A Creative Dialogue

...On which doorpost should one affix the mezuzahl Most of the precepts prefer the right side...

...She calls attention to the fact that neither in the Torah nor in the Talmud is there a word for Nature...

...While there are times when it makes sense to consider the biological continuity of humans and other animals," he adds, "a classification that makes all part of Nature is self-defeating...

...Enter Hoffmann with more questions for Ayyal...

...The authors also point out that almost two dozen commandments are affected by handedness...

...The importance attached to the matter is indicated in Genesis when Joseph brings his two sons to his father Jacob, who is close to death, for a blessing...

...Before the 15th century, the Europeans pushed Nature into the background...

...If everything were natural, nothing would be unnatural and "a dialogue that includes environmental issues" would be impossible...

...This marked the beginning of a collaboration between the scientist, who describes himself as "unreligious," and the Orthodox mother of six children, who earned an engineering degree at Stanford University...

...to a discourse on mirror images that is illuminated by showing the original and a mirror version of Adriaen van der Werff's painting, Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph...

...Recalling Hoffmann's lecture, Shira invited him to join in the correspondence...

...Perhaps the intention is to avoid the slightest taint of idolatry...

...Joseph positions Manasseh, the older son, before Jacob's right hand and Ephraim, the younger boy, before Jacob's left hand...

...The opinions of the three justices are a potent mixture of art, science and halacha (Jewish religious law...

...It is wiser to distinguish humans, whose actions are guided by reason or a soul, from "other creatures and the inanimate world...

...The Chinese provide a sharp contrast, for in their paintings the opposite is true...

...Which way should one lean, to the right or the left, during the Passover Seder meal...

...Roald Hoffmann, a professor of both chemistry and humane letters (academically, an unusual mixture of disciplines) at Cornell, delivered a lecture on the dichotomy of "natural" and "unnatural" materials at Ben-Gurion University in Israel...

...Let me further illustrate the nature of the book, however, by briefly turning to a chapter entitled "Signs and Portents: No Parking in the Courtroom...

...People think science and religion are enemies, says Ayyal, but "they work together to ruin Nature...

...In the Index, to cite a mere dozen entries randomly, one finds Abraham ibn Ezra, bronze alloys, Yehuda Amichai, Aristotle, ordeal of bitter waters, blue pigments, Bartolommeo di Giovanni, superconductors, Paul Klee, pheromones, Tacitus, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein...

...The 40-page chapter is packed with quotations from classic Jewish sources and contemporary rabbinic responsa, and from discussions and arguments elsewhere revolving around the question of right and left...

...The whole enterprise is full of wit, whimsy and unexpected insights...

...But their grandfather "stretched out his right hand and placed it on Ephraim's head, though he was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh's head—thus crossing his hands—though Manasseh was the firstborn...

...It concludes with Hoffmann and Schmidt expressing the fear that a reader may be left feeling "like one of those poor souls of Nineveh," described in the Book of Jonah as "that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left....' They need not have worried...

...This entertainingly recounts —in fictionalized form—a real parking violation appeal involving an ambiguous sign that is being heard by Israel's Supreme Court...

...Since organic farming is different from farming that has elements of the "unnatural," they discussed the question what is "natural" and what is "unnatural...

...and to an impressive demonstration of how "persons of faith and/or science react to imposed or accepted authority...

...In the case of music, too, the Europeans confined the sounds of Nature to serving the purposes of religion or love...

...Although in essence Old Wine, New Flasks examines some of the laws prescribed for Jews by the Torah, its range and richness defy summarization...

...For instance, in which hand should the kiddush cup be held when saying the blessing over wine on the Sabbath and festivals...

...and of industrial and labor relations, Cornell University...

...It all started with God's words (Genesis 1:28) to Adam and Eve: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth...

...both assume the world is there for human beings to probe, dominate, rule and exploit...

...Booksellers must be having great difficulty deciding where to place it on their shelves...

...There is much more that is intriguing in the 54 pages on the natural and the unnatural, including the issue of whether they really are different...

