Voices of WRJ: B'reishit

by Abigail Fisher My mother needlepointed the atarah (neckpiece) of my tallit. She made it for me when I first began to wear a tallit, when I was in college in the early 1980’s. The theme of my atarah is B'reishit: it depicts the creation of the world. At the time that Mom made it for me, she thought it was ironic. Put her daughter, the scientist, in something showing creation. But she was wrong. It’s not ironic at all; it’s totally appropriate. Science, the study of our world or our universe, is inherently the study of creation, and, by extension, the mind of our Creator. It is only in relatively modern times that science and religion have been deemed incompatible opposites; before that they were often one and the same. Just ask Brother Gregor Mendel, the monk who discovered modern genetics. The story of B'reishit tells us that the Eternal One created the world. It does not tell us how. The story does not tell us the mechanism. Science, I believe, gives us the mechanism. There are those of us who think that when G-d said, “Va Y’hi Or—let there be light,” what was said was Maxwell’s equations (don’t believe me? Check out the T-shirt). My son, at about the age of 3, asked, “when G-d made the world, did he use hammer and nails?” To my great delight, my Rabbi engaged him in a lengthy discussion of the need to first create the hammer and nails. Creation ex nihilo (from nothing) for 3-year-olds. I have had the great privilege of being involved in creating something ex nihilo: URJ’s newest camp, the URJ Six Points Sci-Tech Academy, whose lay council I chair. Watching a camp grow from a concept to a reality was an amazing experience, and I was as verklempt on opening day (and most of the summer) as I have ever been. This past summer, we served over 160 boys and girls. All of them, along with the wonderful staff, love Judaism and science as much as I do. I could not have made my journey to understanding the balance of science and Judaism, nor would I chair the Sci-Tech council, and indeed Sci-Tech would not be the camp it is were it not for WRJ. Personally, WRJ has allowed me to grow in my Judaism and as a leader, and through a generous grant from the YES Fund (supported by your donations), Sci-Tech was able this past summer to double our enrollment of girls. We have done much but there is more to do. We need to fight for girls’ equal opportunity to love science and technology, one girl at a time, by encouraging those interests in the girls in our communities. I would ask each and every one of you to encourage a girl from your community to consider attending Six Points Sci-Tech Academy next year, so that she too can know the joys of living in a community of like-minded scientists engaged in Judaism. Abigail Fisher is WRJ Vice President of Advocacy, Marketing, and Communications. She was also WRJ Centennial Assembly Program Chair, Immediate Past President of WRJ Northeast District, and a member of Beth El Temple Center in Belmont, MA.