 So last Tuesday night, last Tuesday evening, a special exhibit opened at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Science Museum in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the release of Stanley Kubrick's landmark film 2001 A Space Odyssey. And aside from its evocative beauty, this film raised some tantalizing questions about what might lie out there. I was a kid during the Soviet American space race during the 1950s and 1960s. And I followed the various flights and expeditions with tremendous interest and excitement. Kubrick's film literally blew me away. And I was so impacted by 2001 A Space Odyssey that I wrote a very extensive review of it from my high school journalism class. I still wish I had my hands on that review. Of course, the highlight of that time was the Apollo 11 moon landing back in the summer of July 1969. By the time I was ready to head off to university in 1970, the personal essay that I submitted with my applications to the various schools I was hoping to attend was an essay that dealt with the importance of space exploration. Going way back in human history, people have speculated about the intriguing question of whether or not there is life beyond our planet. During the terrible years of the Second World War, while confronting Hitler's Germany, Winston Churchill published an essay on March 8, 1942, in London's Sunday Dispatch entitled, Are There Men on the Moon? He mused that given the vast size of the universe, it would be strange if no living creatures existed outside of planet Earth. Most people seem to agree with Churchill. A poll that was conducted by National Geographic back in 2014 found that 77 percent of Americans believe that extraterrestrial life exists. In 2017, a locality study of 26,492 people from 24 different countries revealed that 61 percent believe there is some form of life on other planets. Since the 1950s, scientists have proposed that habitable zones near stars in space are the most likely places that life may be discovered. They propose that there are planets where it's more likely that life might exist because the conditions are more right. Some statistical projections suggest there may be billions of earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of our Milky Way. Other estimates are a bit more modest, but still in the thousands. Since the 1960s, there have been numerous efforts launched attempting to detect not just intelligent forms of life in outer space, but any form of life. In 2015, British physicist Stephen Hawking and Jewish Russian tech billionaire Yuri Milner teamed up to launch the Breakthrough Listening initiative to seek out intelligent, extraterrestrial life. This is a $100 million 10-year project that is scanning the heavens using some of the largest and most powerful telescopes available at this time. But with all of this exploration and these kinds of searches and the going on since the middle of the 20th century, nothing has yet been discovered. What does the Torah have to say about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life? Believe it or not, some of our sages, going back to the 15th century, were fascinated by this topic. Rabbi Chazdai Kreskis, who wrote a famous book of Jewish philosophy called the Or Hashem, Light of God, has a long discussion on the topic of extraterrestrial life and concludes that the existence of life on other planets would not pose any problem to Judaism. As supporting evidence for this, he quotes a passage from the Talmud and tractate Avodazara 3b that says God travels among 18,000 different worlds. And he understands this to mean that God supervises these worlds, which may imply that they are inhabited. Kreskis also cites Psalm 19 verse 2, which says the heavens declare the glory of God, which again may be alluding to the praises of God emanating from other corners of the heavens. This view, by the way, can also be supported by the familiar verse from Psalm chapter 145 verse 13, the ashray, which says your kingship is a kingship over all worlds. Of course, these sources are far from conclusive. Number one, the 18,000 worlds referenced in the Talmud may be spiritual worlds and not physical worlds. Number two, Psalm 19 may simply mean that the vastness of the heavens testify to the greatness of God. Not that there are people found in these different parts of the heavens that testify to God's greatness, but simply the vastness of the world itself testifies to the greatness of God. And number three, Psalm 145 can also be referring to spiritual worlds. Your kingship is a kingship over all worlds. It may be spiritual worlds. And secondly, a totally valid translation, alternative translation, is not that God's kingship is a kingship over all worlds, but that your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. So the sources that we have so far, while they may indicate the potential for life on their planets, they're far from conclusive. The second voice weighing in our discussion at a similar time in history was Rabbi Yosef Albo, the author of the philosophical work Saifah al-Kharim. He lived in Spain between the years 1380 and 1444, slightly after Hasdaikreskis. And he maintained that there is no life on other planets. He insisted that the idea of life on other planets is an impossibility. And he argues this on theological grounds, on philosophical grounds. And he says that mankind, human beings, are the crown of creation and that the entire universe was created for our sake and for our benefit. And he reasons that since extraterrestrials would never interact with human beings, at least this is what he assumed back in the 15th century, they would have no purpose and therefore there'd be no