Seeing Red: Hubris and the Halakha of Space Flight

In 1961, as humans reached Space, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch (1902-1994) wrote a private letter in which he declared that Space travel was permitted according to Jewish law. The Lubavitcher Rebbe offered a broad, affirmative framework for Space exploration, viewing the quest as an avenue for spiritual growth. Other rabbinic figures approached the frontier with more ideological caution.

****

Southern Pulpit

A year after the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s responsum, Rabbi Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch (1928-2020) offered a different perspective. At the time, Rabinovitch was serving as the spiritual leader of the Brith Sholom Beth Israel Synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina – which describes itself as the oldest continuously operating Ashkenazi Orthodox congregation in the United States. In 1963, he took a rabbinic post in Toronto at the Clanton Park Synagogue, before being appointed the principal of Jews’ College in London in 1970. In the early 1980s, Rabbi Rabinovitch moved to Israel to serve as the head of Birkat Moshe – a hesder yeshiva in Ma’ale Adumim.

While in Charleston, Rabbi Rabinovitch was active in local Jewish and non-Jewish affairs. Beyond the local community, in 1959 he became the associate editor of Hadorom – a semi-annual Torah journal published by the Rabbinical Council of America. He held this editorial position until 1983 and was a regular contributor to the journal. In the spring 1962 issue of Hadorom, Rabinovitch inaugurated a section devoted to short, crisp responsa, presumably from his own pen. When introducing the section, he offered a disclaimer, humbly deferring to more experienced rabbis:

Of course we do not come to decide Halakha, even in the most straightforward matters, and we come only to offer a comment, and our words should not be relied upon at all without consulting our teachers, the great decisors of the generation, may they live and be well (emphasis in the original).

In subsequent issues of the journal, the section with Rabinovitch’s short responsa repeated this disclaimer.

****

A Congressman’s Question

The second question in the series concerned Space exploration:

A Congressman asked a certain rabbi whether, according to the Holy Torah, it is permissible to travel to the Moon and to other planets, and to settle human beings there, if it is possible?

Rabbi Rabinovitch opened his brief responsum by acknowledging the strange circumstances of the question:

Even though those responsible for these experiments do not heed the view of the Torah, nevertheless one should not turn away the questioner empty-handed.

NASA, formed in 1958, was not consulting traditional Jewish legal sources as it mapped out its Space objectives. Nor, for that matter, were the competing Soviet design bureaus. Despite the entirely academic nature of the question, Rabinovitch felt that a halakhic answer should be provided.

****

Godless Orbits

In a staccato-style responsum, Rabbi Rabinovitch directed readers to three Talmudic passages, a commentator on the Talmud, and biblical verses. The upshot of the curt references was not immediately spelled out, though the concluding line of the responsum was clear:

It would seem, prima facie, from all the above, that one should not consider it a sin that the Americans are striving to reach the Moon, since they do not thereby exalt themselves against God, Heaven forefend, as the Reds truly do.

Rabbi Rabinovitch’s responsum took an unabashedly partisan view of the Space Race. The US Space programme was kosher because it was not arrogant and heretical. In contrast, the “Reds” – that is, the Soviet Space endeavours – were rooted in state-mandated scientific atheism; they had fallen to the vice of hubris and were intent on self-deification.

The timing of Rabbi Rabinovitch’s responsum was striking: it appeared in an issue dated Nissan 5722, corresponding to 5 April – 4 May 1962. The ideological divide it described was vividly expressed that May. On 5 May, Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov (1935-2000) began a two-day visit to the Seattle World’s Fair. Titov was the second human to orbit Earth and the first to spend more than a day in Space. On the second day of his Seattle visit, Titov was asked how Space flight affected his philosophy of life. Titov replied through his interpreter:

Sometimes people are saying that God is out there. I was looking around attentively all day but I didn’t find anybody there. I saw neither angels nor God.

Titov continued:

Up until the orbital flight of Major Gagarin, no god was helping make the rocket. The rocket was made certainly by our people and the flight was carried out by man. So I don’t believe in God. I believe in man – in his strengths, his possibilities, and his reason.

In the country that has “In God We Trust” as its motto, this statement provoked outrage. Astronaut John Glenn (1921-2016) – the first American to orbit Earth on 20 February 1962 – visited the fair four days later and responded to Titov:

The God I pray to is not small enough that I expect to see him in outer space.

****

Towers of Intent

From the perspective of Jewish law, Rabbi Rabinovitch suggested that Space exploration was permitted. He did not, however, provide a source for this ruling. Presumably, he was working from the legal maxim that everything which is not forbidden is allowed. In Rabinovitch’s assessment, there was no problem going to Space, as long as it was for the right reasons. Accordingly, it was not the act that should be the focus of discussion; rather, it was the motive for Space travel that needed to be probed. For this position, Rabbi Rabinovitch provided references, though his selection of sources was curious.

