{"id":106495,"date":"2023-08-23T17:05:13","date_gmt":"2023-08-23T15:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=106495"},"modified":"2023-08-23T10:29:19","modified_gmt":"2023-08-23T08:29:19","slug":"28-05-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=106495","title":{"rendered":"Of Judaism, but Not in It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Of Judaism, but Not in It<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

AVI SHAFRAN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Isidor Isaac Rabi \/ SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES\/ALAMY<\/em><\/span>
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A Nobel Prize winning physicist who helped build the atomic bomb had a deep and abiding relationship to his Orthodox Jewish upbringing<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
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On July 16, 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer stood in the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico, watching a second sunrise\u2014that caused by the detonation of the world\u2019s first nuclear explosion, marking the dawn of the atomic age.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Standing by his side was I.I. Rabi, another Jewish physicist. \u201cIt was a vision,\u201d Rabi later said of that explosion. \u201cThen, a few minutes afterward, I had gooseflesh all over me when I realized what this meant for the future of humanity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If Oppenheimer was the Jewish father of the bomb, it had a large assortment of Jewish uncles (and at least one aunt, Lise Meitner), including Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, Niels Bohr, Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe, John von Neuman, Rudolf Peierls, Franz Eugene Simon, Hans Halban, Joseph Rotblatt, Stanislav Ulam, Richard Feynman, and Eugene Wigner.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Judaism qua Judaism, however, wasn\u2019t a major part of the lives of most, if not all, of those Jewish scientists. Certainly not of Oppenheimer\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Judaism was central for Rabi, who was a close colleague and friend of Oppenheimer\u2019s, and who was vital to America\u2019s efforts to develop the atomic bomb.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 1930, Rabi researched the nature of the force binding protons to atomic nuclei. That work eventually led to the creation of molecular-beam magnetic-resonance detection, for which Rabi was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1944. Rabi\u2019s work is what made magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, the valuable diagnostic test, possible.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During World War II, Rabi served as associate director of the Radiation Laboratory\u2014which became known as the \u201cRad Lab\u201d\u2014at MIT, where he was one of the first scientists in the U.S. to work on what is known as a cavity magnetron, a device that sends a stream of electrons, guided by a magnetic field, past a series of cavity resonators\u2014small, open cavities in a block of metal. The electrons cause microwaves to oscillate within, much the way air blown through a whistle produces a tone. The microwave-generating device revolutionized radar (and today, rather mundanely, is part of every microwave oven).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The ability to produce shorter, or micro, wavelengths through the use of the cavity magnetron on ships and aircraft resulted in unprecedented accuracy in locating enemy craft over greater distances. The Second World War\u2019s main theater of operations was, in effect, a massive sea and air battlefield that stretched for thousands of miles. Many military historians give the lion\u2019s share of credit for the Allies\u2019 victory on that global battlefield to the greatly enhanced radar system honed by Rabi and others at the Rad Lab.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The other decisive technology of the war was, of course, the atom bomb, two of which devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During the first test bomb\u2019s gestation, Oppenheimer offered Rabi, with whom he had become friendly, the position of deputy director of the Manhattan Project. Rabi turned it down, though he agreed to serve as a consultant for the project and made occasional trips to work at Los Alamos. Rabi was with Oppenheimer for the Trinity test on that historic July morning.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If Oppenheimer was the father of the bomb, it had a large assortment of uncles (and at least one aunt, Lise Meitner), and many, like Oppenheimer, were Jewish.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Oppenheimer was not oblivious to his connection to other members of the Jewish tribe. When news of the mass murder of Jews in Europe reached him, he was deeply shaken, feeling a bond of ethnicity with Hitler\u2019s victims. \u201cI had a continuing, smoldering fury,\u201d he wrote, \u201cabout the treatment of Jews in Germany.