Community Magazine April 2013

Copernicus publicized his findings, shortly before his death, did the understanding that the Earth orbits the sun (the heliocentric belief) begin to penetrate mankind. It was around the same time that the idea that the rising and setting of the sun is caused by the Earth’s spin on its axis began to be established. A short time before that, in 1492, Columbus discovered America, and the belief that the world was a globe and there was life on every side of it received clear affirmation. Today, of course, we know as a fact that the world is spherical based on satellite photographs. The amazing thing is that all these facts were written in the Zohar , by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, about 1,900 years ago, long before these facts were scientifically established! The Zohar says: The whole world with the people on it is a revolving globe. Some of the Earth’s inhabitants are above and some below. The races indigenous to the various climes differ in appearance due to the differing environments of their native lands. When one part of the world is in sunlight, the other part is in darkness. There is inhabited latitude where daylight sometimes prevails for almost the entire 24 hours. This secret was transmitted as a tradition to the masters of Torah wisdom. Remarkably, the Zohar explicitly asserts that: • The world is spherical. • The globe does not remain still; it revolves around its axis. • People live on both the upper side and lower side of the globe (meaning, on the entire circumference of the globe). • All the people on the entire surface of the globe stand upright. • When a portion of the world is in light, the other portion is in darkness. • There are places where there is light for a long time and a very short night. Today, all these statements have been shown to be entirely true. This passage concludes by stating, “This secret was transmitted as a tradition to the masters of Torah wisdom.” The Torah scholars did not achieve this wisdom through reasoning and analysis; rather, it was a tradition transmitted from generation to generation, since the time Moshe received the Torah at Sinai. THE CONTINENTS WERE CONNECTED In the book Planet Earth , Jonathan Weiner describes the revolution in the scientific understanding of the geological history of the planet Earth at the beginning of the 20 th century. The hero of this modern revolution was the German scientist Alfred Wegener, who claimed that in the past all the continents were connected: He came up with the idea when he noticed that the coast lines in South America and Africa fit together like two pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. To explain this phenomenon, Wegener proposed that the two continents were in the past one continent that became separated. In the course of time he saw all the continents as parts of one single landmass... He claimed that the pieces continue to drift apart from one another to this day. Wegener saw geologically identical mountain systems stretching from east to west on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, in South Africa and Argentina. A plateau in Brazil corresponded exactly to an identical plateau in the Ivory Coast in Africa. Identical fossils of tropical ferns are found in certain areas of Africa and Brazil, and the point of their dispersal corresponds exactly as the coastlines do. Support for Wegener’s theory came from the work of Eduard Suess (1831-1914), a geologist who also maintained that the entire world was once a single super-continent he called Gondwana. He based his theory on a fossil plant found in Africa, South America, Australia, and Antarctica. Later, Alexander Logie du Toit (1878-1948), a South African geologist, joined them and added further fossil evidence that demonstrated that in the past, identical life forms existed on the entire southern hemisphere, which indicated that there was once one continuous continent. In 1915, in The Origin of Continents and Oceans , Wegener published the theory that there had once been a giant super-continent. Thousands of years ago, the Zohar knew that the continents were connected, without the use of scientific investigation. “ It was taught: The water brought forth one dry landmass, and it became seven landmasses” ( Zohar Hadash 12:1). The Continental Drift - Alfred Wegener’s theory of the formation of the continents from one landmass was controversial at first, but today it is widely accepted. In the Torah, on the other hand, these facts were written plainly thousands of years ago: “And Hashem said: ‘Let the water gather under the heavens to one place and let the dry landmass appear’” (Beresheet 1:9). Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) - This photo was taken in 1912, during a scientific expedition in Greenland. Wegener’s theory of a “continental drift,” presented for the first time in January of that year, started a scientific revolution in geology that deeply affected the way we understand how Earth systems work. Planet Earth as it was imagined by the ancient Greeks, positioned on four elephants standing on a turtle’s back. 36 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE