Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseDaniel talks to Rabbi Jack Schlacter, a physicist at Los Alamos, about the movie Oppenheimer and the connections and conflicts between physics and judaism.
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A lot of you out there love physics and love history, and so probably lots of you went to see the recent movie Oppenheimer, maybe the biggest blockbuster ever starring physicists. And some of you who know that I grew up in Los Alamos, that I went to Los Alamos High School and my parents worked in the weapons program at the lab wrote in to ask me what did I think of the movie? What's it like to see your hometown portrayed on the big screen in such dramatic fashion. Well, the answer is I decided to go see Barbie instead. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, a professor at UC Irvine, and I've been supported by the United States Department of Energy since i was about five years old. My parents worked at Los Alamo's National Labs, and so the weapons program basically put food on our table, paid for my education, and later on, when I grew up to be a physicist, I actually wanted to avoid the moral quagmire of designing weapons of mass destruction, so I ended up sliding over to the much less practically useful field of particle physics, which of course is still funded by the Department of Energy. Maybe the folks over there believe that eventually the Higgs boson will have some practical use, or maybe they just love understanding the universe. Either way, I'm a very grateful lifelong recipient of government funding, from building weapons to exploring and understanding the nature of the universe. And Welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, where we dive deep into the issues of physics, whether or not they have practical use. We think that understanding the universe has deep inherent value to me, to you and all of future humanity who are desperate to understand how the world works, what the laws are that govern it at the smallest scale, how those come together to make our universe, whether it is in the end and following some plans, some systems, some reasons, some logic that we can deduce, that we can understand and that hopefully on this podcast we can explain to you. So we ask all of the biggest questions. We don't shy away from those that have philosophical consequences or deep implications for the nature of our lives. That's why we do physics, because we seek to understand our place in the universe. And when I was growing up in Los Almos, you know, physics was in the air. There were physicists everywhere. People were doing physics all over the place. You know, it's a small mountain town and it's really dominated by the lab. I remember my mother went for jury dude one time, and a standard question the lawyers ask is who here has an advanced degree? But everybody in the room raised their hand, so they couldn't just disqualify the scientists like they usually do. Something else that's interesting about Los Almos. Beyond the standard story that it's marinated in science is the number of places of worship. You drive around Los Almos, you see lots and lots of different kinds of churches and temples and synagogues. It's because people come from all over the world, and so there is this incredible diversity of places of worship. It's fascinating to me how people come there for the science but end up seeking out their cultural and religious communities. And this of course played a big role in the movie Oppenheimer, the religious identities of some of the scientists, the role that played in their fight against the Nazis, and their Jewish identity, and Los Almost of course includes a vibrant Jewish community. When I was there, there was a very lively population of Jews, and that community was something I was a part of growing up. My Eagle Scout project when I was seventeen was repainting the Los Almost Jewish Community Center. And more broadly, there's a fascinating connection between physics and Judaism. We all know, of course that there are lots of famous Jewish physicists. You got Albert Einstein, Niels Bor had Jewish background, Polly born, Beta Block Landau, Robbie Wigner, von Neumann, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Marie Gelman, Stephen Weinberg, Oppenheimer himself, Edward Teller, Ed Witten, Lisa Meiitner. All of these folks have Jewish backgrounds. And beyond the anecdotal list of famous names, if you look at the Nobel Prize winners in physics, fully a quarter of them are Jews. So it makes you wonder, like, what's the connection there between Judaism and physics? Are Jews drawn to physics for some reason? And is it a cultural or a religious connection? Do the folks who are trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe to reveal the laws that govern it, the cold heartless logic of the universe, also believe the stories of Judaism? How do they reconcile these two things in their mind? Do they divide them up into separate questions? Do they find them to be in conflict? And so today on the podcast, we're going to be exploring the question our physics and Judaism in harmony or in conflict. This is a bit of a departure for us where we usually dig deep into the details of the physics, but often on the podcast, we are exploring the consequences of what physics has learned, the philosophical implications. If the universe works this way, what does it mean for me how I live my life, what I should do with myself. Because physics is more than just understanding how the world works. It gives us a sense of our place. Learning that the Earth is not the center of the universe, that there are billions of planets like ours out there, gives us a context for our lives and tells us something about how we should live it, which, of course is something religion also speaks to. So this is a potentially tricky topic, but we're going to try to tread sensitively and explore the overlap and understand the connection between these two ideas that are so important to so many people. And so, of course I was curious what everybody out there thought about these things. Our listeners to this podcast really just do they find religion and physics to be in harmony or in conflict? So I went out there to our community volunteers and I asked them our physics and religion in harmony or in conflict? So think about it for a moment yourself. What do you think about this difficult question. Here's what our listeners had to say. The church has done awful things to scientists. So I would say physics and religion are in conflict.
I think if a compartment lie and let religion help us with our spirituality, our faith community, and help us get a structure in life, et cetera, while we let physics handle why and how of the universe and explain all the things we see around us.
Well, are in homny sometimes and are in conflict sometimes, especially around the Nuton period.
So I'm going to say they're in how many is conflict.
They don't need to be in conflict.
