הנחיתה על הירח וחקר החלל

00:01 This is Igress, and today we are going to talk about space travel, and specifically how the Rebbe addressed the moon landing in and around July of nineteen sixty-nine. There were a number of people who suspected that the moon landing would undermine Judaism for various reasons, uh, ranging from some lines in our Siddurim, in our prayer books, that reference being unable to reach the moon, to verses in our Holy Torah suggesting that the moon is unreachable. Uh, some people simply worried that we'd get too full of ourselves and start relying on science and not religion. The Rebbe, as you'll see in a moment, is worried about none of these things. He addresses these concerns and in characteristic form, uh, flips them on their head, and im yirtzeh Hashem, we'll have time to see a sicha at the end of the shiur, where the Rebbe brings out a few practical lessons in the service of God that we can learn from the moon landing. But we're going to start with a letter that we've seen previously, which we used for our aliens discussion, and then just review one small bit of this letter where the Rebbe talks about space travel before we get into new material. So this letter is labeled Yud Alef Tav Tav Kuf Beis, and, uh, we saw this once again just last time when we did aliens. Resh Chetis Elul, Tav Shin Lamed Vav, and we're only gonna read this section. The Rebbe says, "I received your letter, uh, late, and you wrote

01:06 about it-- and in it you wrote about the ‹foreign language›, the recent happenings ‹foreign language› in the world of science, of ‹foreign language›. Specifically, you talked about the Mars landing," which still has not happened. We put some rovers on there, but not people. "‹foreign language› Before that you talked about moon landings." So when science is talking about moon landings and Mars landings, ‹foreign language› and things like that, the ‹foreign language› you ask, ‹foreign language› you ask, "Is it according to Torah allowed for somebody to land on another planet? Are they allowed to land on the moon? Are they allowed to land on Mars?" Not that the moon's a planet, but you get the idea. The Rebbe says, ‹foreign language›. The Rebbe says, "I see no relationship between, between this and the laws of Torah." ‹foreign language› "Landing on another planet is an optional activity." Uh, it's a strange optional activity. Not a lot of people have a hobby to land on the moon, but it's an optional activity. ‹foreign language› "When it comes to any optional activity, there is a general rule that everything you do should be for the sake of Heaven." ‹foreign language› "And that you should know God in all of your ways." ‹foreign language› "And if you do that," ‹foreign language›, "then everything is fine." So if you wanna land on the moon, you can land on the moon as long as you keep Hashem as the focus. Everything you do should be for the sake of God, and every-- in

02:18 all ways you should know God. ‹foreign language› "The fact that you then extend," says the Rebbe, "a connection between the verse, 'The heavens, the heavens belong to God and the land that was given to people,' apparently to create a contradiction, that it says in the verse in Tehillim that the heavens belong to God and that people are supposed to live on land, and here we are traveling to the heavens." The Rebbe says, ‹foreign language›. "That has nothing to do with landing on other planets or landing on, uh, l-landing on other stars or anything like that." Uh, ‹foreign language›, "as is implied from the verse itself." Uh, the Rebbe doesn't go any further in this letter, but in the next letter we look at, he's going to explain exactly what he means, that this is in fact no contradiction. But that's sort of our opener. Let's go to our main letter. Our main letter for today is labeled Yud Reish Yud Gimel. This is from the days of Selichos of the year Tav Shin Lamed Alef. That would be nineteen seventy-one. So at this point, the moon landing, uh, the first moon landing has already happened. It happened, uh, two years before this. I think there've been moon landings since then. So it's already becoming something that's part of, uh, it's, it's very much in the culture. It's very much in popular culture. In the n-- I, I wasn't around in the late sixties and early seventies, but I believe that this was what people were

03:28 talking about. People were very excited about the moon landing. So the Rebbe writes, we're gonna go down to the part of the letter that we need. ‹foreign language› That's never a good sign. "With great shock," not a good kind of shock. ‹foreign language› "I don't-- I think those are newspapers." ‹foreign language› "and things like that." ‹foreign language› "Or maybe journals." ‹foreign language› "I was shocked to read that people are going back and forth on how to, in quote, answer the landing on the moon, the moon landing, in a way that won't end up causing trouble for faith, for Torah, for our contemplation of the lowliness of man. People are raising the possibility that, uh, the moon landing is gonna be a problem for faith. It's gonna be a problem for Torah verses. It's gonna even be a problem for the ego of people, that they're gonna say that they're a real big deal, even though God's supposed to be in charge." And there's this whole back and forth the Rebbe's reading about people trying to resolve these conflicts, and it is, uh, it's bothering him. The Rebbe says that ‹foreign language›, "I'm very disturbed by this." And the Rebbe has several points which I have outlined for you so that I didn't get lost, but they're on your page too, so you can see them. Point number one, ‹foreign language›. "This all begins from what would be known as," the Rebbe puts this in quotes, "the ‹foreign language›, that is the, uh, ‹foreign language›, the

04:39 specific, the, uh, the, the, uh, the well-pronounced conflict," which the Rebbe's putting in quotes 'cause he doesn't consider it a conflict at all, "that the Torah seems to say on a bunch of occasions that the heavens belong to God and the land belongs to people, and so we don't belong up there in the heavens where the moon is." The Rebbe has a few points about this. He says, ‹foreign language›. The Rebbe says, "It's hard to figure out what Shamyim, what the word Shamyim, which we usually translate as heavens or sky, means in context, because we have some verses that say that God made birds to fly in the heavens, and nobody thinks birds are flying in some spiritual world. They're flying in the sky. And other places it says that God hangs out in the heavens, and nobody thinks God hangs out in the physical sky. That's obviously a spiritual term in Kohelet." So the Rebbe says it's not entirely clear what to do with the word Shamyim in the first place. ‹foreign language› "And as a matter of fact, lest you'll tell me it's all about the context," ‹foreign language› "King Solomon, he one time has a verse where he puts both of them in both contexts together in the same verse, so completely a toss-up. He says there, ‹foreign language› that if the heavens close, there will not be rain." ‹foreign language› "Which is a very practical sky kind of thing. That's an atmosphere Shamyim. And in the same verse, he says, ‹foreign