reason for them to exist. This is the argument that Rabbi Yosef Albo makes. Rabbi Ariye Kaplan, who was an extraordinary Torah scholar and scientist who passed away in 1983, published a seminal article on Judaism and extraterrestrial life for the journal Intercom back in 1972. And Rabbi Kaplan offers support to the view of Albo from a passage in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Brachot 31a, that says, every land where it was not decreed for man to live was never subsequently inhabited. So therefore, since human beings are not found anywhere else in the universe, they would not be inhabited by anyone else. However, Rabbi Kaplan notes that this source as well is not an absolute proof since the Talmud may only be referring to those parts of planet Earth that are not inhabited. Of course, Rabbi Albo's argument assumes that we will never have interaction with extraterrestrials and that, as we all know, is not a done deal. From his perspective, back in the 15th century, he was able to assume that if you find another being on a planet somewhere a billion miles away, human beings will obviously have no contact with such a creature and therefore he assumed that since everything created was for the sake of human beings, if human beings don't interact with other beings in the universe, then they obviously have no purpose to exist and therefore he maintains there would be no other life on other planets. A third view is found by Rabbi Pinchas Eliyahu Horowitz, who lived in Poland from 1765 to 1861 in his famous Seifer Habrit, which was published in the year 1797. And he has a very extensive discussion of cosmology and he cites the view of Joseph Albo, who insisted that there is no life on other planets, but he rejects that conclusion and he believes that in fact there is life on other planets. He believes that the 18,000 different worlds that were mentioned in the Talmud, Tractate Avodazara 3b that we mentioned, are actually inhabited physical worlds. Rabbi Horowitz also cites along these same lines the last Mishnah, the last Mishnah in the entire Talmud, which is from Tractate Uktzin. It's a very famous Mishnah where Rabbi Yoshua Ben-Levy said, in the world to come, the Holy One blessed be He, will have every righteous person inherit 310 worlds. This is hinted at in Proverbs chapter 8 verse 21, which says, I have what to bequeath to those who love me and I shall fill their warehouses. And the word, which is the Hebrew word for what in this verse has a numerical value of 310. So again, God is saying, I will bequeath to those who love me, Yeh, which is 310. And these are the 310 worlds that Rabbi Yoshua Ben-Levy says, each righteous person will inhabit. Now some commentaries take these worlds as a metaphor for the spiritual delights that await the righteous people in the world to come, or that these 310 worlds might be speaking directly about spiritual worlds. Rabbi Horowitz understands this reference to 310 actual physical worlds existing in outer space. But this means that these worlds are inhabited. Again, we have a reference in the Talmud here to the fact that there are 310 worlds, are they inhabited? So to drive home his point that they are inhabited, Rabbi Horowitz takes us to a very interesting source. The fourth chapter in the Biblical Book of Judges describes how the Israelites were brutally oppressed by the Canaanite General Cicero for 20 years. The judge of Israel at that time was a prophetess named Devorah, Deborah. And she summoned a general named Barak to lead an army to fight Cicero. With the help of God, Barak's men defeated the army of Cicero. Cicero himself fled, but he was dispatched by a brave and cunning woman named Yael. The fifth chapter, the next chapter in the Book of Judges, is the famous Shiras Devorah, the song of Deborah, which praises God for the victory over the repressors. Now in this song, at verse 23, she quotes an angel who says the following, Cursed be Meroes. Cursed are its inhabitants, for they fail to come to aid God, to aid God against the enemy. And what is Meroes? What is this referring to? So many of the commentaries to the Book of Judges, including the Mitsudas Davide, the Radakh, the Rolbag, maintained that Meroes was a large city at that time near the area where the battles against Cicero's army was taking place. And this city was being cursed because they didn't participate in the battle. But there's a little bit of a problem. The problem is that there is no mention or record of any place named Meroes back then anywhere else in the Bible or any other source. So Rashi, in his commentary to this verse, cites two explanations about Meroes that are found in the Talmud, tractate Moe Katan 16a. One opinion that Rashi cites is that Meroes was an important leader at that time. The problem is, how can you curse the inhabitants of a leader if Meroes is referring to a great leader? What does the verse mean by saying and cursed are your inhabitants, Meroes? It doesn't seem to be reasonable. So the other possibility suggested by the Talmud is that Meroes was a star or a plant. Now, interestingly, a few verses earlier in Deborah's song in verse 20, she took note that the heavenly bodies came to help the Israelites in their battle. She says, from heaven they fought. The very stars from their orbits did battle with Cicero. And therefore, some commentaries, such as the Radak, take this idea of the heavens coming and fighting on behalf of the Jewish people. They take this metaphorically to indicate that the defeat of Cicero was so decisive that it was as if the very heavens participated in the battle. But the Talmud seems to take these verses more literally, and that while the heavenly bodies did come