\u201d And, while teaching at Berkeley just before the creation of the Manhattan Project, he earmarked 3% of his salary to help Jewish scientists escape Nazi Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But, as far as Judaism as a religion was concerned, Oppenheimer\u2019s convictions mirrored those of the Society for Ethical Culture, the Jewish-founded but wholly secular movement in which he was raised. As Elie Wiesel wrote in a review of a play based on\u00a0American Prometheus<\/em>, the book that inspired the current popular film: \u201cDespite being a notable Jew, [Oppenheimer] remained at a distance from Yiddishkeit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rabi, however, despite his friendship with Oppenheimer, was a very different sort of Jewish physicist. Though he respected his colleague greatly, Rabi told his biographer, John S. Rigden, that Oppenheimer \u201cwas Jewish, but he wished he weren\u2019t, and tried to pretend he wasn\u2019t.\u201d Rabi was saddened by his friend\u2019s apathy toward his Jewishness and saw it as having caused Oppenheimer to have failed to become a fully \u201cintegrated personality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The contrast between the two men\u2019s attitude toward their Jewishness is evident in how Oppenheimer, as an 18-year-old in 1922, accompanying his English teacher Herbert Smith on a trip to the Southwest, asked to travel as Smith\u2019s brother so he could be introduced as \u201cRobert Smith.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rabi, too, as a young man, during the two postdoctoral years he spent in Europe, sought to amend his name, but in the other direction. In Germany,\u00a0he insisted on being identified as Isidor\u00a0Isaac\u00a0<\/em>Rabi. \u201cI was never sailing under false colors,\u201d he explained about that decision. \u201cThis is it. Whatever dealings we have will be on that basis\u2014I know who you are and you\u2019ll know who I am.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Though proud of his religious heritage, Rabi never dressed or lived as an observant Jew. His appearance and demeanor in every way telegraphed an image of the secular scientist. But his mindset, when it came to Judaism, was considerably more complex.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

From left: Robert Oppenheimer, Isidor Rabi, H.M. Mott-Smith, and Wolfgang Pauli at Lake Zurich, Switzerland \/ AIP EMILIO SEGR\u00c8 VISUAL ARCHIVES, FERMI FILM COLLECTION<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Rabi was born in 1898, into an observant Orthodox Jewish family, in Ryman\u00f3w\u2014what was then part of Austrian-ruled Galicia and is today part of Poland. At his circumcision, he received the name Yisrael Yitzchak. Soon thereafter, his family emigrated to the U.S., settling into a small apartment on Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side before moving to the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rabi\u2019s parents fully maintained and cherished their Orthodox Jewish observance, and the family spoke Yiddish exclusively.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As a young boy, though, Yisrael Yitzchak quickly picked up English, and his interest in science led him to the public library and to tinkering with electronics. He was no mere dabbler. His first scientific paper, on the design of a radio condenser, was published in\u00a0Modern Electrics<\/em>\u00a0when he was still in elementary school.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And his scientific explorations were not limited to any one field. When he read about heliocentrism, like many a young person coming to doubt the wisdom of his parents\u2019 life choices, \u201cIzzy\u201d\u2014how he came to be known at school\u2014proudly declared himself an atheist. \u201cIt\u2019s all very simple.\u201d he informed his parents. \u201cWho needs God?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They were disappointed, as might be expected, but tolerant. He was only a boy, after all. And when his bar mitzvah approached, they asked him to prepare a bar mitzvah\u00a0drasha<\/em>. This was usually a scholarly discourse on a topic sourced in the Talmud for the guests, who were all religious people like Rabi\u2019s parents. Rabi eventually agreed. And delivered a speech\u2014in Yiddish\u2014about how an electric light works.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI talked about the carbon filament,\u201d he recalled in his later years, \u201cand then there was something I thought was very clever: getting the [electrical] lead out from the filament.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite his 13-year-old freethinking ways, Rabi, even as a youth, came to mature in his worldview. And to feel the sense of awe that underlies deeply religious minds.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To be sure, he told Rigden, \u201cWhen you are Orthodox, you say prayers for the new moon \u2026 [but] when you have an astronomical explanation, the rising of the moon becomes a sort of non-event.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And yet, he recounted how, once he \u201cwas walking along and looked down the street, which was facing east. The moon was just rising. And it scared the hell out of me! Absolutely scared the hell out of me.\u201d His inexplicable reaction to the grandeur of a moonrise was at odds with cold rationalism.