05:44 language› says, 'Hashem, you sit in that, in the Shamyim,' which is clearly not referring to the physical atmosphere. It's referring to something more spiritual." It's the entire thing. It's not clear what the word Shamyim means in the first place. So the Rebbe starts off by saying, "You're worried about ‹foreign language›. You're worried about traveling to space or traveling to other planets or traveling to the moon because you think there's some hard stop that we're not allowed in the heavens." The Rebbe goes, "I'm not sure where the heavens are. It's really not clear from the verses what the word Shamyim means in the first place. It's clearly not just the sky. It's clearly not just a spiritual realm because you have verses that go both ways. Hard to say what that verse means." But then the Rebbe has a bracket here, which I don't really know why it's in a bracket, 'cause to me it seems to be a very clear answer to the entire thing. The Rebbe sort of put it as-- puts it as an aside, as like a general answer. I think it's a fantastic answer all on its own. So this bracket says, ‹foreign language›. He said, "The truth is, from the beginning, you don't really have this question. All you need to do is, uh, look at its neighbor, and you'll see what's going on." The Rebbe says, "Look at the rest of the verses in Tehillim." ‹foreign language› It's Tehillim. I really should say it better, but in any event,

06:45 um, Uh, the mountains, the high mountains, that's where rams get to go, and the rocks, uh, that's where shaphanim, which are like rabbits or I think hyraxes, but I don't really know what a hyrax is. Scientist, right? Uh, a shaphanim, uh, the rabbits, hyraxes is the way it's always translated. Um, these high mountains are for, uh, are for rams and goats, and these rocks are where shaphanim, where these hyraxes hide. The Kabbalists believe this was them. The Rebbe says there's a whole bunch of verses like that, and I'll tell you what the Rebbe is saying here. The Rebbe is saying the same tale that tells us that the heavens are the place for God also tells us that the rocks are the place for hyraxes, and the mountains are the place for rams. Now, nobody thinks that because rams belong on mountains, you're not allowed on a mountain. And nobody thinks that because rocks are the place where the hyraxes hide, that you're not allowed to walk on rocks, that there's some hard limit that humans can't get in rock territory, 'cause that's the place for hyraxes. Uh, when the Pasuk says that Hashem is in the heavens, that doesn't mean we can't go there. It just means that's his main dwelling place. So as far as point number one, that Shamaim Shamaim La'Hashem is some sort of problem, the heavens are the heavens of God is some sort of problem for space travel or for landing on another planet, the Rebbe rejects this entirely.

07:47 Number two. A question of Birkat HaChodesh. V'eni yachel li ga'ot bach. When we say Kiddush HaChodesh once a month, we go outside, we look up at the moon, and then we stop looking at the moon, and then we daven. And when we daven, one of the things we say is the same way that I'm dancing toward the moon. Ki shem she'ani reked kenegdech, v'eni yachel li ga'ot bach. The same way that I dance toward the moon and I can't reach the moon, similarly, my enemies should, uh, dance toward me, but they shouldn't be able to reach me. And it's supposed to be symbolic. You lift up on your toes, you jump up in the air a little bit. V'eni yachel li ga'ot bach. I'm not able to touch the moon. Now, I have been asked this question by people multiple times during Kiddush Levana. Seriously, like during-- not in our community. I'll be traveling, there'll be Kiddush Levana, and someone will say to me, "We're about to say in the verse that you can't reach the moon, that haven't we reached the moon?" Uh, the Rebbe thinks this is the silliest question. In a sicha we're gonna see of Yitzhak Shem in a moment, he's going to call it a stupid question. And you don't often get the Rebbe to use that, to use that phrase to describe a question. He calls it amaratus. Says that it's a, it's a simpleton's question. But as for the Rebbe answers here very clearly, it's a real easy

08:40 answer. V'shever v'tzid la'av ke'deim la. The-- It's answered from its side and even before it, it's sort of a Talmudic, uh, uh, expression to mean very obviously you'll find the answer right there. Harei ani reked kenegdech. The verse says, "I dance toward you, v'eni yachel." I gave it kidazu. By dancing, i can't reach the moon. Li ga'ot bach. Kach le'och lechulu. We're not saying, uh, the same way that i could never reach the moon, may my enemies never reach me. We're saying the same way that i can't reach the moon by dancing, my enemies shouldn't reach me. And it is absolutely the case. Modern science is incredible. It gets better every day. We still cannot reach the moon by dancing. That is not how you get to the moon. So that, that's what this means. It means that i can't get to the moon by jumping. Uh, point number three. Amo be-Chazal. Kidava bilti efshari, amena sh'ta'al le'rakia. Chazal generally speak about things that are impossible by describing them as the inability to reach the sky. They'll go, "Well, that's, you know," and, and it's, it's not a-- I shouldn't say it. I was gonna say something, but it's not gonna work on the podcast. Whatever. Um, uh, Chazal, when they're trying to, uh, paint a picture of something that's impossible, the expression they use to describe impossibility is reaching the heavens, which means Chazal very clearly, our sages very clearly didn't think you could do it based on the way that they talk. And

