Bar-Ilan University
Parshat Hashavua Study Center
Parshat Bereshit 5776/October 10, 2015
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1036
Moshe Kaveh
The Divine Particle and Maimonides’ First Three Principles of Faith
“In the beginning G-d created heaven and earth” (Gen. 1:1). This momentous opening
verse of the Torah contains a vast part of modern science and has stood up most
amazingly against primitive views of the entire scientific world that the universe is
primordial and not created.
Maimonides, who formulated the fundamental principles of the Jewish faith and was
himself a scientist in heart and soul, stood up to the Greek notions of the scientists of his
day, who also maintained that the universe was primordial. Maimonides held a
fascinating position in the interface between science and religion. He believed that the

Prof. Moshe Kaveh served as President of Bar-Ilan University.
universe was created, as stated in the first verse of the Torah, but wrote1 that if science
were to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the universe is primordial, he would
accept that as scientific fact. In such a case, Maimonides said, we would not take the first
verse of the Torah literally and would view the act of creation described there
metaphorically.
In other words, in the meeting between science and the text of the Torah, as long as
scientific facts can be reconciled with the plain sense of the text, all is well and good. But
in the event that scientific findings do not sit well with the plain sense, one cannot stand
by the scriptural text and deduce scientific facts from it. In such a case, one must view the
biblical description as an allegory. Now, more than eight centuries later, it is clear to
every contemporary scientist that the Greeks were wrong and that the first verse of the
Torah is not allegorical, but rather a wondrous scientific depiction.
The breakthrough came in the twentieth century, when Penzias and Wilson discovered a
special type of radiation2 that proves the theory of the Big Bang, the scientific term used to
refer to the creation of the universe. This discovery won Penzias and Wilson the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1978, thus bringing to a close the debate whether the universe is
primordial or created. Today, the sudden formation of the universe is something that
modern science has accepted as scientific fact. Thus, contemporary science confirms that
there was Creation.
But does science assert that Creation took place ex nihilo? Every scientist, after all, is
familiar with the law of conservation of energy; so how could the world have been created
from a condition in which there was nothing? The answer of modern science is that
indeed Creation did happen ex nihilo. This response would have been impossible had the
Big Bang theory been espoused before the time of Einstein, who discovered the
inseparable connection between space—represented by length, width and height—and
time.
Since the universe was created by the Big Bang, its beginning was from a point. The
volume of a point is zero (length, width, height), and therefore by Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity the time associated with the beginning point must be zero. In other words,
Creation is the beginning of time; before Creation there was no matter and no time,
which means that all of what exists in the scientific world begins with the Big Bang,
including time itself.
1
Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, chapter 71. Also cf. Moshe Kaveh, “Torah and Science,” Daf
Shavua, Bar Ilan University, Genesis 1997. Also cf. Moshe Kaveh, “Olamot Nifgashim,” 2014.
2
In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered cosmic microwave background radiation, providing
corroborative evidence in support of the Big Bang the theory, developed by George Gamow in 1946.
In the light of this, we marvel that the first word in the Torah is bereshit, “in the
beginning,” denoting the beginning of time. Thus, in the twentieth century, with the help
of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the first verse of the Torah was put together with science
to tell us that there was Creation and that the universe was created ex nihilo. And so the
great riddle was solved: before Creation there was nothing, and hence science begins only
from the moment of creation onwards.
Science has not the tools to say what there was at the moment of Creation or prior to it, 3
and the birth of science is precisely in the key word with which the Torah begins: “in the
beginning.” The first two words of the Torah, Bereshit bara, “In the beginning [G-d]
created,” summarize for all of modern science the Big Bang and the birth of scientific time.
But immediately afterwards, in the third word of the verse, we have the key word in the
world of faith: El-ohim, “G-d,” to whom Creation is ascribed and who brought it about.
Little wonder, therefore, that Maimonides’ first principle of the faith relates to the first
verse of the Torah: “I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is
the Creator and Guide of everything that has been created; He alone has made, does make
and will make all things.” Ostensibly this important principle, written some 800 years
ago, is supported by the theory of creation and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, from which
it follows that Creation occurred ex nihilo.
We might naively think that the controversy between believers and non-believers has
been played out. But the notable scientist Stephen Hawking, from Cambridge University,
England, who accepts the Big Bang theory and of course accepts Einstein’s theory,
challenges the third word of the verse: G-d. He writes in A Brief History of Time:4 “So
long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the
universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have
neither beginning nor end: it would simply be,” and therefore he asks, “What place, then,
for a creator?” This position stems from not knowing how the Creator is defined in Jewish
thought.
G-d in Judaism is abstract and cannot be described in scientific terms. Maimonides’
important statement in Guide for the Perplexed,5 “this discipline [Metaphysics] can only be
approached after the study of Physics,” means that in order to understand that aspect of
faith which Maimonides calls “science of the Divine” (or Metaphysics) one has to delve
into and study natural science, in order to understand that G-d is abstract and not given
3
P.A.M. Dirac 1972, “Recent results in cosmology,” Commentarii, Vol. 2, no. 11, p. 15; Vol. 3, no. 24, p. 2.
Also cf. Nathan Aviezer, In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science, Ktav Publishing House, 1990.
4
A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, 1988, pp. 156-157.
