Telling it Like it Is

By Susan Esther Barnes

The other night a commercial came on TV. There’s a man in a shirt and tie who gets a phone call from his wife reminding him they’re supposed to have their anniversary dinner that evening, asking him if he’s on his way and whether he made the reservation. The man, who has clearly forgotten all about it, assures her that everything has already been taken care of while he frantically uses his phone to make the reservation and rushes to get ready to leave work to meet her at the restaurant.

I turned to my husband and said, “I’m so glad we’re not like that. It’s so nice to know that in the same situation you would say to me, ‘I’m sorry, I forgot all about it! Hold on a minute while I see if I can make the reservation now.’” We call this our “honesty policy,” and we have found that every time one of us forces ourselves to say something that is scary to admit to the other, it serves to strengthen our relationship.

Interestingly enough, at the same time I had been watching a series of videos posted by the BayNVC, which stands for Bay Area Nonviolent Communication. They state their mission as, “To create a world where everyone’s needs matter and people have the skills to make peace.”

The video series is a role play demonstration which starts with a theme of “Yes and No in the Workplace,” and teaches what to do when you ask someone if they can meet a certain deadline and they say “yes,” even though you’re pretty sure from past experience that the answer is really “no.”

Then there is a caller who phones in a real-life dilemma, and the role players demonstrate how the caller might be able to resolve her conflict in an honest and respectful manner, resulting in a win-win outcome.

It all seems so obvious – just be honest, say what’s on your mind, put all your cards on the table, and make room for the other person to do the same thing. But it’s so easy sometimes to get caught up in fears about potential conflict, how the other person might react, or a desire to “make” the other person just do what we want.

Not to mention how difficult it can be to make room for another person to tell us something we don’t agree with or may not want to hear.

All of this was a good reminder to me of how much I need to continue to work to not only be authentic in my communications with others, but to try to make space for others to be authentic with me as well.

I truly think this world would be a better place if we would all just tell it like it is, and make it safe for those around us to do so as well.

Orthodox Jews in Space – The Real Questions

By Susan Esther Barnes

Recently I wrote a critique of a novella that purported to be about Orthodox Jews who go into space in an attempt to find and populate another planet. Unfortunately, the novella appeared to have been written and edited by people who know very little about Jews in general, let alone the Orthodox.

Since that time, I have continued to wonder, if Orthodox Jews actually went on a long journey in outer space, what kinds of issues would they need to address?

One thing I mentioned in my other post is the issue of whether there would be any maintenance or other work that would be required on Shabbat, since normally no work is allowed on Shabbat. As one person pointed out to me, perhaps the concept of pikuach nefesh would apply. The Talmud says that certain laws, including those concerning Shabbat, may be broken in order to save a life. Therefore, one might think that if neglecting to do certain work on Shabbat would result in the death of one of more people on the space ship, that work would be permitted.

However, it is my understanding that pikuach nefesh only applies when the specific individual who would die has been identified. For example, if you see a person drowning on Shabbat, it is permissible to do things to save that person that would otherwise be forbidden, such as using a motor boat to reach them, using a phone to call for help, etc.

In a space ship, if, for example, an air filter breaks down on Shabbat and some people might die if weren’t replaced before the conclusion of Shabbat, but it is unknown which people might die from it, there might be some question regarding whether this work is permitted (no specific individual whose life is at risk has been identified).

On the other hand, if it is a person’s profession to save lives (such as a doctor or fire fighter), that person is allowed to work on Shabbat. So perhaps it would be determined that anyone who maintains or repairs life support systems would fall into this category.

Clearly, this is one of the kinds of issues the Orthodox Jewish inhabitants of a space ship would be wise to anticipate and come to an agreement on before embarking on their trip.

Another Shabbat issue, which appears to be more easily solved, revolves around the prohibition against carrying things outside one’s home or community on Shabbat. In some areas where a lot of Orthodox Jews live, they use an eruv, or enclosure, around their community. This allows, for example, a person to carry a house key with them to synagogue. I would think it would be easy to declare the space ship’s hull as an eruv, thereby allowing all of the space ship’s inhabitants to carry items throughout the ship on Shabbat.

