"[Faith] is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.”
- Richard Dawkins
“Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.”
- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
The conflict between science and religion is as old as science itself with many religious leaders denouncing advances and theories from Darwinism to the use of embryonic stem cells and scientists expressing similar contempt. Does Judaism have a unique religious perspective when it comes to balancing questions of trust, faith, evidence and knowledge? Do today’s Jewish scientists believe traditional Jewish wisdom brings value to the tables at which they work?
In partnership with Sinai and Synapses, The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center is honored to welcome two prominent American Jewish scientists and one of the country’s leading rabbis to discuss a variety of ways in which contemporary scientists think about the interplay between science and meaning, the relationship between religion and science in our society, where there are similarities between how Jews and scientists deal with and communicate uncertainty and how to (re)build trust both in science and in Judaism.
Panelists include:
The former Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky has also been Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and Chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health.
Professor of Physics and of Mathematics at Columbia University, Dr. Brian Greene is a leading theoretical physicist who has been described by The Washington Post as “the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today.” He is the author of four acclaimed books turned into the Emmy and Peabody Award–winning NOVA miniseries, The Fabric of the Cosmos, which he hosted.
The Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School, Rabbi David Wolpe has been named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek and one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world by The Jerusalem Post. Author of eight books, he is the Senior Advisor at Maimonides Fund.
Moderator: Author, producer and frequent moderator, Abigail Pogrebin sits on the boards of both Shalom Hartman and AJC’s Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council. Her My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and her new book, It Takes Two to Torah, will be published in September 2024.
Opening and closing remarks:
Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman is the Founding Director of the organization Sinai and Synapses, which bridges the scientific and religious worlds. A writer, scholar and speaker on the interaction of religion and science, he has been an adjunct professor at both the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the Academy for Jewish Religion.
President of The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (Clal), Rabbi Brad Hirschfield was listed in Newsweek as one of America’s 50 Most Influential Rabbis. He is the author and editor of numerous books, writes a column for Religion News Service and regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and US Department of Defense and multiple religious organizations.
This program is funded in part through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.