Von Neumann-Wigner

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Collapsing the Wave Function of Urim and Thummim

By Alexander Poltorak Dedicated to the refuah shaleimah (a complete and speedy recovery) of David ben Leah And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before G‑d; and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the G‑d continually. (Exodus 28:30) AbstractThe Urim and Thummim, sacred oracular devices embedded within the High Priest’s breastplate (Ḥoshen) in ancient Israel, represent one of the most enigmatic elements of biblical tradition. This essay explores their mystical function through an innovative framework that draws parallels with quantum mechanics. By examining rabbinic, Talmudic, and kabbalistic sources, I propose that the Urim and Thummim operated as a dynamic dyad with the High Priest, forming an interactive [...]

The Paradise: A Metaphor for Quantum Mechanics I

By Alexander Poltorak The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge as Metaphors for the Wave Function and Measurement Summary This essay proposes a novel interpretation of the Edenic narrative through the conceptual framework of quantum mechanics, establishing systematic correspondences between biblical symbols and quantum-mechanical constructs. Through careful analysis of biblical texts and their mystical interpretations in Kabbalistic and Chassidic sources, combined with precise physical and mathematical formulations, I demonstrate how the Garden of Eden can be understood as a metaphorical representation of Hilbert space—the mathematical foundation of quantum mechanics. The essay develops four primary correspondences: (1) the Tree of Life as the quantum-mechanical wave function—representing superposition of all possible states; (2) the Tree of Knowledge as measurement—causing the collapse of the wave function to a single definite state; (3) Paradise as [...]

Time and Space as Emergent Phenomena — Abstract

The current Torah portion Beshalach tells about the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. As I discussed in my essay, “Collapse and Revelation,” the splitting of the sea is a metaphor for the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics. The Alter Rebbe, the Baal HaTanya, taught us to leiben min hatzait (“to live with the time,” that is, to leave with the current reading of the Torah). Maybe this is why, this week, when we read in the Torah portion Beshalach about the splitting of the sea, I finally understood where time comes from. This question haunted me for more than forty years. Finally, this week, I got it—time emerges through the interaction of consciousness with the universal wave function, causing the sequence of wave function collapses that we perceive as [...]

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