The Paper That Started It All

Long before I was The Sci-Fi Rabbi, I was a grad student riding the bus from Boston to Bangor, ME.

It was the winter of 2000, and Stephanie and I had just started dating. I was beginning the Master’s program in Jewish Studies at Hebrew College and she was working through her degree in Oceanography at the University of Maine. We would cuddle on her couch with tea, challah, and a pile of cats, working through our respective assignments. At the top of my stack was a set of readings for a course taught by Rabbi Dr. Nehemia Polen: “The Calendar and Sacred Time”.

As it happened, Polen became one my favorite teachers and guides on my path to the rabbinate. He exuded warmth and acceptance for his students and radiated passion for Jewish text. He inspired me to feel that the flow of the seasons has a dance of its own; a beauty that our tradition offers us as a gift.

During that class, I realized that Shabbat lasts for different amounts of time at different latitudes and in different seasons. I was fascinated by the idea that physics and halacha (Jewish law) are in dialogue together. For the first time, I imagined Shabbat as a rolling wave, flowing across the planet – from space, you could watch dusk sweep across the world and see Shabbat arrive. For a lifelong lover of speculative fiction, it was just a short jump to begin wondering how we would know when to celebrate Shabbat on a space station, on the Moon, or on Mars.

I grappled with those questions for my final project – “Jews in Space: Reflections on Welcoming Shabbat in Exotic and Off-World Environments.” By the time I finished it, I understood that my love for Judaism and my love for science didn’t exist in isolation. These passions could intersect and enrich each other.

I had no idea that this paper would influence my role as The Sci-Fi Rabbi.

Fifteen years later, my old friend, Dr. Sheyna Gifford, was living in a Mars-simulation mission on the slopes of Mauna Loa, HI. She wrote about my paper on her blog. To my astonishment, my old ideas were quoted in a JTA feature that ran in The Forward, The Times of Israel, and beyond. I was proud of Sheyna and delighted for her adventure. I also began to sense that my passion for Judaism and space exploration could be part of something greater than I had imagined in graduate school.

Later, I drew on this paper for my commentary in Fiddler on the Moon: Judaism in Space. In the recording session, I was asked questions with which I had first wrestled on a couch in Bangor, over challah and tea. It was a delight to work with the filmmakers, and I was thrilled when Fiddler went on to stream on PBS.

After Fiddler, I returned to the paper and brought it up to date with more recent science and halachic developments. If you would like to read the full text, you can do so here. I would love to hear your thoughts, so please don’t hesitate to contact me.

This paper is my way of saying that our path to the stars doesn’t require us to forsake a Jewish identity. In ways that we are only beginning to explore, it can validate who we are becoming.