5
Maimonides, Preface to Guide for the Perplexed,
http://www.teachittome.com/seforim2/seforim/the_guide_for_the_perplexed.pdf , pp. 73-74.
to being described in terms of the parameters of natural science; that is to say, the
Creation of the world brought into being that which Exists in the universe. G-d is not
dependent on Existence and is not part of it in the universe, rather is outside it.
Moreover, one cannot associate with G-d the concept of time that came into being with
Creation, for it is a concept that belongs to scientific Existence. Therefore, one cannot
delimit G-d as Stephen Hawking did, saying that His “existence” is only after Creation.
Again we see Maimonides’ greatness, for his second principle of faith emphasizes precisely
this point: “I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is a Unity,
and that there is no unity in any manner like unto His, and that He alone is our G-d, who
was, is, and will be.” In other words, G-d is beyond the dimension of time, and is at one
and the same time in the past, present and future.
In view of this, Stephen Hawking’s question is irrelevant, and G-d “was” before Creation
because He is not part of scientific “existence.” Maimonides also addressed this theme in
his third principle: “I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is
incorporeal and cannot be conceived in physical terms [even by such a great scientist as
Stephen Hawking of Cambridge, who discovered Black Holes], and there can be no
physical comparison to Him at all.” Maimonides' last clause here emphasizes that no
matter how much science progresses, it will not be adequate to describing G-d, for there is
no comparing Him.
Having found scientific corroboration for two great words, Bereshit bara (= “In the
beginning [G-d] created”), we proceed to the third and key word in the Torah, E-lohim, a
word belonging to the concept of faith, and show that it can in no way be in contradiction
with science. We recently experienced a parallel “Big Bang of faith,” coming actually from
the world of science, namely discovery of the “G-d Particle,” which appears to be what
sparked Creation. Were a modern scientist to have written the first verse of the Torah, it
might have read: In the beginning was the Big Bang from which the G-d Particle was
formed, creating heaven and earth.”
The G-d Particle
Physics has explained the structure of matter in the universe as comprised of neutral
atoms, and elementary particle physics has made great strides in explaining how the
universe developed to its current state.
The fascinating and as yet unsolved problem is what gave the matter in which we find
ourselves its mass. Einstein provided the famous formula, E=MC2, by which a vast amount
of energy is needed to create mass (mass multiplied by the speed of light squared).
Particle physics teaches us that matter is made of elementary particles between which
there are interactions and fascinating phenomena theoretically hypothesized and
experimentally observed, but elementary particle physics has not found an answer
accounting for the source of the mass of matter.
In 1964,6 the British scientist Peter Higgs and others7 showed that there is something
called the Higgs-Boson which might be responsible for the creation of mass. The HiggsBoson was hypothesized but had never been observed in any laboratory experiment.
Given the difficulty of finding the particle responsible for giving mass to the universe, and
given the tremendous aspiration to find it (to the extent of investing billions of dollars in
experiments to identify it), scientists gave it the engaging name, the G-d Particle.8
Failure to find it in the laboratory would put a wrench in all known physics. According to
science, the G-d Particle is to be found in minute fractions of a second after Creation.
Therefore, it was necessary to create laboratory conditions such as would have existed in a
minute fraction of a second after the world was created by the Big Bang. In order to find
the G-d Particle, a 27-kilometer long tunnel was built in Switzerland at the cost of billions
of dollars, to serve as a giant particle accelerator. It was hoped that under conditions so
similar to the beginning of time and the colliding of particles the G-d Particle could be
discovered.
And lo and behold, it happened. On the fourth of July, 2012, the two main research teams
at the particle accelerator in Lucerne, Switzerland, each separately reported finding the Gd Particle that matches the characteristics of the Higgs boson in the accelerator attained
the minute mass of (0.125) kg. This was a tremendous breakthrough, explaining how the
G-d Particle was responsible for creating a universe that contains particles having mass.
The dramatic scientific development recently reached a climax, sealing the scientific
understanding of the first verse of the Torah. Without the G-d Particle, heaven and earth
would not have been created; but most significantly, the last piece of this dramatic
scientific puzzle was the G-d Particle, thus forming a fascinating symmetry between the
Torah and science. Maimonides, as we mentioned, called the teachings of Faith
“Metaphysics” (or “Science of the Divine”) and science calls the factor responsible for
bringing about Creation the G-d Particle. Never was there such a confluence of science
and faith as in this experiment.
Hence we conclude that Science of the Divine and the G-d Particle are one thing that
human beings must study and come to understand. This is perfect harmony of science
and faith.
We conclude with the wonderful words of Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed, loc. cit.),
which ought to be sent to all the scientists who discovered the G-d Particle:
6
Higgs, 1964.
7
Prof. Robert Brout and Prof. François Englert (1964).
8
Leon Lederman, Beyond the G-d Particle, 2013.
…because there is a close affinity between these subjects [Natural Science]
and metaphysics, and indeed they form part of its mysteries. Do not
imagine that these most difficult problems can be thoroughly understood
by any one of us…But this discipline can only be approached after the study
of Physics: for the science of Physics borders on Metaphysics, and must
even precede it in the course of our studies…Therefore the Almighty
commenced Holy Writ with the description of the Creation, that is, with
Physical Science.
Translated by Rachel Rowen