09:49 the Rebbe says, "Hinei af ilim timtzer le'dehis ha'yareach harehu." Even if you're going to tell me that landing on the moon counts as reaching the rakia, which is another word for heavens that's a little bit fuzzy. It's not clear that reaching the moon counts as reaching the heavens. "Kim she'ne'emar b'tenai sam lekim b'rekia shamaim," uh, "ve'etz ahad im," but then the Rebbe goes, "You could make that claim to be fair, because it does say in the verse in Genesis that God placed the moon in the rekia shamaim." So it would seem that that would mean where the moon is, but the Rebbe is not convinced. He says, "Even if you are convinced," and the Rebbe's not, "that reaching the rekia," which is the he- which is the heavens, which is the firmament, "counts as reaching the moon, that these are the same thing," the Rebbe says even if you have that problem, which i don't think the Rebbe does based on the way he's saying this, uh, "difa, havli la'haksheis ve'kam ha'kam k'sulu," you should be asking-- you should ask better. That's the way they said it when i was in, uh, when i was in school. Ask better, ask better. You should ask better. There's a better question here than how do we reach the moon when Chazal say we can't reach the moon. How about some verses where we have done a whole bunch of things that it sounds like we wouldn't be able to do normally? "Le'dugma," says the Rebbe. For example,

10:43 if you look in Iyov lamed heh through lamed heh, uh, Iyov is the book of Job. If you look in the thir-- chapter thirty-eight and thirty-nine, you'll find, "Ve'harei bov nivcheyam." You'll find that Hashem says to Iyov, "Are you able to go to the depths of the sea?" And we have gone to the depths of the sea. We have submarines. We have, uh, we have scuba divers. People go under the sea nowadays. Uh, "Ye'erim m'tzayin," it says also in Iyov that, uh, that, uh, "Ye'erim m'tzayin" says that, "Paleg lashet-- lashet ef tala de'ma'aseh b'nei adam v'chulum chulum." In Iyov, it says that, uh, uh, God says to Iyov, "Are you able to dig your own canals?" Uh, that's that line. Paleg lashet ef tala. Um, are people able to dig their own canals? And we see that on the rivers of Egypt, people literally dig their own canals off the Nile that go into their areas, and they've also, uh, they've made canals through things and around things. The Rebbe's saying, "If your problem started today, then you haven't been reading." We have all sorts of verses that make the broad claim that something should be impossible, and modern technology has made it possible. These aren't things we normally see as conflicts between the Torah and what people can do, but at the end of the day, your question shouldn't have started with the moon, says the Rebbe. There's a whole bunch of other places where this has come up, specifically with deep-sea diving and

11:47 with canal building, two things that are used in Job as expressions for stuff you cannot reach. I will point out that what the Rebbe is doing here is he's not saying that all over the Torah, the Torah keeps on-- because i think this could be misunderstood. He's, he's not saying that all over the Torah, the Torah says, "This is impossible," and we keep on doing it. That's not what's happening. That would be a real problem for us. What's happening is that the Torah very regularly will say, "This thing is impossible. Let me give you an example of something impossible. This is so impossible, it's like digging a canal. This is so impossible, it's like going to the bottom of the sea. This is so impossible, it's like ascending to the sky." That doesn't mean these things are literally impossible, very clearly, because we have done all three of them. It's an expression of impossibility that matches the available technology or what normal people can do, i guess, when they're not dancing. In any event, up to number four. Point number four. M'deguel shifus lamim k'nez vedev. Regarding the fourth issue, which is that people might get, uh, egotistical about this. We used to think that we were small and God was big, and now that we can reach the moon, maybe we think we're big just like God, and it's gonna pose a, a, uh, theological problem in general. Or a religious problem. The Rebbe says, "Mas niri yeser," and you're gonna see this as

12:47 a recurring theme, actually. I, I don't know what to do with this besides to say this is very characteristic of the, uh, very characteristic of the Rebbe's specific approach to physics. Um, "Mas niri yeser asher," uh, the Rebbe says, "I'm specifically surprised, very surprised." "Asher af echad mehamtaartzim shel izi difrei betful, vekasav, v'dibor." All the people giving these answers, I've seen them. I've seen their words, I've seen them in print, or I've seen in writing, or I've heard, or I've spoken with them. I'm very surprised no one has brought up the following point. "Le'alman od ela shebetor chidush madai kehasafa be'avanan hadei sha'abriya." When we're talking about big scientific discoveries that really add something to, uh, our knowledge of creation, "Ein la she'esan chisa al yareach shel yechulu lekol ma'apach hamadez klal. Af ilu lechidush mapti'ah lechadir bizech atom she'ivi le'ira ve'shlilas kam mi'sebei ha'ma'adan." The Rebbe says, "I'm not seeing anybody pointing out that landing on the moon is really not much of a big deal." To translate him literally, he says, "Nobody's saying that, uh, that nobody's saying, but they should be saying, that we really can't compare the moon landing, which didn't really overturn any science, and it didn't really give us any fundamental chidushim. It didn't give us any fundamental novelties in science. It's an engineering achievement. I guess we didn't think we could do it, and then we did it, but we didn't get a whole lot of new information out of going to the moon. We always knew it

13:53 was a big rock in the sky, and then we landed on a big rock in the sky. Not a lot changed." And when you compare that to the splitting of the atom and the investigation of the atom and the discovery of the atom, atomic science, uh, which has completely overturned all the foundations of science. "Yesh la ashlochos venigeul im b'chirah chofshis, neis, v'teva." These things have implications. The atom, atomic physics has implications for, uh, free will, for miracles, for nature. Says the Rebbe, "I don't know why people are making such a big deal about the moon landing because from a scientific perspective, it is a modest achievement compared to what's been happening in the study of the atom over the past few years, and I haven't seen anybody bring this up." Anyway, we are not gonna read the rest of the letter right now. These are the Rebbe's three big points about concerns about the moon. Uh, I wrote a little summary in my own notes that I'd be able to keep track of all of them, and that is, here's my summary. The verse that the heavens are for Hashem is adjacent to a verse saying that mountains are for rams and rocks are for hyraxes, but that doesn't mean we can't walk on rocks or climb mountains, so that problem's not a problem at all. Uh, number two, the kidush levana line means that we can't dance to the moon, and indeed we still not, we still cannot. Uh, number three, when Chazal

