The halakhic discussion of whether there are aliens began centuries ago • The problem: How does humanity remain unique if there is life somewhere?
• The occult project takes off for the stars
Alien
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The Pentagon recently admitted that its people had previously examined various findings from unidentified object crashes (UFOs), a news item that gave a shot of encouragement to all conspiracy buffs who believe there is intelligent life out there, and only world governments hide it from us. There is no possibility of an intelligent extraterrestrial life, it does not bother the alien lovers, for them there are aliens and that is a fact.
It turns out that the question of the existence of intelligent life in outer space has also preoccupied the sages of Israel for centuries, and certainly from the moment humans began to look at the sky in amazement and in an attempt to score the eternal veil of darkness of outer space.
The existence of other worlds besides our world is already discussed by Rabbi Hassadi Karshak, 14th century, but he did not explicitly mention the existence of intelligent life in those worlds, so probably the first Jewish sage to deal explicitly with the possibility of intelligent life outside the earth was the sage David Nitto. , Rabbi and Dayan who operated in mid-17th century London.
In his book "The Second Kuzari" he argued that the existence of intelligent life on other stars does not contradict the Torah at all: "It is not against the Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu for the Israeli man to believe that the stars are inhabited worlds", he writes - adding: When they wrote ... [Q] God will instill in every Tzaddik and Tzaddik S. "worlds".
In the "Complete Book of the Covenant", on the other hand, a Jewish book of nature printed at the end of the 18th century in Central Europe by the Polish-Ukrainian rabbi Pinchas Eliyahu Horowitz, one can already find opposition to the claim that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life: " "Like this is the world really, without change in nature, including a person with a choice and a beast and a plant and an inanimate ...
Still, Rabbi Horowitz did not object to the possibility that there are living stars that are not intelligent, and he even brings evidence to his method from the Gemara, which according to one opinion says that the verse Against the inhabitants of a star called "Maroz", and "and cursed the same star with all its inhabitants, why did not come to the aid of God in the heroes ... therefore my opinion that there is a settlement and worlds in them, and also means glorious corrections", and yet, according to his method " It is doubtful that in any of them there are no human beings in our image as our image and with choices, although it may be that they have intellect and science. "
Life - yes, intelligent - no.
What bothered Rabbi Horowitz in claiming that there is an intelligent extraterrestrial life, is the destructive effect of such a theory on the unique place of man in creation;
In a world where there is intelligent life and choice even outside of the earth, humans lose their unique place as the crown of creation and as the center of the universe, and from there the path to heresy in the Torah and in the work of God is short.
The Rebbe of Lubavitch, who was one of the greatest of Israel in the previous generation, ruled out the possibility of having an intelligent life abroad for a similar reason.
He explained that if "there are other creatures in the world who are intelligent beings, they must say that they have Torah," and this is not possible according to his method, since "the Torah is a true Torah, and there is only one truth."
So are there aliens out there?
We probably won't know the answer soon, but even if we do, they probably don't have Chabad houses there and they also don't put on tefillin.