and involve themselves in the battle against Cicero, Meroes did it. And that's why it and its inhabitants were being cursed. Rabbi Horowitz also marshals a verse from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 45 verse 18, which says, for thus says the Lord creator of the heavens. He is the God, the one who fashioned the earth, and he is its maker. He established it. He did not create it for emptiness. He fashioned it to be inhabited. In other words, if there are inhabitable planets, they were in all likelihood created, Rabbi Horowitz suggests, to be inhabited. If there are places beyond planet earth that are inhabitable, Rabbi Horowitz takes Isaiah 45, 18 to indicate that they in all likelihood are inhabited. So based upon these and other sources from the capitalistic Ticune Zohar, Rabbi Horowitz concludes that there are inhabited planets in outer space. Next question he addresses though, is what would be the nature of these extraterrestrial beings? What would they be like? Now there were people at the time that Rabbi Horowitz was writing who believed that on other planets in space, they were beings just like beings on planet earth with similar characteristics, similar plants in animal life and beings just like human beings. That was I'm not sure a popularly held view, but it was a view that was held back in the time that Rabbi Horowitz was writing. He strongly rejects this view and insisted that just like creatures living in our oceans differ significantly from those that live on the land on planet earth, so Rabbi Horowitz says that inhabitants of other planets will be different from us earthlings. By the way, it's interesting that the Hebrew word for human being Adam basically means earthling because Adam from the Adamah we come from the earth. So that would be a good translation of the Hebrew word Adam. We are earthlings. So while Rabbi Horowitz believes that extraterrestrials can be endowed with intelligence and can be knowledgeable, he believes that only human beings down here on planet earth are created in the image of God and possess the spiritual component of free will. Ultimately, Rabbi Horowitz sees our world as the ultimate focus of God's creation and that in some way perhaps not always readily apparent, everything else in existence was created for our needs and to serve human beings. To support this idea, he quotes a passage from the Babylonian Talmud for a hope 32b. Says the following, the holy one blessed be he said, my daughter, I created 12 constellations in the firmament and for each and every constellation I have created 30 armies and for each and every army I have created 30 legions and for each and every legion I have created 30 infantry division leaders and for each and every infantry division leader I have created 30 military camp leaders and for each and every military camp leader I've created 30 leaders of forts. Hang in there everybody. And for every leader of a fort I have hung 365,000 stars corresponding to the days of the solar year and all of them in the heavenly host, all of these planets and stars, the Talmud is comparing the heavenly host to Roman military installations. God says in all of these in the heavenly host I have created only for your sake. So Rabbi Horowitz suggests based upon this passage in the Talmud that everything in existence was only created ultimately for the purpose of human beings. There's another famous passage in the Talmud which says and actually challenges each human being to always say that all of existence created for my personal sake, not just for the sake of humanity in general, each one of us should come to the point of saying that everything God created is ultimately here to serve me. Exactly how we benefit from the white cosmos is a mystery yet to be fully understood. The one loose thread that I should point out in Rabbi Horowitz's presentation is that if these extraterrestrials from the Rose as he insists do not have free will, then the obvious question is why would the inhabitants of this star be cursed for not assisting Barak's army? Normally you could only help people responsible and punish them if they have moral free will. So Rabbi Ariah Kaplan in his essay suggests that there happen to be rare occurrences in our sources where we see that beings such as angels are punished for wrongdoings even though they don't have free will. I want to discuss a relevant issue which we will see comes out of the passage in the book of Psalms chapter 115 verse 16. The psalmist writes the heavens are heavens to the Almighty but the earth he has given over into the hands of mankind based upon this verse and other verses such as Genesis 128 where again God gives dominion to the earth over to mankind. We see that God specifically has given dominion to human beings over the earth. If this is the case are we overstepping that which has been granted to us by exploring outer space meaning if God specifically has given into our dominion what's on earth and the heavens belong to him so maybe we shouldn't be poking around up there. So in order to understand this it's important for us to clarify what exactly are the parameters of heaven and earth and how far do they extend. One of the great commentaries to the Bible is the Malbim and he cites three opinions on this question. He cites the Ravad who says that the atmosphere above earth is called the heavens. So if you want to know where the heavens begin it begins just in our atmospheric you know area just above planet earth where we see the rain coming down that's already the heavens. My mononies the Rambam says that the sun the moon the stars and the planets constitute the heavens. The heavens don't start all the way down here you