TRENDING FOR 3,000 YEARS: PARSHA INSIGHT

The pair worked together at Bell Labs in New Jersey, experimenting with the giant machine to measure radio waves emitted from distant objects in space. Because the antenna was so sensitive, before they conducted an experiment, they needed to calibrate it.

They pointed it up to a part of the sky where they expected to receive nothing, but instead got a consistent, low signal. They tried everything to identify the source of this interference. They tested it at different times of the day and night, different seasons, and different parts of the sky. They checked the antenna itself and even cleared out pigeon droppings, but they still found the same constant noise.

Eventually, with the help of their colleagues, Penzias and Wilson came to realize that the interference was coming from the universe itself.

Before Penzias and Wilson’s accidental discovery, there were two competing theories on the origin of the universe. The first theory was that the universe was eternal and had always existed. The second theory was that the universe came to be in a sudden, explosive moment – the Big Bang.

The two physicists had stumbled upon the afterglow of a massive explosion that happened at the very beginning of time – a smoking gun for the Big Bang. Penzias and Wilson’s discovery was significant for the scientific community and they won a Nobel Prize for their work, but it was also theologically significant, effectively ending a debate that had raged for over three thousand years.

The opening chapters of the TORAH contain many radical claims: that the entire natural world comes from the same source, that human beings were created “in the image of God,” that human beings are both part of and separate from the rest of creation. But perhaps the most fundamental idea is the one contained in the first word, BEREISHIT, “In the beginning.”

Even Stephen Hawking admitted that desperate attempts to avoid the Big Bang were probably motivated by the feeling that a beginning of time "smacks of divine intervention."

The prevailing scientific hypothesis up until then was that the universe was eternal; a never-ending cycle of birth and destruction. Everything that happens in the present is merely a repetition of something that happened in the past and will happen again in the future. As the French historian Henri-Charles Puech described, "every event has been enacted, is enacted, and will be enacted perpetually; the same individuals have appeared, appear, and will appear at every turn of the circle."

However, this was not the only view. The Jewish people had a different story. They believed that the universe began at a specific moment, that the world was created. We can see that in the mysterious, beguiling opening verses of the Torah, “When God began to create heaven and earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and God’s spirit sweeping over the water – God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” (Gen. 1:1-3)

The TORAH isn’t making a scientific claim (see Rashi on the first verse), it’s making a philosophical claim. As American author Thomas Cahill put it, “Jews saw time differently. It isn’t an endless circle; it’s linear moving towards a triumphant destiny. And every generation – every person – is contributing to writing and shaping the story.”

If the universe had existed forever and will continue to exist forever, what significance do our actions have? Our lives are merely shadows of countless lives lived before us and after us. But a universe with a beginning has a direction, a trajectory. History is going somewhere, and our actions help take it there.

During the morning prayers, Jews thank God for “renewing every day, continually, the work of creation.” In a sense, that is our role, too: to wake up each morning and add something to a world that is still unfinished. To build, repair, teach, create – and leave the world a little different, a little better, than the way we found it.

Creation began with BEREISHIT. What happens next is largely up to us.