Over the last few hundred, maybe even less millennia, they've been pushed to be in conflict with each other.
I believe that physics and religion is in conflict because physics is based on scientific evidence and in the nicest way possible. Religion is based on fairy tales and what people believe to be true.
I'd say it depends on your religion and how deeply are you believe in it. If you believe most of your religion, then then I'd say they're in conflict. But some people just believe that some sort of higher power started the universe, and then that could be in harmony as long as you say that creator didn't interfere after that.
Yes, yes they are. It's both. Let me put it this way. I love physics with my brain. It's good for the mind. I love Jesus with my heart. He's good for the soul. These two things live on total opposite ends of my being. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile my interests in both. They can butt heads on certain topics, but at other times, each one enhances the beauty of the other. They come together, and when one informs the other, it just makes them both so much better. So, yes, it's both.
I believe religion and physics are in conflict and pretty much always have been. But it's interesting that both try and understand our place in the universe and try and give our lives meaning. So in that sense, they're in harmony. But the ideas of each are in conflict to each other's understanding.
I'd say conflict. Physics spec imperial evidence. Religion is based on faith and intangible proof.
I guess it depends on which region we consider, but I wouldn't say they have to be fundamentally in conflict. I think they can be complementary and their money can be found in front of the wonders of the universe.
Personally, I think they are I guess, in conflict given that religion doesn't believe in any form of evolution or anything. But then again, religion does believe that everything came from nothing. We have no idea what happened at the moment before the Big Bang, and we still can't explain consciousness or human feelings. So it's a tough one. Now, I'm not too sure.
I would say that the amount of harmony or conflict involved in these two ideas is dependent on the two people who are discussing these ideas.
So I love these answers and thank you everybody for your honest and heartfelt replies. It really helps me to hear what you're thinking about, and already here you see part of the story emerging. You hear that some people separate these things and say physics is asking some questions and science is asking other questions, while other folks find them to be directly in conflict and prefer to go in one direction or the other. Personally, For me, I think that there are a lot of questions that science can answer and is the best equipped to answer. But there are also lots of questions that science just cannot answer, questions like what should I eat for lunch today? Or should I even get out of bed this morning? Science is not set up to answer every question in the universe. That does mean that religion is necessarily the best way to answer it. There's lots of different ways to find joy and value in your life, but science doesn't necessarily answer every question out there. And while I grew up in a Jewish community and it's part of my identity, I'm not a terribly observant due these days. And so to help me figure this out, I reached out back into my childhood and out to Los Almos to talk to the rabbi who leads the Lost Almost Jewish Center and is a physicist himself. So I had a fascinating conversation about Judaism and about physics, and about the Jewish community in Los Almos after the war, and how Judaism was portrayed in the movie Oppenheimer. So here's my interview with rabbi and physicist Jack Schlacter. So then it's my great pleasure to welcome the podcast doctor Jack Schlacter, also Rabbi Jack Schlacter. Doctor Schlacter got his PhD in physics from the University of California at San Diego and his worked full time at Los Almost National Laboratory as a physicist. He's also a long standing member of the Los Almost Jewish Center and recently ordained as a rabbi. Jack, thank you very much for joining us on the podcast.
It's my pleasure and honor. Daniel, thank you very much for inviting me.
And it's been quite a few years since you and I have spoken. I think the last time might have been before I left for college.
That's a while ago. Yeah, so you'll have to refresh my memory, because that's one of the things that starts to go with time. But my ordination actually took place in nineteen ninety five, and I'm thinking that that's maybe just after you disappeared from Los Almas. I don't remember now.
Yeah, I graduated from high school in ninety three and left for college and only visited occasionally back to see my parents. So yeah, when I left, you were not yet a rabbi and something I only learned recently is that you were a physicist. I knew you my whole childhood, and I was always interested in physics, and of course, growing up in Los Alamos, the physics is in the air. But I wasn't really like concretely aware of which adults in my sphere were actually working physicists. So I only learned a couple of weeks ago that you've been a physicist this whole time.
That's correct, that's right. In fact, I like to tell people that from the age of four, I was set on a path for the physical sciences. I actually thought I was going to be an astronomer, and I'm a product of the Spotnek generation and the Mercury seven astronauts were my heroes, and I really was convinced I was going to do some kind of astronomy or I actually put in an application to be a mission specialist as an astronaut along with fourteen billion other people. I was not accepted into that program. But then when I matriculated at cal Tech, there was incredible peer pressure to go into physics as opposed to astronomy, and so I shifted gears and very quickly became fascinated with physics. I don't think I knew what physics was when I showed up at Caltech, but I quickly became interested in it.
Well, that's a pretty good place to learn some physics. So tell us a little bit about your physics expertise and your background or your scientific career. We'll talk about your rabbinical work in a minute, but I want to make sure everybody has the kind of text of you as a scientist. What did you work on at Los Almos if you can tell us.