14:54 say that we can't reach the sky, uh, honestly, you should be asking better, right? That's the way we put it earlier. Uh, it's not much different than verses saying, um, "This thing is so impossible you can't reach them," but then that's like reaching the bottom of the sea. That doesn't mean that it's something that you can't do. It means that it's something that's a good example of an impossible thing. And regarding our egos, I don't think we should be so impressed. Uh, people are worried that the landing on the moon is going to somehow take humans and make them think they're all that. Uh, the truth is, landing on the moon is not even that big of an accomplishment compared to the splitting of the atom and atomic physics in general, and, uh, that doesn't seem to have increased anybody's ego, so the Rebbe is not worried so much about, uh, space travel doing that either. This was printed in Der Her. Der Her is a fantastic resource for everything. Uh, this was printed in Der Her. It's a newspaper article where, uh, Israeli journalist Shlomo Nakdimon, Nakdimon, uh, he recorded a conversation he had with the Rebbe about space exploration, and, uh, the newspaper article is fuzzy, and it's also, I believe, in Hebrew, but, uh, they translated it into English in Der Her, and they gave us the transcript. So here is a transcript of an interview between the Rebbe and a journalist in the year nineteen sixty-two, which was, uh, a couple

15:56 years, well, now seven years. Yeah, seven years before the moon landing. So he asked the Rebbe, "Will man ever be able to reach the moon?" And the Rebbe says back, "It is surely possible." "What will they find?" the journalist asks. The Rebbe says back, "What they will find is something that we will find out when they reach the moon," which is just a great answer. Uh, "How does Torah view these types of experiments?" Nakdimon continues. The Rebbe then says, "The discovery of the atom, its particles, and its laws are more crucial in the Jewish view than the conquest of space," which is very much like what he said in the previous letter. The Rebbe continues, "The conquest of space is the advancement of science and technology, while the discovery of atoms corrodes the very foundations of science. Until now, science was perceived as a stable entity, while Torah was no more than belief. Now we see that all the assumptions of science and technology are not unequivocal truths, and this happened with the discovery of the atom. Thus, all of science's questions on Torah are removed, since science truly needs to be reevaluated. We shall see that with every advance in understanding the relation of atoms to each other, there will be greater need to reevaluate science as we know it today." So the Rebbe talks about the moon and then immediately does what he did in the last letter, shifts and says, "I think you should be a lot more impressed with the atom.

17:00 That is undercutting the foundations of science. The moon is just, you know, we made some-- We, we, we had airplanes. We made a bigger airplane. We had rockets. We made a bigger rocket. There was a rock. We landed on it." The Rebbe was not terribly impressed by the moon landing. Uh, the final part of the interview that we have here, uh, the journalist asks the Rebbe, "And the Torah doesn't withhold or prohip-- or prohibit exploring sci-- exploring space?" And the Rebbe answers, quote, "Torah has no opposition to continued research." Okay, so you have very similar attitude here about moon landings. I have one English letter to show you, and then im yirtze Hashem, we'll look at a couple sikhos. This is, as far as I know, the only English letter so far. You know, thousands more are coming out, but the only English letter I found so far that specifically talks about the moon landing and reaching, uh, and, and reaching outer space. This is from the twenty-second of ER five seven twenty-one, once again obtained from the Rebbe Responsa Act, which I am a big fan of. The Rebbe says, "Greeting and blessing. I received your letter of April twenty-fourth, in which you write about the apparent contradiction between the latest scientific attempts to penetrate outer space, especially reaching the moon, which seems to you to contradict the statement in the Torah, 'The heavens belong to God, and the earth He gave to the children of man.'" Uh, this was lit-- written in nineteen

18:02 sixty-one. No. Yes, nineteen sixty-one, so this was a good eight years before the moon landing. "Actually," the Rebbe says, "there is no contradiction at all. If you consider the term earth not in the narrow sense referring only to our globe, but in its proper sense as meant in this verse, which includes also the atmosphere and the whole physical universe with which mankind is concerned and directly affected by. We must not confuse the terms heaven and the planets. The stars, planets, moon, et cetera, are not called heaven, since heaven is something spiritual, whereas those planets are physical and belong in the physical universe." You'll note that this is, uh, this is me talking now. You'll note that there's a difference between this, what's happening in this letter and what happened in the previous letter. In the previous letter, where the Rebbe was dealing with this, he said, "You could make the claim that the planets are in what we call Shamayim or Rakia." Here, the Rebbe's rejecting that entirely. In this letter, what the Rebbe is saying is that when we say Shamayim v'aretz, uh, land and that Hashem created the heavens and the Earth, Earth does not mean the ball that we are on right now, this particular rock that, uh, that, that, the pale blue dot. Uh, that's not what it's talking about. The Earth, the word Earth refers to the entire physical universe. It refers to the rings on Saturn. It refers to distant galaxies. Earth means Gashmius. It means the physical world,

19:07 and the word heaven means the spiritual world. So when it says in the verse in Tillim that the heavens belong to Hashem and the Earth was given to us, that means we have physicality and God has spirituality, and you shouldn't be bothered by this at all. So this is a sort of, uh, this is a completely different really commentary on that verse than what the Rebbe provided in the other letter, and it's very direct that heaven means heaven and Earth means Earth, but it doesn't mean what you think it means. Continuing. The fact that God created the so-called heavenly bodies to serve our world and to give light, warmth, and energy to it and placed them in the firmament of the sky at a certain distance from our Earth does not preclude man's attempt to learn all about them. Similarly, when the Torah states that God placed the moon in the sky, so to give light on Earth, this does not exclude the possibility of man's landing on it at some future time. The meaning of the verse, the heavens belong to God, et cetera, is in the sense that while God is everywhere, including the heavens, man was placed in the physical universe and is part of it, and therefore must make the most of it as long as there is life on Earth. There is nothing in actual scientific experiments and accomplishments that contradict the Torah, nor is there any possibility since Torah is truth. The Rebbe continues and concludes, "Judging by your

