BEFORE THE BEGINNING—TORAH AND SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS OF TIME AND SPACE
The Torah begins with bet (the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet) while the Ten Commandments begin with aleph (the first letter). “We learn from this that prior to the initial act of Creation, bereishith, there was anochi, the 1 AM aspect of G‑d: the singular, indivisible and transcendent SELF “negating entirely the possibility of any derivative form of existence.”[6] At this level, which is called Yachid (singularity), there is only the unitary and eternally present vision of the end purpose of Creation. This is the original, quintessential “thought” which inspired and induced the first creative act. Jews affirm this Creation paradigm each week when they sing “L’cha Dodi,” the traditional song for welcoming the Sabbath “Queen”; this song contains a verse that says how “The final act arose in thought primordially.”[7]
Yachid, translated literally means “single” or “singular.” This is precisely the word chosen by most modern physicists to describe, at an infinitely lower physical level, the “point” of origin of the universe.
By extrapolating backward from the present day expanding universe to the time before galaxies formed, cosmologists have traced the origin of the universe to a singularity, a state of apparently infinite density. The singularity represents the origin of space and time… Before that time the laws of physics known today do not apply.[8]
This both confirms the Torah paradigm and explicitly acknowledges the current limitations of theoretical physics. Science hypothesizes the existence of a singularity but cannot describe its internal character. Torah also teaches the inscrutability of this level of G‑d and insists on describing it through statements of what it is not.[9] Were we to ascribe any positive attributes to this aspect of HaShem, we would be limiting that which is essentially and necessarily without definition.
IN THE BEGINNING
“In the beginning G‑d created the heavens and the earth.” [10]This first act of Creation evoked the process of “bringing into reality that which had existed “only” as a thought in the mind of G‑d. Creation is nothing but a materialization of this primordial thought and the means by which He imparts to His thought an external, concrete existence.[11] There is general agreement among Torah commentators that, in this first instant, “G‑d created the entire universe from absolute nothing, simultaneously.”[12] This includes time and space as well as the “seeds” of potential for all subsequent existence.
We experience time as a linear sequence of events flowing perpetually from an indeterminate future, through an ever vanishing present, into a history that is past, but this is only a relative reality—a view from “below”.
The Judaic conception of time and space is of “an all-embracing field of existence that constitutes the definitive framework wherein life evolves.”[13] Time is stationary, absolute, cyclical—having been created yesh m’ayin (Creatio ex nihilo) at the very onset of Creation.[14] The Jew travels a spiral path through the weekly, monthly and yearly cycles of Shabbat and festivals. This is Absolute Reality, the perspective of the omniscient consciousness of G‑d. From this viewpoint, there is only an Eternal Present—that which was, is and will always be.” Creation is simply the illumination of that which already exists primordially in the Divine Unconscious. The entire unfolding of Creation is nothing more than the progressive illumination of a singular and perfect Divine Image.”[15]
This matrix of space and time— the Eternal Present— is not a vague, amorphic, infinitely malleable ether; rather it has a definite configuration that is rigorously determined by law (Torah). As Chazal (the Talmud Sages) say: “HaShem looked into the Torah and created the world.”[16]
Physicists cannot really speculate about “what happened at the precise moment of Creation because unfamiliar physical principles unique to the immense densities and temperatures of that moment mask the initial structure of the universe.”[17]
There is, however, general agreement about the subsequent formulation of the cosmos and the original and fundamental qualities introduced in those earliest moments after Creation. In the language of geometrodynamics (a theoretical explication of Einsteinian Relativity): the space-time manifold is the single, irreducible substance/principle from which all matter, all forces, all characteristics and components of the universe derive.[18] “It includes the entire history as well as spatial extent of the universe.”[19]
The Newtonian view of space and time is a dynamic picture where events develop with the passage of time. Time is one dimensional and moves (forward). The past, present and future happen in that order. The special theory of relativity, however, says that it is preferable, and more useful to think in terms of a static, non-moving picture of space and time. This is the space-time continuum. In this static picture… events do not develop, they just are. If we could view reality in a four-dimensional way, we could see that everything that now seems to unfold before us with the passing of time already exists in toto, painted, as it were, on the fabric of space-time. We could see all the past, the present and the future with one glance.[20]
Thus, mainstream theoretical physics paints a picture of the early universe and a conception of space and time that is essentially identical to the model of Divine Reality in the Torah.