Sure, absolutely so. My senior year at Caltech, I took a class that was like an introduction to fusion by one of the real pioneers in the field. It was really Gould, and it intrigued me. The idea of blending a study of the physical sciences and the world around us, which to me is kind of physics in a nutshell, but also with doing something useful for the world. That fusion energy seemed like a really wonderful goal. So then when I went to graduate school, I had sought out somebody who was working in plasma physics and magnetic confinement fusion, and that was the area that I had my PhD in. Well, I actually completed my PhD at Los Almos and then was hired on as a staff member in what was then the Magnetic Fusion division, and I worked for well over a decade doing experimental plasma physics with the intent of trying to make confined magnetic plasma systems for fusion energy.
Wow, amazing, it's incredible that we didn't run into each other. Even more because plasma fusion was my first for into physics. I joined the group working with Glenn Worden and Fred Weisaki at Los Almos.
That was the people I worked with at the time that you were doing stuff with those people. My interest was in a pretty bizarre approach to magnetic fusion. It was a standard linear z pinch but at very high densities, and the idea was to use oma heating straight up to ignition. And what we did, in fact, probably the most exciting day in the laborate story for me and my whole career, was extruding a solid fiber of frozen deuterium fifty microns in diameter and five centimeters long, so it was like a hair of frozen deuterium, and then it spanned an electrode gap and we did basically an exploding wire experiment. With that, you put a very high current through initially insulating deuterium fiber, which rapidly broke down, and then the plan was to try to heat it to ignition by driving very high current at very short time scale through the deuterium wire.
All right, so clearly you're working on the forefront of plasma physics. You're working specifically on technologies that you know could change our world if we had this kind of fusion, certainly it would affect the trajectory of technology in the human race. But it sounded like you were also interested in physics for deeper reasons. I mean you got into it for astronomical curiosity. Does that mean that you also like wanted to understand the nature of reality and you know, the fundamental fabric of space and time, where there are also those motivations for you.
You're probably putting me at a higher level of sophistication than I deserve. I mean, I was totally intrigued by the universe at large, and I think I received a telescope when I was four years old as a Sonica present, and you know, it was just a passion for me to try to see things at the you know, furthest distances in the cosmos, and to try to understand something about the nature of the universe at large. But I also knew my own limitations, and I knew that I needed to have an income, and the fusion seemed like a way to combine things where I would probably be able to get a job. People were being hired to do a magnetic fusion when I entered the field, and it also had something to do with helping the world. And somehow I realized that life is finite, and the goal, I think is to leave the world in a somewhat better position than when we enter it, and working on fusion seemed like a way to do that. And this is not at all to be critical of people who do what I would call pure physics, but there was no great loss to the world of physics by me focusing in a more applied area. It seemed to me to combine my interest in understanding things that nobody understood previously, you know, really doing novel experiments, but also with an end goal of something that could be useful.
All right, this is a fascinating conversation and I'd love to hear some more. But first we have to take a quick break. With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price you thoughts you were paying magically skyrockets. With mint Mobile, You'll never have to worry about gotcha's ever again. When Mint Mobile says fifteen dollars a month for a three month plan, they really mean it. I've used mint Mobile and the call quality is always so crisp and so clear. I can recommend it to you, So say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts. So dit your overpriced wireless with mint Mobiles deal and get three months a premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintmobile dot com slash universe. That's mintmobile dot com slash universe. Cut your wireless bill to fifteen bucks a month. At mintmobile dot com slash universe. Forty five dollars upfront payment required. Equivalent to fifteen dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only speeds slower about forty gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxi speed and restrictions apply. See mint mobile for details.
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If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily care back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card, apply for Apple Card in the wallet app subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC terms and more at applecard dot com. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite, But the people in the dairy industry are US. Dairy has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four times the same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn and irrigates the crops. How is US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from maneuver into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that dairy farmers and processors around the country are using the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient deents dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit usdairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more. Okay, we're back and we're talking with rabbi and physicist Jack Schlapter, who leads the Los Alamos Jewish Center and works at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a physicist. Yeah, fascinating. One of the reasons I ask is because I'm curious about how physics for you connects with a desire to understand the universe and your sort of picture of the origin of creation and all of this stuff. Because I'd like to understand how you ended up also becoming a rabbi. I mean, we're a scientist, you're a physicist. You're working on practical details, manipulating the universe using our understanding of its laws, and then later in life you became a rabbi. Is that something that came out of physics or that's something that came out of your feelings about Judaism and you know the role of Judaism and telling us how to live with each other and how to treat other people.