20:08 writing and background, I firmly hope that you are conducting your daily life in strict accordance with the Torah, which is called Toras Chaim, the law of life and the mitzvahs by whereby Jews live, and that you attempt to make steady advancement along this road in compliance with the principle, all things of holiness should be on the upgrade." So the Rebbe says in this letter, there's nothing in the Torah saying we can't land on the moon. There's nothing in the Torah saying that we can't go up to the sky. The Torah never says we can't reach there. And any confusion you have over these verses is because you're not translating them properly. Because an accurate translation of these verses reveals that the Torah never... Chaz-Chazal never told us, Gemara's never told us, Yiddish guy Judaism has never believed that it is impossible to land on these things, or even that it's not allowed. It's, as the Rebbe says in his first letter, it's divrei DeShos, "Vechol maaseh chiyus Hashem Shamayim." We're gonna look at a couple of sikhas now 'cause we do have a little bit of time. I don't think we'll go terribly over today, but we'll see. This is a sikha from Taf Shin Chaf Tes. This is, uh, right after the moon landing, because this is Yud Aleph Menachem Av. The moon landing was July of Taf Shin Chaf Tes, and this is right after it or right around it. Might, might even be the, might even be the Shabbos before it. I

21:03 would have to look on a calendar. This is right around the moon landing. And the Rebbe says, "There are some people," "Sheyozel l'shem et nusach hatfila b'kiddush levana ei me'achlun gayavach." There are some people who are trying to change the nusach hatfila now. I think this is shortly after the moon landing. Shortly after the moon landing, the Rebbe says there are some people who are talking about changing our prayer books and going into kiddush levana and taking out the line that says, "The same way that I can't reach you by dancing," so you, the moon by dancing, "so too my enemies shouldn't be able to reach me," because now we've proven that you can reach the moon. And as you saw in a previous letter, the Rebbe is not at all amused by this. Here he's going to be even less amused by it. The Rebbe says, "Bach dava," by way of introduction. "Nusach hatfila v'chalalusa nikfal idei, idei ba'ei s-ba'ei simcha." Reliable people made the nusach hatfila. What we have in our Seder was not just thrown together. It's very reliable people. "Frappantain midanshu, nusach l'kiddush levana hu v'Tur masech ha'sefer," espe-especially when it comes to kiddush levana. The kiddush levana prayer is, uh, brought in the Tur, and it's brought from Masechah Sefan. So it's very, very old. It's one of the older parts of our Seder. "Ves sham dushinin min nusach shilefneinu," there it's slightly different than what we have in our Seder, but it's the same idea. He says there, "Ver'ekid

22:03 gimel paim k'neged," you should dance three times against the moon. "Ve'eimen bechol paim," each time you dance, you should say, "K'shem she'ani reked k'negedech," the same way that I dance against you, and I'm not able to reach you. Similarly, "kach yirtu acherim k'negeddi," if others dance against me, "lahasteni," to damage me, "lo yigvu bi," they shouldn't reach me. But it's the same idea. "V'lichai," the Rebbe says I'm pointing out. "Shinin harikud k'neged haLevana hu lo al pi kabbala v'nistre davka el gam al pi nigla." Dancing by the moon in this prayer is not something that is a Kabbalistic thing specifically. It's also something in the revealed parts of the Torah. "Ad rach mu b'drasha saran," did this even make sense based on what's brought in the "Drasha Saran" and in several other books? "Shinin haNebu'ah hayetzach liyes beven shel chizmit hava gashmi," that in order for any prophecy to take hold, it had to be attached to something physical. "K'dei lamshiach hazki maNebu'ah l'at beven de'adme herut z'devarei." In order for a prophecy to be fulfilled, it needed to have some achiza. It needed to be sort of grasping onto something in the physical world. "V'al derech zemin din," and the Rebbe says the same thing's happening when we dance by the moon. In case you ever wondered why we do that, 'cause it is kind of silly. We get out on the front lawn, and we're all hopping around. Uh, why can't we just say, "I would dance by the moon if I was,

23:06 uh, if I was the hopping type"? But I'm not the hopping type, so I'm gonna stand here and look at the moon, and we'll talk about it. Why do we physically dance? And the reason why we physically hop toward the moon is because, "K'sheh reitzin lifel shelo yichlu kalei vayein gayav lilrah." If you want to affect that your enemies won't be able to reach you for evil, "m'kach zizein imim gashmi shel rikud," it has to be tied to a physical expression of dancing. So the Rebbe says if you don't do that little, you know, those little jumps, then you're not tying the prophecy of the great spiritual energy of my enemies not being able to attack me to anything physical, and then it doesn't have a Kiyom, it doesn't last. So the Rebbe says actually the dancing toward the moon and talking about dancing toward the moon is not just a Kabbalistic thing, it's a revealed Torah thing, it's in a Drasha Saran, it makes a lot of sense. "V'Levush metz l'van atam li rinikud davka." The Levush goes on to explain further why we specifically dance. "D'lechaira dai bekach sheyesh etzba v'im k'shem she'ani meyesh etzba v'ni yachlin gayavach cach chul." The Levush says, you know, in theory, I could have just pointed my finger up there and gone the same way I can't touch the moon with my finger. I can't dance toward the moon, and we could have saved everybody the trouble of dancing poorly in front of their friends on the

