2. Says Who?

The suggestion in the previous post is that everything we want in life can be attained through a principle discovered by the patriarch and kabbalist, Abraham—a principle encoded in the midrashic legend about his search for the master of the universe. Love. Health. Wealth. Knowledge. Peace. You can have it all. “Who is this guy,” you may wonder, “that is making all these outlandish promises? And why should I believe him?”

These are reasonable questions. This author lays no claims to genius, nor to mystic revelation. All I have is a strong academic background, and a quarter-century of exploration into the interplay of science and faith.

As a scientist, I earned Canada’s first doctorate in Applied Ecology from the University of Toronto and conducted environmental impact assessments professionally for many years. On the faith side, I spent the first half of my life as a deist, believing in an impartial creator that wound up the universe and took a long nap. Half-way through graduate school, though, I stumbled across some intriguing people who took the tradition from Sinai seriously and was surprised to discover that its scholars did not spend the last 3,000 years twiddling their thumbs trying to memorize the ten commandments. Indeed the more I delved into rabbinic literature, the more astounded I became at the fact that the talmudic and hasidic masters seem to have gone way beyond legal and moral teachings, presaging a host of modern scientific discoveries and current global trends.

Excited by my findings, I decided to share the wealth by designing and conducting courses on the interplay of science and faith for professors, graduate students and undergraduates at the University of Toronto. Some indication of the importance and relevance of these ideas can be seen from the fact that my accredited undergraduate course, Faith and Science, won a $10,000 Templeton Award and filled the largest lecture hall at UofT’s New College every year until my retirement from academia in 2002.

Beyond all this, I am a disciple of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, whose erudition in both mystic and pragmatic matters is legendary. I was privileged to translate many some of the teachings culled from his 300 books into English in a book called Mind Over Matter: The Lubavitcher Rebbe on Science, Technology and Medicine, which you can order here. Among those who say it’s a good book are Nobel Physicist Arno Penzias and Time Magazine’s candidate for scholar of the century Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz.

As for why should you believe my claims, it is not necessary that you do. I think you should research and analyze the ideas and the information presented by yourself and come to your own conclusions. No one has a patent on truth.