So it's going to be a little bit embarrassing to be completely honest about it. But it's all serendipity, you know. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time for my life to end up with the trajectory that it had. As I said earlier, I came to Los Almos as a graduate student, and I actually completed my PhD here at Los Alamos. My thesis advisor had been a graduate student at Los Almos in the fifties, and then his first staff position after he got his PhD, which I think would have been maybe the late fifties, was also at Los Almos, so he still had a connection to the laboratory when I would work looking for him at UC San Diego, and we had worked on an experiment and you can appreciate this, and I think any of your listeners, especially in experimental physics, can appreciate this. I had worked on an experiment for four years and it got us nowhere, and it was basically starting from scratch. My thesis advisor had a track record of people taking nine and ten years to complete their PhDs, and that was sort of hanging over my head. You know, Oh, my goodness, I'm going to be following that same trajectory. So I had spent four years with It was a diagnostic. It was a laser scattering diagnostic to look at very low amplitude waves in a TOKAMAC, which is a kind of a leading magnetic plasma confinement device to configuration. And so we had this diagnostic and we took it up to UCLA where there was a small tokamac and we made it the diagnostic to the tokamac and we scattered light off of the plasma and we got no signal at all. And so here was four years of graduate work going nowhere, and my thesis advisor, rather than trying to improve the laser system or do something to increase the sensitivity of the detector, he decided to change gears altogether. And he got interested in this dense z pinch approach that had been pioneered at Los Almos. So he sent me to Los Almos for the summer, and the idea was to learn something about this approach and then come back to San Diego and we would build an experiment and we would pursue that He was going to be applying for a grant while I was learning some techniques and it all sounded good on paper, but it did look like this ten year trajectory might be my career. So while I was at Los Almos two things of importance. One, I came to the quick realization that here was a working experiment and I could take data now and not wait to build something and start from scratch at San Diego. So that was piece number one, and that's what worked out. He didn't get the grant, by the way, so it's really lucky that I ended up staying at Los Alamos. Number two, though, and quite an unexpected change for me, is that I came to Los Almos not knowing a single person in town, and I showed up here. And this was in the days where it was not so common for people to be here as students it's much more common today, But back when I came, I was a little bit of a loaner, and in my entire division, I was the only student who was working at the time, and I thought, Okay, I don't know anybody in town. I could do worse than go to the synagogue and meet a few people there. And I had probably not really done much actively in a synagogue for about a day at that point. So I went to the synagogue in Los Almos. People were very friendly and welcoming. And then one other quirk that was to my advantage is that I could sing reasonably well. And I don't know if it's the altitude in Los Almos or the high physics population or what, but most people cannot sing well here. In fact, it generally does not sound good in the synagogue unless somebody's really leading it and pushing everybody along to be in the same Let.
Me interrupt you with a comment and a question. First of all, you're being way too modest. You can't just sing reasonably well. You have a beautiful voice, like really, it's an incredible baritone. It made a huge impression on me as a kid as part of those services. But also I just wanted to clarify. You're saying you joined the Los Almos Jewish community as a way to find community. You're looking for people to connect with, maybe people with a similar background. Was it a social environment and a community you're looking for, or also a religious experience.
I mean, to be completely honest, it was not for the religious experience. It was not because I had some spiritual craving. It was not because I wanted to connect with my heritage. It really was a social thing, and because I knew nobody in town, and there weren't very many students anyway in town. It's not like I could easily go meet people my age. I tried the synagogue route and what happened for me there, and I think it's probably a confluence of being at the right place and the right stage of life. I realized that I did not know anything about Judaism. I knew some of the mechanics, I knew I could read Hebrew well, I could chant the prayers, but I really didn't understand the depth and profundity of Judaism. Because I had the arrogance of a physicist to reject things as being anachronistic or mythical and I just didn't know what it was that I was throwing out, So I went through the usual thing. I had a very solid grounding in the mechanics of Judaism through a conservative synagogue where I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, and then, kind of like many people in my age demographic, I sort of left synagogue life after I became bar Mitzva. So for about a decade I did almost nothing Jewishly. And when I came to Los Almos and I started going to the synagogue. There's a few things that happened. One I started questioning, you know, why are these things here, why do we do these things this way? And is there a logic to it? And I found out, you know, with my usual arrogance, that I had thought there was no logic to anything, but there's actually great wisdom in Jewish tradition. That was number one. Number two is that, as you may remember, there was a rabbi in Santa Fe, Rabbi Lendard Hellman of Blessed Memory, who used to come up periodically to Los Almos, and I have in my notes at home the materials from a class that he taught in nineteen eighty one. Just an adult education series that he drove up to Los Almos and taught some classes, and I started realizing, you know, I don't know anything about what I would call and I don't mean this in an X rated sense, adult Judaism. I had experienced Judaism as a child, and what I had been taught was appropriate for a child, but nobody ever really explained to me there's a lot of wisdom here on interpersonal relations, on societal mechanics, and Judaism really has a lot to offer that I didn't realize. And even today, I learned new things every day. I realized that there just is a lot to Judaism that I love to expose other adults to because I think they share that same rejection of things that they don't know what it is quite that they're rejecting. And so I just was very, very lucky to connect with the Jewish Center for Social Reasons, but then to realize that if I'm going to lead some things, it would be good if I knew what it was that I was trying to need. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized there's a lot to this.
So I think that's really fascinating because it's sort of an unusual trajectory. I think a lot of people learn about judaism as a child, and if they have it as an adult, it's because they grew up in the tradition and they learned it and it sort of became part of who they were. I think it's more rare for people to end up embracing this in adulthood, especially if they have such a strong, rigorous scientific background. And so that's the reason I'm very curious to hear from your perspective, how do these two things live in your mind simultaneously? Are these two different parts of your life the way like a physicist can also be a father or a basketball player, and those don't have to necessarily be in conflict with being a physicist. How do these two things accommodate each other.