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Many decades after his boyhood, he recalled how intrigued he had been as a youth, even an ostensibly atheist one, by the biblical creation account. \u201cThe first verses \u2026 were very moving to me as a kid. The whole idea of the Creation\u2014the mystery and the philosophy of it. It sank in on me, and it\u2019s something I still feel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMy early upbringing, so struck by God, the maker of the world, this has stayed with me,\u201d he mused. \u201cThe idea of God,\u201d he added, \u201chelps you to have a greater feeling for the mystery of modern physics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rabi expressed disdain for physicists who pursue their occupation for fun. \u201cI knew other ways to have fun,\u201d he said, drolly. \u201cPhysics has a much deeper emotional quality for me than that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rabi considered physics as something that \u201ctranscended religion,\u201d but didn\u2019t replace it. Physics, he explained, \u201cfilled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He recounted that whenever one of his students would come to him with a scientific project, he asked \u201conly one question: \u2018Will it bring you nearer to God?\u2019\u201d And, he added, \u201cThey always understood what I meant.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018My early upbringing, so struck by God, the maker of the world, this has stayed with me.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After the war, Rabi returned to Columbia University, where he had taught in the 1930s. He became an outspoken critic of the continued development of nuclear weapons, joining with Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi to oppose the development of the hydrogen bomb, 1,000 times more destructive than the bombs that had fallen on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A plan he had put forth to enlist all nations in forswearing development of such a weapon fell flat at the United Nations when the Soviet Union refused to be part of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In his final days, Rabi had the bittersweet experience of undergoing an MRI examination, the medical fruit of his prewar research. He was approaching death\u2019s door\u2014through which he passed on Jan. 11, 1988\u2014but could take heart at what he had bequeathed to help save, not take, lives. \u201cI saw myself in that machine,\u201d he exulted. \u201cI never thought my work would come to this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rabi never returned to the Orthodox practice of his family and his youth. And yet, at the same time, he remained somehow conjoined with it. \u201cNothing in the world can move me as deeply as some of these Orthodox Jewish practices,\u201d he confided.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cPeople go to Israel, to Williamsburg in Brooklyn, or to those places where Orthodox Jews go \u2026 and they pray and shake back and forth. Some people are appalled by it, but to me it is great. These are my people. I could join them, shake back and forth, and feel all right about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He paused then to reassure his biographer that \u201cI\u2019m a scientist, which I firmly believe transcends\u2014doesn\u2019t oppose, but transcends\u2014these particular things. I am\u00a0of\u00a0<\/em>this \u2026 there is no question, but I\u2019m not\u00a0in\u00a0<\/em>it, couldn\u2019t be in it. I love it and I respect it, but as a scientist I am at a more universal level \u2026 and this comes back to God.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cOf this but not in it.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>An apt capture of the subtle complexity of Rabi\u2019s feelings toward his religious roots. What he realized was the truism that a scientific mindset needn\u2019t preclude a spiritual one, indeed can be based on one. Human lives are lived in color, not black and white.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And so, while J. Robert Oppenheimer may have epitomized the \u201cpure\u201d scientist, his friend Rabi was, psychologically speaking, to borrow a phrase, a man in full.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a revealing, pithy attestation, Rabi told his biographer: \u201cThere\u2019s no question that basically, somewhere way down, I\u2019m an Orthodox Jew […] In fact, to this very day, if you ask for my religion, I say \u2018Orthodox Hebrew\u2019\u2014in the sense that the church I\u2019m not attending is that one. If I were to go to church, that\u2019s the one I would go to. That\u2019s the one I failed. It doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m something else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Rabbi Avi Shafran<\/strong> is a columnist for\u00a0Ami magazine and writes widely in other Jewish and general media. He also serves as Agudath Israel of America\u2019s director of public affairs.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Of Judaism, but Not in It AVI SHAFRAN Isidor Isaac Rabi \/ SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES\/ALAMY . A Nobel Prize winning physicist who helped build the atomic bomb had a deep and abiding relationship to his Orthodox Jewish upbringing On July 16, 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer stood in the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106495"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106512,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106495\/revisions\/106512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}