...Another chapter, "You Must Not Deviate to the Right or the Left," takes its title from a command in the Bible: Once the judges have decided a case, "you must not deviate from the verdict that they announce to you either to the right or to the left" (Deuteronomy 17:8-11...

...Reviewed by Milton R. Konvitz Professor emeritus of law...

...Hoffmann agrees and observes that the Bible expresses the feeling of wonder and awe that Nature arouses, even its sublime character...

...In the first one, entitled "Is Nature Natural?," the young man studying organic farming with the Navajos inveighs that religion and science have conspired "to destroy this green planet...

...The Hebrew word currently used, teva, emerged in the writings of the medieval Jewish philosophers...

...The Greeks, Hoffmann notes, considered humans members of the animal kingdom, but this is not true for Judaism or Christianity, since according to the Bible man was made last in the order of Creation and in the image of God...

...For Hoffmann and Schmidt —as well as the participants in their exchanges along the way—writing is clearly fun, debate is a source of enjoyment, and imagination is an indispensable part of reasoning...

...Shira, responding, wonders whether the Bible really means to suggest that man has a mandate to dominate Nature...

...As proof, he presents passages from Handel's Messiah and Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony...

...The Biblical hymns are not about Nature, they are about the God of Nature...

...Why do we say it is natural when beavers build a dam, but when human beings build the Hoover Dam we don't associate it with Nature...

...The book's approach can perhaps best be illustrated by samples from a few of its eight chapters...

...Indeed, the book is a validation of the philosophy of Torah U-Madda, of the union of Judaism and culture, religion and secularism...

...Then came science, "ostensibly seeking wisdom...

...Like Carlyle's Sartor Resartus or Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean, it cannot be classified, nor can it be compared with other books...

...Echoing Hoffmann's lecture, she asks: What is the difference between the natural and the synthetic—chemically, materially, spiritually, poetically, even erotically...

...The esthetic experience quickly becomes transmuted into a religious emotion...

...Nature was not empowered to be by itself a musical subject," declares Hoffmann...

...Painting was controlled by religious and secular potentates, who wanted the human figure to be the central focus...

...It had its origin, rather, in fortuitous circumstances...

...Ayyal writes that despite the lack of a word for it, Nature is a strong presence in the Bible, notably in the Book of Psalms...

...The volume was not planned...

...Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, then assistant to the rector there, was in the audience and afterward mentioned to Hoffmann that the distinction he had drawn applied to various areas of Jewish religious life...

...That leads to spirited explanations of the chemistry, biology and physics of left- and righthanded molecules...

...He readily agreed, and the felicitous result is the opening chapter of Old Wine, New Flasks, an elegant collection of letters and essays in which the authors deal with science, art, poetry (Hoffmann has produced several books of notable poems), music, literature, and of course Jewish thought and scripture (Shira is a member of the Leibowitz family of eminent Jewish scholars...

...author, "Torah & Constitution: Essays in American Jewish Thought" This engaging work by a Nobel Laureate for chemistry and a Judaica scholar who teaches at the Netanya Academic College in Israel is sui generis...

...Are the leather soles of a pair of loafers natural, or are they unnatural because man-made...

...Some time later, Shira (as she is known in the book) entered into a correspondence with a young man named Ayyal, a student of organic farming in New Mexico...

...A subsequent Hoffmann letter takes up the treatment of Nature in painting and music...

...The Appellant and the Police invoke, among other things, the artwork of David Hockney and Gustave Caillebotte, Nachmanides' theories of signs and symbols, and Umberto Eco's views on the use of color...

...Throughout, Old Wine, New Flasks is a remarkable blending of earnestness and playfulness, learning and imagination, prose and poetry, rigorous scientific thinking and critical humanistic considerations...

...Shira could have cited the blessing a Jew is supposed to recite upon seeing an exceptionally beautiful individual, tree, field, orthe like: "Blessed art Thou, God, our Lord, King of the universe, who has such [creations] in his universe...

...But Shira remonstrates— correctly, I think—that when the Psalmist praises Nature, he praises the Creator...