Whether they would actually want to do so, however, is an interesting question. If they can carry anything anywhere on the ship at any time, then when their descendants finally reach their destination, those descendants will have never experienced the prohibition against carrying on Shabbat, and may even have forgotten all about it. It seems highly possible that they, then, would be at risk of carrying things on Shabbat on their destination planet. Therefore, I can see this, too, as being an interesting topic of discussion before the ship leaves.

One issue this all leads up to is the question of sacred time. For Jews, one day of each week, namely Shabbat, is separate in time and holiness from the other six days of the week. Shabbat starts at sundown on Friday and continues until three stars are visible in the sky on Saturday night. In a space ship, there is no sundown, nor an appearance of the first three stars, to mark the beginning and the end of Shabbat.

In addition, certain other holy days (or holidays) are set aside in time as well. These days are fixed according to a lunar/solar calendar, meaning they are set based on the phase of the moon, with adjustments made in order to ensure that they don’t drift from one season to another. For instance, Pesach is always observed in the spring, and Yom Kippur is always observed in the fall. With no lunar or seasonal cycles, how should these days be set in the space ship’s calendar?

One possible option that might be considered would be to tie the ship’s calendar to the earth’s calendar. The ship’s clocks and calendar could be synchronized to a specific place on earth, such as the country where most of the ship’s original passengers came from, or with Jerusalem, for instance.

However, that would be harder to do than it sounds. Anyone who reads a fair amount of science fiction likely is familiar with the concept of how time changes with speed. Many stories have been written about people who make a journey that appears to be only a short amount of time to them, but when they return home they find many more years have passed at home.

Therefore, if a space ship tried to synchronize its time with a spot on Earth, as the ship moved faster and faster, the ship’s days and hours would get shorter and shorter. I don’t imagine a ship full of Jews being content with observing a two-hour-long Shabbat every 14 hours. That really isn’t enough time to get in all the traditional prayers, let alone to have enough time in between Shabbats to appreciate the break from work.

Even if the space farers came up with a satisfactory way to establish the correct time to observe Shabbat and the other holidays when en route, once they reached their destination planet, they would have to examine all these questions of time and calendar once again.

The length of the days, the years, and the seasons on the new planet, and whether or not it has more than one sun or more than one moon, will present a new host of questions to be answered by everyone concerned with establishing the correct placement of Shabbat and the holidays in time.

These are all questions that I think could be incorporated into a very interesting story about what might actually happen if Orthodox (or other observant) Jews endeavored to take a long journey in space to find and populate other planets.

Orthodox Jews in Space

By Susan Esther Barnes

For many years now I’ve been a reader of a magazine called, “Analog Science Fiction and Fact.” I’m not a hard science kind of gal, and I don’t always like all of the stories in the magazine, but I find most to be well written, plausible, and entertaining. I find it a welcome way to take a short break from the more serious reading I do about Judaism and related subjects.

Imagine my delight when I thought the two areas that take up most of my reading time would come together when Analog published a story titled “The First Day of Eternity” by Domingo Santos, as translated by Stanley Schmidt. On the third page of the story it says, “Project Diaspora was originally conceived, developed and financed by the great Jewish lobbies of Earth as a second Exodus from the incomprehension of gentile societies, to spread Judaism throughout the Universe. So the pilgrims chosen for the first Diasporas … were all strictly Orthodox.”

I thought, “Cool, Orthodox Jews in space. If everyone on the ship is a strict Orthodox Jew, then they’re going to, for the first time in a long time, experience what it’s like to be in their own community without any outside influences or temptations. I hope they don’t need to do any important ship maintenance – such as to life support systems - on Shabbat!”

I suppose I should have been tipped off to the author’s lack of knowledge about Judaism when he went on to say the ship’s inhabitants “venerated the menorah” and “celebrated” rather than “observed” Yom Kippur, but on the title page the story says it was translated, so I set those issues down to a probable poor translation.