That's an excellent question, and maybe I haven't fully resolved that for myself, but I think that physics is a questioning discipline, maybe to the point of distraction. My wife is not a scientist at all, and she finds it frustrating at times that I need to know why that you know, I will ask why is this and why do we do this this way? And why do you suppose your coffee stayed hot in the tall cup more than a stick hot in the short cup? And maybe we need to do some experiments here I can drive people to distraction, I think of asking questions like that. But for me, Judaism also encourages a question attitude. It's not a dogma as such the way I view it, and I probably should have caveated everything in our conversation here that there is no authority in Judaism the way there might be in other traditions, such that we're not obligated to think a certain way. And asking questions I think is inherent in Judaism, just like it is in physics. So for me, the issues that Judaism addresses are different issues, perhaps than what a physicist looks at. Of course, things like the origin of the universe and the nature of interaction are bread and butter for physicists and have some overlap with Judaism. But I think by and large Judaism is a way of life. It's not in conflict for me with the rational world, if you will, the way it might be for people from other traditions.
I see. That's fascinating. So the things you take from Judaism are how we should treat each other, how we should live our lives, how we should feel about each other, not necessarily like the literal truth of the creation of the universe.
Yes, and I think look texts that are thousands of years old, who wrote them, and what languages used and what metaphors are used obviously shifts over time. And let's just take the Five Books of Moses, which is a central text, as you well know in Judaism and in other traditions as well. The Five Books of Moses have been central to Jewish tradition for millennia, and very wise people have looked at those texts and interpreted them and looked for meaning in those texts. And whether we know exactly how those texts work imposed or who wrote them, or the details of their composition, the commentary alone brings us in touch with brilliant people from the Jewish past who offer insights in a way that's meaningful to me at least. So I tend not to dwell so much on the issue of is this the hand of God? And literal text, but it's text that can serve as a springboard for deep inquiry and meaningful discussion. And I think meaningful life a meaningful way to live our lives. Without getting into the details about when it says the world was created in six days, what does that mean. I mean, obviously, from a scientific point of view, I can't take those texts literally. But I'm not the first to say that. Within a very traditional Jewish context, there are commentators from many, many, many years ago who well understood that this text is not to be taken literally, and that that's not a problem. So I don't get hung up on those things. And as you know, we have an annual cycle for reading the five Books of Moses, and last week we were in the Book of Exodus in a section that's filled with a bunch of detailed laws about society, one of which is something about cooking an animal maybe it's a small goat in the milk of its mother. And this is an interesting text because it's actually repeated verbatim three times in the Five Books of Moses. That's unusual. That suggests there's some importance to it, because while else would you repeat it three times. And we had at the synagogue that I lead in Santa Fe a half hour discussion about why that text is there, and what does it have to teach us? And I think there are many incredibly valuable messages from that text. Whether somebody chooses to live their life following that in either a literal sense or in maybe the more expanded traditional sense, what somebody does with their own dietary practices can be put aside for a bit as we explore what value is there too a statement like that, And I thought it was a wonderful discussion. We had somebody talking about health reasons, we had somebody talking about idolatrous practice of related people who were contemporaneous. We had people talking about reasons that evoke a care for animals in us as human beings. It was a very wide ranging discussion, all of which are commentaries that come from the early commentators. And to me, that was just a beautiful way to make that text come alive, to make the text useful, and for me, as a practical matter, we incorporate that into our practice at home. And so I just found that a fascinating way to look at an ancient text and to derive value from it based on the wisdom of people who have looked at it over the millennia. Thank you.
Yeah, that's very insightful and it makes a lot of sense to me. And now when I get back to the question of how Judaism teaches us to think and to question and to discuss and to explore the universe. But before I just wanted to make one clarifying question, which is you're talking about interpreting the Torrahs a certain way and not taking it literally and maybe using it as a way to motivate the choices we make in life. That to me reflects something about the specific Jewish tradition that you embraced. But of course there's a whole spectrum from orthodox to very reform. Do you think that it's possible? And apologies if this is an inappropriate question, have you met anybody who is more in the Orthodox side of things who takes literally to be truth the story of Genesis and also has a sort of scientific mind as a practicing scientist. Do you know anybody who lives that intersection?
I don't think I do, because the people I know who follow what I would call Orthodox practice and are physical scientists, I don't think look at the text in a literal sense either. I don't think they have that kind of a dichotomy either. I think people who observe what I would call a traditional Jewish life are doing practices, but it does not inhibit their rational thinking. So I don't know people who we would call literalists who also are doing physical science inquiry as part of their daily routine. Having said that, I don't know that many people who are both scientists and traditional practice in Jews. So I could just be not aware of people in that category. But I will say my approach to Judaism is that we've never been fundamentalist. If fundamentalism is defined as people who take the text literally, and I say that with some degree of confidence that it's actually applicable in Judaism across the board, because some practices, some Jewish practices, and I'd have to work to come at a good example, are actually at odds with the literal text. And that's because Judaism has evolved. It's a multi millennial tradition, and I don't think we've ever really been fundamentalists as such. I know you know this stuff, but it may be valuable for your listeners. There was a movement, one of many schisms in Jewish history, this one that I'm referring to in particular, as the Karaites. So this goes back to probably around eight hundred of the Common Era, and the Karaites I mean literally from their name were fundamentalists. They read the text and they used the text as the basis for their practice, and they rejected the evolution of Judaism through the so called rabbinic period that developed the Talmud. They said, this is just made up by human beings. This is not what Judaism should be. We need to go back to the literal texts. And that was a divergence from what is today normative Judaism, and that's not Judaism of today. So I think we've always looked at the text as a basis, but not as a dictate for how Judaism should be practiced.