24:03 front lawn on Motza'ei Shabbos, is that the Levush says dancing is siman simcha. It's a sign of joy. "Kevishir rayim u'chash ish kamadargat simchas," the Rebbe goes on to say in the rest of this paragraph. There's different levels of simcha. There's regular joy, where a person just says they're happy. There is a greater joy, where they clap their hands, and even greater joy, where they start dancing with their feet. "V'ha'in isha simchas nevushcha," that is called a guf. A true joy fills the entire body, and that brings you to a state you're dancing relative to the moon. So all of these things are good reasons to keep our current custom of dancing toward the moon. And then the Rebbe says, "U'lechem bes derada yish li zoi," you have to be very careful. "Shelo l'shanosis nusach, nusach l'kiddush levana," not to change the words of the kiddush levana prayer. Sanctification of the moon, I believe it's called. "Afilu leish yanish ein b'etzem ha'amien," even changing things that don't specifically strike to the topic of kiddush levana is a problem. Changing even a single word. "She'ein gam midinat teves b'nusach hatfila b'diod." Even the le-- even the number of words in our prayer book is done very specifically. As the Tur says, and here is a moment for me to mention once again one of those very rare famous Yechiels. We have a famous Yechiel coming up. "Lashon achi, haRav Yechiel Zal," the words of my, the words of my brother, um, "Rav Yechiel Ze'ir Livracha, dersher

25:09 shumas," who was one of the dersher shumas, one of those who investigate hidden things. "Hayu sheikelim mesefar midinat teves hatfila va'brachos."These people, when they were putting together the siddur, they would weigh and they would count every single letter of the words of the prayers and of the berachos and of the blessings. And the Rebbe says although he's talking about Shemoneh Esreh when he says that the Amida, this applies, says the Rebbe, to every single tefillah. So we don't mess with any of the words of our davening. Here the Rebbe strikes a little bit. He says, "Certainly changing the Nusach HaTefillah, deciding how we should pray is something that should be decided by the Darshei Rishonim, by people who are used to plumbing the depths of secret wisdom. It should not be the job of somebody," in the Rebbe's words, "Does not even know the simple meaning of the words." This is the Rebbe in response to somebody saying, "Maybe we should change the siddur." The Rebbe's saying back, "If anybody's gonna change the siddur, it's not gonna be you. It should be left to people who know what the siddur really means, and, uh, certainly not to people who don't even understand the basics of what the siddur means." And the Rebbe continues with regarding our specific topic. When a five-year-old asks you what does it mean that it says in the Torah that the same way I dance toward the moon and I can't reach the moon, that says-- excuse me, in the

26:22 siddur, "I dance toward the moon and I can't reach the moon." If a five-year-old asks you that question, what would you answer? And the Rebbe says you would answer You would answer simply. Then you'd answer this kid, and you'd say that an old man can dance, and he can jump, and he can skip. He's not gonna reach the moon. So he says, it's, it's just the, the Rebbe seems frustrated, that somebody who doesn't even understand the basic idea behind this is the first one running to the front of the line to try to change the words of the prayer book to accommodate the fact that we've landed on the moon, when clearly that's not what the simple translation of these words mean and certainly has nothing to do with the deeper ideas behind it. The Rebbe says in addition to this, we are living in a time right now where we really need that prayer that our enemies should not be able to reach us for evil. Practically speaking, we have to be very, very strict about our prayer books to make sure that we daven exactly the way the prayer book says. Not to add any new prayers. Not to change the wording inside the prayer which were established by the sages of the Jewish people. Messing with this stuff is not the kind of thing that we wanna do. The Rebbe goes on in the rest of the sicha and the rest of this section of the sicha to explain that, uh, specifically

27:40 the prayer by Kidush Levana that our enemies should not be able to reach us is something that gives us an enormous amount of protection, and we want to make sure that we get that, especially when it comes to our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land. And, uh, we want to, of course, the sicha ends off by saying, " I want to show you one more thing although I know we're over time, so please do feel free to go. I won't be offended. But, uh, one more thing I want to show you. This is the last sicha. And this has a little bit of words of inspiration and practical advice on what we can learn in our day-to-day lives about visiting distant planets. This sicha is Parshas Vayigash, Zion Teves of Tishrei Ches. So this would be, I believe, when the moon-- when they had, when they had circled the moon but had not yet landed on it. I believe this is around the time in nineteen sixty-nine where they had, uh, where they had just recently, um, visited the moon but hadn't landed yet. I don't think the moon landing had happened. The Rebbe says, This is a little bit earlier than our last sicha. First of all, Let, let's start off by addressing people for whom the fact that we have come close to visiting the moon, flown, flown by the moon, is causing problems for them. Let's start with them. Somebody wrote me a letter. We might have seen this letter. I'm

28:46 just not sure. We really might have seen this letter. Yeah, it says here to check Chelek Hav Ze'ir. That's the one we saw. So, uh, they're, they're drawing a line between the two. Why shouldn't we? Somebody wrote me a question, says the Rebbe. That this moon landing or coming close to the moon, uh, is a contradiction to what we say in Kidush Levana, that I'm unable to reach you. We've already discussed this at some length, and I'm gonna jump a little bit. And the Rebbe says, he's suggesting maybe we should change the words of the siddur, et cetera, et cetera. The Rebbe says, "And therefore, with, uh-- I, I ask for forgiveness from His Great Honor." "I don't understand at all what you're saying." So the Rebbe says, "With all due respect, I don't understand you. Uh, I don't understand what you're talking about." We're not saying here you can't reach the moon. That is to say that I cannot reach you by way of dancing, which is something we've already answered, so there's no reason to go into it again right here. The Rebbe continues, the thing is very clear. That even now, that they've already come close to reaching the moon, that when an old man jumps three times by Kidush Levana, of course. See, I promised you that one. There you have it. The Rebbe says this entire question is amaratzus, which I-I just-- I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start pulling that one out when people ask me, 'cause I'm telling you,