Setting aside any qualms I might have about the reference to the “great Jewish lobbies,” I thought, “Well, the author must know that the poorest group of people in Israel is not, as certain activists might have us believe, the Muslim Arabs, but it is the ultra-Orthodox Jews, because the men in those families spend all day studying Torah rather than earning a living for their families. So it must not be the ultra-Orthodox who are on the ship. It must be the Modern Orthodox, since they would be more likely to be able to raise the funds.”

I suppose maybe the Modern Orthodox and other Jews might be willing to raise money to send the ultra-Orthodox off in these ships, but that starts to smack just a little bit of people raising money to ship the Jews off in cattle cars. Maybe this story takes place so far in the future that the Jews have become de-sensitized to the horrors of the Holocaust, but we Jews have long memories, particularly about our collective tragedies.

It also struck me as particularly odd that the Jews would flee from “the incomprehension of gentile societies.” Are these Orthodox Jews giving up on being a “light unto the nations?” Sure, they’re supposed to “spread Judaism throughout the Universe,” but since the ship’s mission is to discover and colonize a new, unpopulated planet, this clearly isn’t about proselytization. Still, maybe they yearn for a chance for their children to grow up without gentile influences. I suppose that’s plausible.

But wait a minute. On the first page of the story, one of the inhabitants of the ship says, “We should give thanks to the god of the stars for that,” and a short time later adds, “and to the god of the ship for bringing us this far.” So, this ship full of formerly Orthodox Jews is now a ship of pagans? How did that happen?

The author explains that the ship’s computer decided to make itself a god, and over time influenced the ship’s humans to change their religion. On page four the story says the computer made itself “their prophet, the Moses of the new Exodus,” and goes on to say, “It was the ship, and the ship was it. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the electronic mystery of the Holy Trinity.” Uh, I’m sorry. I do try to suspend my disbelief when I read science fiction, but, frankly, I don’t think the author has any idea what he’s talking about.

Judaism is the world’s oldest living monotheistic religion. Jews are very accepting of the presence of other monotheistic religions. But Judaism has survived as long as it has because Jews are very good at not taking on the beliefs of the religions around them. After being surrounded by pagans in its early years and Christians for two thousand years after that, and not bending from the belief that God is one, there is no way a bunch of Orthodox Jews in a space ship are going to change all that to suddenly believe in a Holy Trinity just because their computer says so. Rather, if the computer started spouting religious nonsense at them, they would quickly recognize a flaw in the computer and immediately set their programmers to the task of fixing it.

It strikes me that the author must know very little about Jews. Perhaps he is unaware that every day, when we lie down and when we rise up, we say the Sh’ma, confirming that God is one. Perhaps he doesn’t know that throughout the space ship, on nearly every doorway (save the ones leading to the lavatories), there would be a mezuzah, and in each mezuzah would be a scroll with the Sh’ma, confirming that God is one. Perhaps he does not know that the Sh’ma is called “the watchword of our faith.” The last thing an Orthodox Jew would ever abandon is the understanding that God is one. This understanding was our greatest gift to the world.

According to the story, this complete change in religion took only seven generations, and then “the brain that was the ship rested.” Really? So a religion that has lasted thousands of years, through pograms, the Crusades and the diaspora, surrounded by other religions and by enemies sworn to wipe it out, suddenly crumbles, in less than seven generations, in a completely closed environment where everyone except the computer starts out as a “strictly Orthodox” Jew? I don’t think so.

Which leaves me wondering, why did the author chose to say the ship was paid for and populated with Orthodox Jews? His tale of the ship creating a religion for the people would have been much more plausible if the original ship inhabitants had been secular scientists without any strong religious beliefs to hold onto. Or even a bunch of people from a host of different religions who would undermine each other’s beliefs.

Why pick a homogenous group of people with the longest running, most resilient, most time-tested belief system? It seems like an incredible blunder, one that renders his story completely unbelievable before it even gets past page four. This is not the kind of mistake I’m used to seeing in Analog. The only explanation I have is that the author and the editor know so little about Jews that they don’t even start to have a clue about us.

Which leads me to suggest to them the oldest rule in the book for authors: Please stick to writing about what you know. And if you have to write about something else, please at least do some basic research first. Otherwise, you blow your credibility out of the water, and it’s hard for those of us in the know to take your writing seriously, no matter how good the rest of the story might be.