukkot, Sukkot, Superposition, Uncategorized|3 Comments
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Fitting Pieces of the Puzzle Together

Meditations on the Maaseh Merkavah – IV This is the fourth and the final installment in the series of posts related to Ezekiel’s prophesy, Ma’aseh Merkava, “The Making of the Chariot.” For background information, refer to the previous posts, “Space – Between Future and Past,” “Relational Space,” and “Collapse of the Wave Function.” Regular readers of my blog may be wondering about my last post “Futurist Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,” which was about my new interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is not a physics blog, however; the Quantum Torah blog is about Torah and physics (or, more broadly, Torah and science). What did the last post have to do with Torah? Hopefully, it will all now become clear. Last Shavuot I had a very unusual experience. Sitting in shul listening to the reading [...]

By |2019-06-21T13:21:11-04:00June 21st, 2019|Collapse of the wavefunction, Ezekiel, Freedom, G‑d, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Kabbalah, Names of G‑d, Physics, Quantum Theory, Relativity, Science, Sefirot, Shavuot, Spirituality, Superposition, Time, Topology, Uncategorized, Wavefunction|2 Comments
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Collapse of the Wave Function

Meditations on the Maaseh Merkavah – III This is the third installment in the series of posts related to the Ezekiel’s prophesy, Maaseh Merkava, “The Making of the Chariot.” For background information, the reader is referred to my previous posts, “Space – Between Future and Past” and “ Relational Space.” As I wrote in the first post, “Space – Between Future and Past,” Sefirot line up against four letters of Tetragrammaton, Y‑H‑W‑H, as follows: Yud י Chokhmah, Abba Heh  ה Binah, Imma Waw  ו Six Lower Sephirot (Z”A) Heh  ה Malchut   The first two letters of the proper name of G‑d, Y‑H‑W‑H – Havayah, or Tetragrammaton – are י “Yud” (sometimes transliterated as "Yod") and ה “Heh” (sometimes transliterated as "Hey" or "He").  During the reading of the Ezekiel’s prophesy Maaseh Merkava [...]

By |2019-06-19T03:41:47-04:00June 18th, 2019|Collapse of the wavefunction, Ezekiel, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Kabbalah, Names of G‑d, Physics, Quantum Theory, Sefirot, Shavuot, Uncategorized, Wavefunction, Zohar|2 Comments
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Relational Space

Meditations on the Maaseh Merkavah – II This post is a sequel to my previous post, “Space – Between Future and Past.” For background information, the reader is referred to that post. My second Shavuot “epiphany” was that space is relational. Not that I realized that space was relational for the first time – I always thought so. But, for some reason, thinking about the meaning of the four faces of Chayot, the "living creatures" – the angelic beings described in the prophecy of Ezekiel that we read on Shavuot – made it absolutely clear in my mind. Isaac Newton The debate about the nature of space goes back at least to the times of Newton and Leibniz. Isaac Newton believed (as it is apparent from his mechanics and as it [...]

By |2020-10-20T00:26:20-04:00June 17th, 2019|Ezekiel, Kabbalah, Mathematics, Mathematics, Names of G‑d, Physics, Relativity, Sefirot, Shavuot, Space, Time, Uncategorized|8 Comments
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Space – Between Future and Past

Meditations on the Maaseh Merkavah – I We do science by studying nature. We study physics in a lab, peering into space or working out mathematical models with pencil and paper to see if they fit experimental data. However, great mystics of the past were able to see how this world operates by gazing into spiritual worlds above. On Shavuot, the holiday when we celebrate the revelation on Mount Sinai, we read the prophecy of Ezekiel (the First Vision of Ezekiel) called Maaseh Merkavah (or Ma'aseh Merkabah)—Work of the Chariot. Masters of Kabbalah have taught us that understanding the Work of the Chariot gives the initiated an understanding of the works of nature. This Shavuot, studying and thinking about Maaseh Merkavah, I came to understand some profound insights about the physics of space [...]

By |2024-06-09T17:14:43-04:00June 13th, 2019|Ezekiel, Fractals, G‑d, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Kabbalah, Names of G‑d, Physics, Relativity, Science, Sefirot, Sefirot, Shavuot, Space, Spirituality, Tanakh, Time, Topology, Uncategorized|6 Comments
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Quantum Torah Film Premiere

Welcome to the premiere of our first film, Quantum Torah. You can watch the film here: https://youtu.be/uTrMj80k6QE   Don't forget to subscribe to my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNVwLUClNUXVBqJUI9A47AQ/

By |2019-02-28T17:44:14-05:00February 28th, 2019|Collapse of the wavefunction, Creation, Entanglement, G‑d, Physics, Quantum Theory, Randomness, Resurrection, Science, Soul, Superposition, Uncategorized, Wavefunction, Yom Kippur|1 Comment
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