30:08 three or four times I've been asked this by Kidush Levana. The Rebbe says this question is amaratzus. It's ignor-- it's ignorance to ask the question. It's like you didn't read the page. It's also the opposite of logic. So yeah, it's, it's a pretty low question. We see nowhere, says the Rebbe, that people cannot reach the moon. We don't see anywhere that people can't reach further than that. The Rebbe is saying again and again that he just can't find Torah sources, authentic ones, ones that pass muster for the idea that we can't reach these planets, and he doesn't understand the problem. I'm gonna jump over here. Zion. It's not just the case that this shouldn't pose a problem for us, it is also our obligation as Jews to not only say a new scientific discovery hasn't gotten in my way, but to also learn something from it in our service of Hashem. So it's not enough to just say, as the Rebbe has up until now. We've seen a bunch of places where the Rebbe told us, "Don't worry about the moon landing. It's not a problem for a Yiddishkeit." The Rebbe says that's not enough We also are obligated not just to say the new discovery, the new happening isn't a conflict, but to turn it into a way of serving Hashem. And the Rebbe says we can get from this an increase in our, if in our, increase in our ability to pull off “ma rabo maasecha Hashem, ma gadlu maasecha Hashem.” The basic,

31:21 uh, I guess, uh, kavanah thought, um, the thing we ponder when we are trying to think about the greatness of God, it's incredible all the things that you made, and it's so big all the things that you made. I'm gonna do that a little more down here because I wanna read this, and this is our last thing. “B'chol zeni baze.” He says, in general, what does this look like? “Shekol haShas says that bema rabo maasecha Hashem, ma gadlu maasecha Hashem.” Says the Rebbe, the more we increase in our wonder of the things that Hashem made and our wonder in the size and the greatness of the things that Hashem made, the more we think about these sorts of things. The Rebbe is saying here very specifically, the planets, the moon, the sky. “Misaser et haYesod ve'hecha kidusha, kidushas u'verkadas kidusaso shel Hakadosh Baruch Hu.” This increases our recognition of the greatness of God. “Ki kol matiyyas hanivra v'yanan eyla elimei Hakadosh Baruch Hu,” because everything that was created was only created from Hashem. “Vim kein, kihol shnai miyesod kidusaso shelanivra.” And therefore, the more we see the greatness of stuff that God made, “Misaser et haYesod ve'hecha kidusaso shel Hakadosh Baruch Hu,” this helps us understand even more the greatness of Hashem himself. And then the Rebbe says, “That's in general.” That's all in general. In general, if you wanted to make the claim that thinking of reaching the moon would, uh, inspire Judaism, all you'd have to say is, now that we've reached the

32:25 moon, we know just how big it is. We've seen it up close. We know more about it. We have better pictures of it, I guess. And because of all of this, we're now able to increase our appreciation for what God Almighty is. But when you add to that, uh, details, you can even get more service of Hashem out of looking at the details. And the Rebbe says, “B'gegeles echad haAdam,” when it comes to human intellect, I'm gonna summarize these paragraphs to keep us moving, but they're on your screen. When it comes to human intellect, the Rebbe says that at this point we've seen, we used to think that people weren't so smart, but now we've seen they're very, very smart because look what they can do. People used to think you couldn't reach the moon, and human ingenuity and human creativity created the sorts of engineering that allowed them to reach the moon, which is just incredible. And the Rebbe says, when you look at that and reflect upon the greatness of man's mind, you then have to reflect upon the greatness of a God who made a mind that great. So the same way that we are impressed by the mountains and impressed by the sky and impressed by the, uh, impressed by the planets because they're so big and God made something so impressive, we can be impressed, we can be impressed by human intellectual achievements. That God made a brain that can turn, uh, you know, rockets into something that can reach

33:24 the moon. Uh, “Kimich klitisia lili sishavi lisaad,” the Rebbe says, “Things that fly when you try to, when you try to get them in that direction, they, they're likely to break, they're likely to heat up too much, and we found a way around this.” Human achievement makes you think about the greatness of a God who created a mind like that, which is actually not something I've ever seen anywhere in the Rebbe's work, that we can meditate on the greatness of human intellect in scientific invention to think about how great God is. It's a really cool point. The Rebbe continues and he says, “Another one, you can think about the greatness of Hashem.” Furthermore, because “B'degel inyan sh'va mesmedin k'dei l're'es kidus Hashem. Ksiv, u'marameinechem u'rumi bara eyla.” We have a verse that says, “Turn your eyes skyward, and you will see who created those things,” which is to imply, as Chassidus explains in many places, that when we think about the things that are up in the sky, this gives us a love and fear of the God who created them. Rambam says this very specifically, and the Rebbe quotes him down here, that when we contemplate the wonders and the greatness of the things that Hashem made, it brings us to love and fear of Hashem. So the Rebbe's final point over here is, the more we know about these things and the more we're staring upward and the more we're looking at the moon, you know, we used to look at the moon

34:25 only a little bit, and lately, the Rebbe says, with this moon landing stuff, you're looking at the moon, the moon a whole lot. And the more you look at the moon and reflect upon the greatness of the stuff that Hashem made and the greatness of the universe, the more we know about the cosmos and the more we're in awe of it, the more we end up coming close to God anyway, as is promised by Rambam and also brought in the Sefer Ha'kedushat Ha'machteret. So the Rebbe says in this, in this sicha that first of all, I don't see the problems, and second of all, it's not enough not to see the problems. We need to be providing solutions as well, and there are solutions. Investing in this sort of stuff brings us closer to Hashem. Um, we're more impressed by the stuff Hashem makes, which brings us to greater love and fear of God. We're more impressed by the intellect of a person, which brings us to greater fear of love in God. So it's not just that the moon landing and space travel doesn't get in the way of our service of Hashem. To the contrary, it helps our service of Hashem. I wanna do a quick summary because we covered a ton of material today, and then we will conclude. Uh, just to summarize everything we've done today, our first letter asked the question whether it could be an issue to travel into deep space or to land on distant planets. And the