The first reference was to a Talmudic dispute about the Tower of Babel builders and their intentions (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109a). According to one opinion, erecting the structure was a heretical act of idol worship. According to a different opinion, only some of the builders had this objective. Thus the architecture itself was not the sin; rather, the project was problematic in God’s eyes because of the wicked intention of the builders.

Rabinovitch supported this reading by citing biblical verses mocking the king of Babylon’s ambition to ascend above the stars and attain divine status (Isaiah 14:13-15). The Charleston rabbi then directed readers to a Talmudic passage where these verses are discussed and the king is identified as Nebuchadnezzar (Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 94a-b). Besides the bibliographic reference, Rabinovitch did not recount what the source said. According to that Talmudic exchange, when Nebuchadnezzar declared his intention, a Heavenly voice resounded calling him a wicked person, the son of a wicked person and a descendant of the wicked King Nimrod, who caused the entire world to rebel against God, and whom the Talmud elsewhere associates with the Tower of Babel (Babylonian Talmud, Hullin 89a). Thus, the Talmud linked Nebuchadnezzar’s cosmic hubris to Nimrod’s Tower of Babel.

****

From One End of Heaven

Rabbi Rabinovitch then referenced a third Talmudic passage, once again without explanation (Babylonian Talmud, Hagiga 11b). This reference reflected on the boundaries of scientific and theological enquiry: Which fields of knowledge are not to be questioned? In its discussion of Creation, the Talmud permits exploring “from one end of heaven to the other” (Deuteronomy 4:32) – anything within the boundaries of the universe may be probed, “however you may not ask what is above, what is below, what was before, what is after.”

The reference to this passage was complemented by directing readers to a gloss written by Rabbi Shmuel Eidels (1555-1631; known by the acronym Maharsha). According to Maharsha, scientific research was not just permitted; it was a worthy pursuit: “A person should investigate God’s existence through the created beings that are in the world.” By deploying Maharsha’s gloss, Rabinovitch framed scientific enquiry into the physical universe as a way of contemplating God’s creation.

Maharsha’s comment, following the Talmud, was an interpretation of verses from Ben Sira (also known as the Book of Sirach or Ecclesiasticus):

Do not search matters that are too wonderful for you, and do not seek that which is hidden from you. Meditate upon that which you are permitted; but you have no business with secrets (Ben Sira 3:21-22, cited in Babylonian Talmud, Hagiga 13a).

Ben Sira was composed in Hebrew by a Jerusalem sage in the Second Temple period and later translated into Greek. Although it was not canonised as part of the Hebrew Bible, it was preserved in the Septuagint and included in certain Christian Bibles. To be sure, despite reservations about reading the book (see Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 100b), the Talmud cites Ben Sira here and in other instances. Strange as it might seem to quote a book left out of the Hebrew Bible, Maharsha was just following the lead of the classic sources.

****

Without Legal Oxygen

Rabbi Rabinovitch’s sources were presented curtly and cryptically. A cursory reading of the responsum reveals that he did not reference classic sources of law. Rather, the material came from the non-legal realm of Aggada – the homiletic, narrative, ethical, and theological portions of rabbinic literature. There was no rule that could be cited in order to address Space travel. Rabinovitch therefore drew on teachings about human ambition, rebellion against God, and the limits of enquiry.

From a legal perspective, Rabinovitch’s responsum might seem to be on shaky ground. He had determined that Space travel was permitted as long as the motive was not to challenge God’s existence or authority. But he had not cited halakhic sources to buttress his claim.

In truth, Rabinovitch’s approach was ingenious. Faced with a new technological reality and a halakhic question that had no tradition of discourse and debate, Rabinovitch could not draw on the traditional cache of halakhic sources. He was in a situation where there was no legal oxygen to sustain the life of a standard halakhic analysis. His insight lay in recognising that when formal law lacks direct precedent, Aggada may be pressed into the service of law.

****

Rabbi Rabinovitch’s brief responsum expanded the vistas of Jewish law to encompass sources not usually admitted to legal discourse – the Talmud famously declares that law may not be derived from Aggada (Palestinian Talmud, Pe’ah 2:6, 17a; Hagiga 1:8, 76d). The need for this move was clear: Jewish law had simply not dealt with the question. Resourceful thinking and creative reading were needed to find an answer.

According to Rabbi Rabinovitch, Space exploration was permitted, provided it was undertaken for the right reasons. Where the Lubavitcher Rebbe saw the cosmos as an arena for spiritual growth, the Charleston rabbi saw it as a test of human intent. He shifted the analytical focus from the physical destination to the human motive, demonstrating that Space travel carried no intrinsic prohibition. Whether crossing the Kármán line constitutes a noble scientific quest or an act of hubris depends on the spirit of the particular Space programme.