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

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