35:19 Rebbe said it's not issue, it's not an issue at all. It's a di-- it's a davar reshus. It's an optional thing. Uh, any optional thing that you can, any optional fun activity that you can choose to participate in has the simple rule that you have to do it for the sake of Hashem. “B'chol derech ha'de'ah u'v'chol ma'aseh l'shem shamayim.” Assuming you're doing that, you are fine. In our second letter, we saw that the, uh, Rebbe, um, dealt with the issue, dealt with four issues, four major issues. Uh, number one, that it says in the verse that the “Shamayim shamayim laHashem,” that the heavens belong to Hashem, and, uh, that would seem to mean that we're not allowed to travel up there. The Rebbe answered that by saying that the same verses right around there say that the rocks are for the hyraxes, and you're allowed to ro- walk on a rock, so I don't know what your problem is. Uh, second of all, regarding the question about Kiddush Levana, the Rebbe answers this, like, several times in the things we saw today. In Kiddush Levana, in the siddur, it says that you're not able to reach Hashem by dancing, and, uh, and the Rebbe says back, “Yeah, that's still the case. You still can't reach Hashem by dancing.” Uh, this verse is, this line in the siddur is not to be construed to mean that the moon is unreachable, just that it's unreachable by, as the Rebbe says in two sichas, “An old man hopping

36:16 on his feet.” But you can reach the moon by a rocket. The siddur never says you can't do that. We also saw a sicha where the Rebbe very firmly defends the nusach of the siddur, saying that it is, uh, anybody who changes any word in the siddur does so at their peril. These things are well established by people who know what they're talking about. And it's shocking that people who don't even seem to know the simple reading of the siddur, the simple explanation of the siddur, are the ones who jump to the front of the line when it's time to change it. And that is something that has been a recurring problem among the Jewish people when it comes to new editions of siddurim. Anyway, uh, the third question, uh, the Rebbe addressed that Chazal imply that we can't reach the sky. And the Rebbe said to that, “The truth is, Chazal have a whole lot of expressions for, uh, this thing is so impossible that it's like that thing.” For example, it's so impossible that it's like going to the bottom of the sea. That doesn't mean you can't go to the bottom of the sea. We got to the bottom of the sea. That when Chazal say it's so impossible, it's like reaching the heavens, it means really, really hard. It doesn't mean it's not something we could eventually accomplish. And finally, regarding ship'la haAdam, regarding people having ego problems now that we've reached the moon, the Rebbe says, “I'm not even that

37:11 impressed by the fact that you reached the moon.” We elaborated upon this in a newspaper article where we saw that the Rebbe says that it really isn't a very big deal that we reached the moon. The conquest, the conquest of space is low-level stuff compared to the work we've been doing with atoms. And the Rebbe has that theme in a couple letters that we saw where the Rebbe says people should really be focusing on the scientific, um, uh, upheaval that's come from the physics of atoms, uh, over the upheaval that seems to be happening in popular culture over the fact that we made a really big rocket that happened to land on a really big rock, which is, to the Rebbe, far less impressive and far less transformational. We have a letter from the Rebbe over here, this English letter. In this English letter, we saw that the Rebbe has a different, and I think more direct answer to the question, What does it mean that the heavens belong to God and that the earth was given to man? You don't know what heaven and earth means. Heaven in this context, and in most contexts, means the spiritual world, whereas earth means not just our planet, but the entire physical universe, which means that what was given to us, what we are authorized to travel, is the entire physical universe. And if anybody builds a rocket to reach the spiritual worlds, I guess then we'll begin to have a problem. We then saw two sichas.

38:11 Uh, one sicha went in depth into the, uh, Kiddush Levana problem and how important it is to keep the Seder as it is. And the final sicha that we saw together reviewed a lot of these points and then spent some time flipping them around, saying that it's not just that the moon landing and space travel does not pose a problem for Judaism. It actually is a way to come closer to Hashem, and the Rebbe gave us a few, uh, approaches to how we can use the science of the moon landing, the things we discover when we're traveling in space as a vehicle for coming closer to God through contemplating His greatness in davening, through contemplating the greatness of the mind of man that He made, and through thinking about the greatness of the stuff that He put in the sky. And so we have here, I think, really, uh, something like a comprehensive treat-- almost. This really is close to a comprehensive treatment of the Rebbe's approach to space travel and specifically the moon landing. Thank you all very much. Uh, now that we had a pause, I will just say something I didn't wanna say on the podcast. I'll just throw one thing in, and that is that, uh, you'll notice that in all of these letters and sichas, the Rebbe not only implies, but says directly, "We landed on the moon." So in answer to Lubavitchers who ask me about the moon landing, I always say back, and by the way, non-Lubavitchers too,

39:18 anytime people ask me, "Do I think the moon landing happened?" I always say this. I always say this. I always say, I always say, "Scientists could absolutely fool me." And what do I know? You think, you think with the budget that NASA has, they couldn't have pulled one over on me? Uh, they absolutely could have fooled me into, uh... I, I, I, I could, I could believe in a moon landing that didn't happen, absolutely. But I don't think they fooled the Rebbe. And the Rebbe says again and again and again that we landed on the moon, and that's all I need to hear. Uh, the Rebbe keeps on saying it happened. It, it's not really a question of could the government have fooled me. It's a question of could the government fool the Rebbe, and I say no. So, uh, there you go. So the moon landing happened. We have the Rebbe saying the moon landing happened. Chassid does not have a question about whether the moon landing happened.