know a hundred feet above terra firma you got to go up a little bit. My mononies the Rambam says the heavens are what extend beyond the constellations. However the Malbim himself and the Italian commentary Soporno take the view that the heavens is that which lies beyond human reach. If you want to understand what the Bible means when it speaks about the heavens it's referring to any point beyond human reach which means any point within the reach of mankind has the status of earth. According to this view therefore space exploration is not poking around where we shouldn't be poking our noses. It's worth by the way bringing up Genesis chapter 11 where there was a plan to build a tower up to the heavens and that plan was thwarted by God. It's interesting that Ravionis and Ibishits writing in this 18th century suggested that the tower that was being built in Babel tower of Babel he suggested was some kind of either rocket ship or a launching pad. There may have been some plan for these human beings to get themselves way up in the sky and we see that God is not happy with that plan. So is this a possible problem for our exploration of outer space? So the Talmud deals with this story in tractate Sanhedrin 109a and the Talmud there teaches that the people building that tower had an agenda and their agenda was either to wage war against God or to worship idols or both but space travel that we undertake for more wholesome reasons would be fine. There's an interesting anecdote that's more contemporaneous. Professor Velvel Green began a return to his Jewish roots as a mature adult and in the early 1970s he was working with NASA on various projects seeking to find signs of life on planet Mars. A number of his Jewish colleagues challenged him and said you know what poking around in outer space like that is not something a nice Jewish boy should be doing. So Professor Green wanted to know if this kind of exploration was permitted according to Judaism and he sought the guidance of Rabbi Manachem Mendel Schneersen the Lubavitch Rebbe at the time and he was told the following the Rebbe said to him you should look for life on Mars and you should keep on looking and if you don't find it keep looking elsewhere because to sit here and say that there isn't life anywhere else is to put a limit on God and no one can do that. Now I wanted to briefly raise for consideration at this time the flip side of this that we've been discussing we've been discussing human beings poking around in outer space but there's a flip side what if the search for extraterrestrials has been turned back upon us. Many people today insist that UFOs are visiting here from other planets to make contact with us. Some people especially listeners to radio programs like Coast to Coast and various conspiracy theorists insist that they've actually seen these extraterrestrials and some people claim to have been abducted by them and experimented upon. I don't personally know what to make of such claims but there are some rabbis who have suggested an approach that can be found in Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lutzato's Derech HaShem The Way of God written almost 300 years ago. In part one of this incredible work The Way of God part one section five Lutzato describes beings that are in an intermediate nature between physical and spiritual. These beings are referred to as Shadim they are malevolent spiritual forces sometimes called the demonic realm and it's been suggested that at least some of these UFO encounters may possibly be encounters with Shadim but I would personally say that the jury is out on this one. One of the things that I personally find so interesting is that human beings for so long have been driven to seek out life elsewhere. It seems to be something that we've been fascinated by and driven by and almost obsessed with for many many years and to explore the incredible mysteries and vastness of the cosmos. There are many reasons why I think this is being undertaken. I think some people today believe that our planet is so messed up that we're going to need to find salvation elsewhere and there are probably dozens of other reasons why people today find it so important to try to seek out life on other planets. I believe that for Judaism there are also numerous angles to this quest. Rabbi Joseph B. Saloveitchek a brilliant 20th century Talmudic scholar and rabbinic leader was very open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life and he remarked that life on other planets would only reflect on the greatness of God. Of course on the other side of this is our reaction to the vastness of the cosmos and the greatness of God meaning if it's true that the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe and the hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy reflect such a massive world when I was back in eighth grade our science teacher was trying to describe how vast the universe was and how if you go out into outer space you just go on almost infinitely and I just remember I always think back to this sitting in that class and starting to cry because my my head was was breaking open it was so painful for me to think about just taking off in a spaceship and never stopping because you can keep on going and going. I found that idea back in eighth grade of the almost infinite size of the universe to be painful to even think about and so while Rabbi Solomon says that the idea of such a vast universe and the possibility of even life on other planets would only reflect on the greatness of God it would get us to think about how small we are. Maimonides actually writes about this in his magnum opus and he says that there are two incredibly important