4 | JULY 28 • 2022
PURELY COMMENTARY
B
ack in December,
human beings, a
weird variety of
uniquely frail, lithe and
hairless monkeys, launched
into space a
new, $10 billion
telescope, 21
feet in diameter
and, like many
great temples,
covered with
golden mirrors.
The
James Webb Space Telescope
is 100 times more powerful
than the Hubble telescope.
It traveled a million miles
from Earth with a mission
— the first fruits of which
we saw with the photographs
released by NASA — that
is almost unfathomably
grandiose: to peer out
(that is, to look back) at
the moment when the first
stars turned out and cleared
away limitless clouds of
primordial gas, seen as
light that has been traveling
toward us for 13.6 billion
years.
Readers of Bereshit —
Genesis — learn about a time
when all was tohu vavohu
— when all was formless and
dark — and there is a strong
chance that Webb will show
us the very moment when
something happened and
then there was light.
We will be able to see that
moment of creation. The
moment when the first stars
began to burn, unfathomable
vessels of brightness that
would create the carbon,
the nitrogen and the oxygen
that make up 86.9% of our
bodies, which would later
shatter to create our heavier
atoms, which would combine
with the hydrogen created
during the Big Bang.
All of this means, by some
alchemy of thermodynamics
that is, for me, still shrouded
in darkness — or perhaps by
some act of primordial grace
— we are mostly composed
of starlight, our mass coming
from some mysterious
vibration of immortal and
timeless energy, echoing
through the universe from
the beginning of time.
This energy has existed
from the moment when the
very first lights went on
and will exist after the very
last lights wink out. When
all returns to a formless
nothingness, those little
pieces of starlight that
are me will still be there,
perhaps joining in a cosmic
dance with those that are
you, forming something
new, maybe something
wonderful.
These are and were
and will be the very same
atoms that now make up
my bones and blood, and
which — through whatever
unfathomable, godly magic
— fired electricity through
my brain, so that one day,
also out of darkness, I
looked out on the world,
saw its lights and colors,
discovered the taste and
fragrance of milk, came to
smile and laugh and walk
and speak and eventually
(not me but others like me)
grow up to build machines
to look back in time.
We are the universe
coming to know itself. We
are the eyes of God peering
out into endless darkness,
lighting fires of imagination
and ingenuity that allow
us to reach into our bodies
to make them well, and to
travel to the great orbs in
Benjamin
Resnick
JTA.org
for openers
James Webb Telescope
Looks at the Universe
through the Eyes of God
An image released by NASA on July 12, 2022, shows the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region in
the Carina Nebula, captured in infrared light by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI/HANDOUT VIA XINHUA
continued on page 11