Yeah, that's really fascinating, especially in the context of my own family. I don't know how much you met or knew my father, because he had basically drifted away from Judaism by the time we moved to Los Alamos. But he was an Orthodox Rabbi before we moved to Los Alamos and a literal believer in the story of Genesis, a Young Earth creationist. And I asked him once about why he ended up leaving Judaism and working at Los Alamos basically as a scientist. He told me that one of the things that attracted him to Judaism something that you mentioned, this spirit of debate, of questioning, of arguing, of exploration. In the end turned out to be something that really frustrated him because instead of building up a picture of the universe the way science does, you know, a set of laws and ideas that have to be consistent and survive experimental tests. He found that Judaism felt more like they were sliding away from the revelation, the moment of insight. Instead of building up knowledge, we were like grabbing at it to avoid losing that inspiration. And for listeners who aren't familiar with it, you know, the Jewish tradition has, of course Torah, but there's also the oral law that you know, Moses heard from God and passed on to Joshua and passes on from rabbi to rabbi. And according to my father's telling of it, it's difficult to argue with a rabbi from a previous generation because they're closer to the revelation and therefore have a deeper, more intuitive insight to this valuable knowledge that we're sort of sliding away from. And to me and I think, to him this seemed very different from the scientific approach, where it doesn't matter whose idea it was, and old theories can be overturned if they fail tests, and every idea has to stand on its own, on its merits, of course, not on the age or the authority of the thinkers.
You know.
In that sense, scientists are scholars of a truth that's still being revealed, rather than an ancient truth that we're sort of clinging to. Do you see those traditions in conflict the same way.
To me, there is a tension. Science generally has the appearance, if you will, maybe with some detours, but of sort of slowly increasing knowledge with time. And what you described is maybe that as we advance in time, we're drifting away from some revelatory experience and losing something in the process, and so there would be some tension there. And I can understand your father grappling with that, and maybe this touches for me on this huge issue about is Judaism even a religion. I think of the revelatory experience that Mount Sinai has described in the Five books of Moses as the formation of the Jewish people. And that's what was the singular event, if you will. That was what was revealed, was the relation that there is an identifiable Jewish people. The first book of the five Books of Moses, the Book of Genesis, follows an individual family or actually some individuals, and then the creation of somebody who is thought of as the progenitor of the Jewish people, but it's not a Jewish people as such, and it's the exodus from Egypt and the revelatory experience at Sinai that really forms the Jewish people. And so, yes, we drifted away from when the people were created as a people, But have we drifted away from the teachings of that period. I think the teaching of that period includes the fact that it's given to us to learn now, and so we're doing that learning by doing our physics or doing whatever it is that we do in our lives. We're advancing our knowledge in accordance with what the tradition would tell me we're supposed.
To be doing.
So I don't quite see the dichotomy, though I totally understand the tension that your fathers felt. I don't know that for me, it's the same friction.
If you will, Yeah, fascinating. Well, I think it's not so hard to see physics and Judaism in conflict because they do have different traditions of exploration, and of course the stories they tell are different. But I think it's more interesting to look for harmony, and I really appreciate the way you find a resonance between the two traditions. So I spend some time trying to think about the connection between these two things and if they can serve a similar purpose in our lives, because for me, physics is not just about the knowledge, it's about the way we think, and Judaism and religion are not just about the stories of the creation of the universe, but about the way we treat each other and all this is really about what is it like to be human in the world and to ask questions. So I was thinking about the intersection between the two, and for me, one of the appealing aspects of religion, at least as a child, because I mostly have a child's view of Judaism was the sense of order and purpose that it brings, Like, maybe you don't understand everything, but there's supposed to be a reason why things happen, there's somebody who's in charge. Is a purpose in an order of the universe is not just capricious and cruel. And I wonder sometimes if my desire to go into physics is a desire to find a reason and an order in the universe. I mean, maybe physics provides a different kind of comfort. You know, it's cold and it's mindless, the laws of physics, but at least it's telling you that there's a sense to the universe, right, that there's order, There is a reason things happen. The reason is it follows these laws of physics. In that sense, I can find some sort of comfort in physics, not exactly the same as one could in judaism, but to me, there's a little bit of a resonance there. Do you feel the same way? Do you see the same overlap and sort of the role of these two things in our lives?