Jewish values among others one is the love of God and one is the fear of God and he says that there are two surefire ways there is a surefire way he says to arrive at each of these virtues at both the love of God and fear of God. Maimonides writes when a person contemplates this wonderous I'm sorry when a person contemplates his wonderous and great deeds and creations and appreciates his infinite wisdom that surpasses all comparison he the person will immediately love praise and glorify God yearning with great desire to know God's great name as King David stated my soul thirsts for the Lord for the living God but when he continues to reflect on these same matters he will immediately recoil in awe and fear appreciating how he is a tiny creature standing with his flimsy limited wisdom before he who is of perfect knowledge as King David stated when I see your heavens the work of your fingers I wonder what is man that you shall recall him that you shall think of him. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamb highlighted this last issue in his extensive article on the religious implications of extraterrestrial life if Rabbi Lamb asks we are not alone and there are other inhabitants of the world who may even in some ways be superior to us do we retain our intrinsic worth are we special as human beings however the Torah insists that our worth is never diminished even in a much larger and more complex world the Torah might teach that we are inferior in some ways to angels we're not superior to angels in many ways we're inferior to angels but we are unique in that we were created in God's image and we have free will and this is ultimately what was behind the argument between Moses and the angels regarding who should receive the Torah when God was about to give the Torah to the Jewish people the angels protested and the angels said you're going to give the Torah to them they're just slimy puny little human beings they don't deserve it the Torah belongs up here in heaven with us angels and Moses responds to the angels by saying one second you guys have parents that the commandment to honor and respect your mother and father should be relevant to you do you guys ever think about stealing other people's property do you think about stealing something from your fellow angel and he went on to explain that the Torah is obviously not meant for angels it has no relevance to angels it's only relevant to human beings living down here on planet earth even with the possibility of extraterrestrial life we don't lose our significance and intrinsic worth or by Tzadka coin of Leblin famously said that not only are we required to believe in God he said we have to believe in ourselves as well human beings may never lose sight of the fact that we were created as very special creatures by God that we here on planet earth might be one among billions of other creatures inhabiting the universe but our Torah teaches us that in some way maybe at this point we don't understand everything else is here in order to serve us in a famous midrash after the creation of Adam and Eve the rabbis teach us that God took Adam and Eve by the hand and took them around the Garden of Eden and said I want you to see what a beautiful world I created he says to them make sure you don't destroy anything in the world because if you do there's no one who'll be able to fix it after you it's the human being that has tremendous responsibility over the world we have responsibility not just for our world if we end up visiting the moon and mars and being on other planets we will have responsibility for those places as well I'm going to end with one final thought the Talmud characterizes different kinds of things that do damage Talmud speaks about four damaging agents one is fire as a pit one is the ox and they all stand they represent different kinds of things that do damage and one is a mysterious category called Mav'eh called Mav'eh it's not entirely clear what Mav'eh is but one of the explanations of the Talmud is that Mav'eh refers to the human being that we as well human beings cause tremendous amounts of damage but what is the etymology of this word Mav'eh so it comes from the root meaning to seek to inquire to seek and what the Talmud is saying is that what defines us as human beings is our quest for knowledge our quest to understand our quest to know our quest to explore and I believe that all of the energy that we put into space exploration and trying to seek out the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere I think it's a manifestation it's an expression of this internal spiritual drive that human beings have that we want to know everything that if we could we would like to be able to know everything we would like to know every planet life on every planet every kind of being that's why we're driven to go beneath the water surface and understand the thousands of different creatures that live in the seas and oceans because what God created is it is incredible it's beautiful there is incredible beauty everywhere everything that God created is an expression of himself and I believe that the human quest to find the furthest frontiers of possible life and existence beyond planet earth is really at its core seeking it's the human being that is seeking and ultimately what we're seeking is God himself that our desire to understand life and to understand all that was created is really at its core desire to connect with the creator and I think it's very healthy so I've tried to share tonight some of the total sources that deal with at least the potential for life on other planets and a little bit about what the implications are at least spiritually for us as God's creations