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When Judaism Meets Science
Posts Tagged ‘Amos’
Lessons from Wall Fragments and a Scroll
Wall Fragments in the Jordan Valley
Most of us have no idea of what treasures might rest under our feet. And then, perhaps, the wind blows, some rain falls, a shovel turns, and you see what no human has seen in years, maybe thousands of years.
So it was just fifty-seven years ago at a site known as Deir Alla, 13 miles east of the Jordan River and 27 miles northwest of the current Jordanian capital of Amman. There and then, an Arab foreman working with a group of archaeologists led by Prof. Henk J. Franken of the University of Leiden discovered fragments of a story that had been written many centuries earlier in red and black paint on a plaster wall. Recovery, preservation, restoration, and reassembly of the plaster fragments was a multi-year effort which led first to framed reconstructions being sent to the Amman Archaeological Museum and, subsequently, the publication of a book.
What could have caused the wall to collapse and shatter? And could that cause help us understand when the wall might have fallen? The answers came from a convergence of investigations at different sites in modern Israel and Jordan, sometimes utilizing different approaches. The sites ranged from Hazor in the north of Israel to Ein Hatseva in the south. The Jordanian site of Deir Alla lies midway between the two. What these sites have in common, and in common with other sites like Gezer, Lachish, and Tell ej-Judeidah (Tel Goded), is that they all sustained damage consistent with earthquake debris in areas stratigraphically contained to the middle of the Eighth Century BCE. In 2021, the Israel Antiquities Authority (“IAA”) announced evidence in Jerusalem, as well, of a powerful ancient earthquake around that time.
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A Solar Eclipse Deserves A Blessing
Credit: USAF/Museum of Aviation
We are on a fantastic journey, over which we have precious little control. As our universe expands, we are pushed deeper and deeper into space. We travel along, like some pebble carried with the tide. Our own galaxy, like hundreds of millions of others, rotates, and it does so at about 168 miles per second. On one of the spiral arms of our galaxy, our solar system has its own rhythms. Within the solar system, our home planet goes around our local star, the Sun, and our moon orbits around our home planet, even as the Earth and the Moon spin too.
Once in a while, in the midst of all this motion, the Moon travels between the Earth and the Sun in such a way as to block the light of the Sun from reaching us. It casts a shadow on our planet. The blockage may be partial or complete. We call this event a solar eclipse. In a total eclipse, when the Moon obscures the entire solar disk, the fullest form of the Moon’s shadow, the umbra, lasts no more than a few minutes in any one spot, but the effects are stark as darkness literally covers the Earth and the temperature drops.
We will ooh and ah as the eclipse begins, but we know that this too shall pass. All that was will be again and soon. Normalcy will return. One might think that it would be an occasion for a blessing, a b’rakha. After all, Jews seemingly have blessings, or b’rakhot, for every event and circumstance, from the sublime to the mundane, and from the time they arise to the time they go to sleep. And there are well recognized blessings for similar occurrences. For instance, when one sees a comet or lightening, there is Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheynu melekh ha’olam, oseh ma’aseh v’reyshit (Blessed is the Eternal One, Sovereign of the universe, maker of the works of creation). When one sees something beautiful like a tree or an animal, one might say Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheynu melekh ha’olam, she’kakha lo b’olamo (Blessed is the Source of wonder, Ruler of the cosmos, that such things are in the world). There are blessings on reaching the ocean, on smelling fragrant grasses and spices, even on witnessing an earthquake. But traditionally, there is no blessing for an eclipse. Why? To answer that question, we need to understand some science and some Judaism. read more