That's very being how you state that. And I agree that the laws of the universe that we uncover exploring the world through physics do give us some comfort, if you will, that things are not just happening willy nilly, that you know, we're not just going to float off the surface of the Earth at a moment because the law of gravity dictates that things work a certain way. But I actually think there's another thing that we haven't touched on that's important and shows that both physics and judaism have things to offer, but they're not necessarily the same. And I'm probably doing a terrible job here of paraphrasing what I think I remember reading from the great physicist Richard Feinman. Physics does not say anything really about ethics. It doesn't say how you should treat somebody. And in that sense, judaism is answering different questions, then physics is answering Physics can tell you what the implication would be if you do a certain thing, but it doesn't say whether that's good or bad. It doesn't do a judgment if you will. And I think judaism maybe adds that extra dimension about ethics, about the proper thing to do, not just the consequence of doing something, but what's right and what's wrong. And I think that's very important to navigate the world in a healthy way.
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Okay, we're back and I'm talking to Jack Schlackter, physicists at Los Alamos and Rabbi of the Los Alamos Jewish Center. No, I totally agree, and that actually brings us to our next topic, because even if physics doesn't tell us how to live our lives, there are enormous potential consequences to doing physics. And that, of course is the context of Los Alamos, where you discovered your Judaism and where I discovered my love for physics. Los Alamos in the forties and fifties is a town centered on the weapons lab, and people who decided to live in this sort of bizarre town in the middle of nowhere did it because they're passionate about the physics or maybe the larger mission of national security. But there's also a significant fraction who build this Jewish community. Do you know much about the early Jewish community in Los Alamos. Is it made out of observant Jews who are also world class physicists, or is it also people like you who are just looking for some sort of cultural community at the time.
So my exploration as an amateur historian into the Jewish origins of Los Almos back to the days of the Manhattan Project nineteen forty three to forty five suggest and I titled a talk that I prepared once in kind of a tongue in cheek intentional title Jews in Theory, meaning the Jews in theoretical division, but also that they were Jews in theory because very few, if any, were what I would call practicing Jews with a deep religious commitment to Jewish practice. I think by and large they were secular Jews. That doesn't mean that they were hiding their Jewishness at all, I think for them, certainly in the midst of fighting World War Two, I think they understood full well that there was a threat to the Jewish people, and developing a bomb, which was the purpose of the Manhattan Project, was in part motivated by the need to be protective of the Jewish people. There are some fascinating individuals. I mean talk about we're now distant from the giants of yesteryear. Every time I look in depth at an individual Jewish scientist from the Manhattan Project time I'm struck with what amazing individuals these were. One of them, in particular, who comes to mind, was Joseph Rotblot, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Peace. But he came to the laboratory barely came to the laboratory from Warsaw, Poland. Leaving Warsaw a few weeks before September one, nineteen thirty nine. His wife was in recovery from some illness, I don't remember what, and the plan was for her to join him, and then September first came, she never joined him. He spent time while at Los Almo's desperately trying to find out what had happened to her. She did actually die in a concentration camp, it's my understanding, but he couldn't find that out for quite some time, and he eventually went on to put his effort into peace and was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Peace. So it's an interesting story, and his Jewishness was probably not what we would call traditional Orthodox practice, but he knew better than anybody the horrors of the Second World War and tragically lost his wife and probably others in his family as well.
And there certainly were a lot of Jews in Los Amo's participating in important roles in the Manhattan Project. But there seems to be also a larger connection between Judaism and physicists, like somehow there are a lot of physicists who are Jews, and a lot of Jews who are physicists, and some huge fraction of the Nobel Prize winners in physics are Jews, at least culturally. I've heard people say that there's a connection between Judaism and physics because Judaism has this belief in sort of like an abstract world. That's the foundation that the physical world is just a reflection of the abstract world. And you can see this and how the story of Genesis is told that God created the world by speaking that these words are somehow more real than the physical world. They're primary, and this kind of thinking lends better to abstract thought and therefore to physics. I don't know if you think there's any truth in that, if you have any of your own theories about why there seems to be at least this confluence or this overlap demographically between Jews and physics.
Well, that's an interesting take on it that I'm not sure I had heard before about the comfort level that Jews may have with the concept of the abstract, and I'll keep that in mind. I will try to remember to quote you, in fact, because I'm hoping to prepare a presentation for May of this year through the Los Almos Public Library System, because I think May might be Jewish American Heritage Month. And I was asked if I would be willing to give a talk, and I wanted to narrow it down, and I thought I would narrow it down to what seemingly would be a tiny topic, which was Jewish American Nobel Physics Prize winners. But that's actually a huge topic. And so in trying to answer the question why is that a huge topic? I think I will keep in mind what you just said. It's not what I would have thought of immediately. I actually had thought it was more of the questioning attitude that is inherent in Judaism, that lends itself to that same questioning attitude in how we look at the world around us. And I'm reminded by the way of a wonderful passage that is captured in the the Hagadad, the text that we use that passover at the Fader, the evening ceremony for Passover. The Hagadad that the Los Amos Jewish Center has used on some occasions includes a passage because there's a section in that ceremony where questions are asked, and there's a quotation. I can picture that on the page where the famous novel prize winning Jewish physicist II Robbie shares an anecdote from his childhood, and he says that when the other kids would come home from school, their mothers would ask them what did you learn today? And when he would come home from school, his mother would say, did you ask any good questions today? And he believes that that was a contributor to his passion for physics and his success. Is this idea of asking questions. So I had always thought that that might be the primary reason why the overla between physicists and Jews might be higher than you would expect. But I like what you say about the abstract also, I think that's equally interesting.
Well, you should probably credit my father. That was definitely an idea of his. But to me, physics is a reflection of a search for the underlying truth of the world and the structure. The mathematical nature of the laws makes us wonder if we're seeing the structure of the universe itself or whether we're just reflecting our own minds, but to me, it definitely is a hunt for those fundamental foundations, the intellectual girders of reality. My last question for you is also about history and the Manhattan Project. I'm wondering if you've seen in the movie Oppenheimer and what you think of the portrayal of Los Alamos and Jews and physicists. Being a physicist and a Jew in Los Alamos.
It would be criminal, I think if I had not seen the movie. I actually saw the movie twice, and I'm not much of a moviegoer, so for me to see the movie twice as goid a lot and I did enjoy the movie. I think it's three hours long, but the three hours went by quite quickly for me. I thought it was a very effective tool for sharing an interesting story. I will tell you that Los Alamos went crazy as this film was being produced and prepared for release. My wife and I were gone to New York for a few years, but we came back into town in time to catch some of the filming that was taking place in Los Alma, and the town was completely in a tizzy over the filming. And then when the movie was getting ready to be released, it was in even more of a tizzy because there was this expectation that we would be inundated with tourists. So in conjunction with that, the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee set up a series of talks and I was asked by the chair of the committee if I would give a talk about Oppenheimer and his Jewishness. And I thought about that for a bit, and I decided to modify the topic, and I ended up speaking about two Jewish people, Oppenheimer and Lewis Straws, and the contrast between the two because of their different approaches to Judaism. It just seemed like an intriguing topic to me. And I gave that talk two weeks before the film was released, not knowing that Straws played such an important role in the movie. And I think that was fortuitous, because I just happened to again guess that this might be interesting. The movie did not make a huge deal about the Jewishness of either of those two individuals. Those who had heard my talk before they saw the movie said that it gave them a little more insight to some lines that might have slipped past them, or some scenes that might have gone by too quickly. Otherwise that they were prepared for paying attention to the Jewish aspects. I don't think it was a major part of the movie, but for me, it's another interesting dimension of the movie that the Jewishness of not just Oppenheimer, but Oppenheimer and Straws and Einstein and the list goes on. Of course, Hans Beta was Jewish by birth, though his family converted, I think, and Keller was Jewish. You know that all these people were Jewish, and there was some aspect of that that must have been underlying what was going on. I think the movie probably appropriately did not make that a major theme, but if there, and I think it adds to our understanding and appreciation of that period of history to know something about the Jewishness. And I'll just say, in a nutshell, Oppenheimer had a very conflicted understanding of his Jewishness, which he inherited from his parents and his upbringing at the Ethical Cultural School in New York, and Straws had a quite different understanding of his Jewishness. He made his way successfully as a businessman in a world that was pretty anti Semitic at the time, and so he wore his Judaism proudly. Oppenheimer, I think more or less hid his Judaism, and I think that was at least one dimension of the clash between the two. That was the tragic arc of the movie, of both of them rising to great heights and then both of them falling down afterwards, Oppenheimer because of the loss of his security clearance and Straws because the nomination to the cabinet physician failed.
Fascinating. Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts, and thanks very much for sharing your personal reflections on living life as a physicist and as a Jew. And thank you very much for helping shape my Jewish identity. Your rule in that community there definitely changed my mind appreciation of Judaism and specifically Jewish songs and melodies.
Oh, I'm so pleased to get that feedback, Daniel, and I really do appreciate that. And I am continuing to sing. I do some secular singing now as well, because I am retired from the laboratory, and it's just a great joy for me. It was just a tremendous gift to have been given a good singing voice, and I've just enjoyed immensely the opportunity to sing both in the synagogue and in a secular choir. It's just been great fun.
Well, it was sort of a canonical part of my experience, and when I went on to other cities and other Jewish communities, I was sort of looking around and I was like, where's there, Jack Schlackter. There's nobody here with a beautiful baritone to lead these songs. It really felt like there was something lacking in the experience, and so thank you. But you also sort of cursed me.
Oh no, how is that?
Nothing?
Ever?
Felt like it matched up to my childhood Jewish experience.
After that, Well, I know that you have a wonderful position and have a very successful career, but you know, Los Almost is still looking for physicists, so maybe you can get over that curse by coming back sometime.
We'll see. Well, thanks very much for spending some time talking to us about these really fascinating topics. Really appreciate it.
My pleasure really was a distinct privilege and honor to connect with you. Thank you so much for reaching out, and I do hope that we cross paths at some point as well.
So that was my conversation with Jack Schlackter, which was fascinating for me personally because I haven't spoken to Jack in thirty years or so, but he played a big role in shaping my Jewish cultural identity, and so it's fascinating to me to have physics in common with him as well. Thanks very much for listening to this episode about this tricky topic that connects physics to larger issues in our lives. I hope you learned something and enjoyed it. Thanks very much. For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Instant, and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. House US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you asdairy dot COM's last sustainability to learn more.
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