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What’s three frum take on it?
We have a few of them posting in the CR.
Hashem created different creatures for different planets.
Human beings were created and made to live on earth until their physical temporary mission down here is complete and their ready for the true olam haemes world above us in Hashems presence. With this being the fact and truth. What happened when yidden tried going to other planets not made for physical human beings? BOTH Rocket ships that blew up & killed everyone on board ( Shuttle Columbia with Israeli & Shuttle of 1986 with a lady ) had jews on it. What is Hashem’s message from this? Hashem says i put you here on Earth to do your job don’t go to another planet & try to see other worlds.Versus demons and animals etc … were made to live in the forest and on other planets and it’s completely normal for their humanity and living daily and are able to stay alive on these other planets or live in the forest or in the ocean like the fish live in at all times.
May we all be happy on earth where Hashem placed us to live to complete our mission in life. And not try going to places where we don’t belong going to.
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“What’s three frum take on it?”
The above “three” postings from presumably “frum” CR participants provide one take.
Obviously, the REAL frum take is much simpler and less subtle.Mishenichnas Adar marbim b’simcha. The guy with the balloons let go of the string a week too early. Some of the most mindless of our generally clueless leaders apparently neglected to look at the calendar.
Frum take:
1. ALIENS. If you are not an American citizen, you are an alien from an American perspective. The word means “non-citizen” (and is fairly unique to English legalese, most languages, such as Hebrew, use the word meaning “foreigner” instead).
2. UFO’s (unidentified flying objects). So the government has trouble finding a flying object bigger than commercial airliner? And it wasn’t even trying to be stealthy. If you are in the military aviation business, keeping your flying objects unidentified probably earns you a bonus.
3. Extraterrestrial Beings. None are likely to be encountered given the probability of the impossibility of faster than light transportation (and we’ve been able to observe nearby planets, finding no signed of life). If Ha-Shem wanted to tell us they don’t exist at all, it would be in Torah (at least in the oral Torah). Since there are plenty of hints in our traditions that sentient beings other than humans exist, they probably do, but who cares since it is at most a theoretical concept with no real world impact.
@yungermans To date, there were a total of 6 Halachic jewish astronauts/cosmonauts on space missions two of whom died (one, not making in it to space). And that’s the fact and truth. Not sure what it does to your argument.
ujm – “We have a few of them posting in the CR.”
well said !Chabad dot org has a nice article on this with many מראי מקומות
Google: Chabad org is there life on other planets
For another interesting article on this topic, Google:
The Rebbe and the scientist: Looking for life on MarsGoyim want there to be aliens to confirm their beliefs in the randomness and purposelessness of creation, letting them go after their desires and ponder their genders all they want without fear of abrogating their responsibility.
Hashem gave one Torah, so anything else with bechirah in the universe would be created without the ability to serve Hashem, and thus with no purpose.
It’s entirely possible – likely even – that there are plants and animals on other planets, perhaps waiting for a time to come when people will need their resources.
In 1992, as a 27 year old, I considered this question in great depth and with much research. I decided then that there are no aliens anywhere in the universe. Human beings are the only beings endowed with real intelligence in all of creation. The first few chapters in Genesis explain things quite cleary. Nothing I have read, heard or experienced since that year has changed my opinion.
It’s really nice of them to wait until humans had published a lot of scifi books on the subject before making their landing on Earth.
Ry23,
How do you know that they weren’t the ones to make such stories?
Maybe sci-fi stories of aliens are really autobiographies
The mindless comment about two yidden have been niftar in the 60+ years of manned space flight is about the least intelligent posting I can recall in a long time. We have chashuvah rabbonim and askanim offering conflicting reasons over the past week for the big Earthquake in Turkey, the terrorist attacks in EY and even why the Eagles lost the superbowl. These speculative rants provide very little useful information other than the antidote for every tragedy is to never leave your house and do tshuvah.
Gadolhadorah,
Are you knocking the gedolim that spoke about the earthquake and the terrrorist attacks?
The advice of the CDC for safety during an earthquake is “to stay indoors if you are indoors, and stay outdoors if you are outdoors”.
CA: I’m not “knocking” anyone. I’m stating that we have CR Nev’iim adding to this proliferation of reasons being offered with purported certainty as to why the Ebeshter allowed or caused certain tragedies to happen. In some cases we have dueling or conflicting rationalizations for the same event. Everyone is free to assign whatever degree of significance or credibility to such statements depending on their source and context but the particular posting here on the consequences of space flight by yidden was a bit of a strech, even by CR standards.
Gadol, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not many, if any, said anything about women not leaving the house. That’s a pet peeve of yours that you fight with ujm about here on a weekly basis, but that’s not what the gedolim have stressed after tragedies.
The chofetz chaim would always say that international tragedies are reminders from Hashem for us to do teshuva. And it wasn’t his chidush; the gemara says it openly – “punishments only come to the world because of yisroel” – the vilna gaon writes a lot about this too. It’s Hashem’s way of reminding us what is fitting to happen to us, but because of His mercy He metes out punishment on goyim instead(who, of course, are deserving in their own right)
When tragedies happen, whether personal, communal, national, or international, the response of every gadol and manhig from literally ever to denomination of klal yisroel has been to see it as a fall for teshuva. What kind of teshuva? That’s where it gets complicated. But teshuva it is. The rambam says that when tragedy strikes and we don’t acknowledge it as being a heavenly punishment and call to teshuva, we are called cruel, because we xause only more suffering to happen.
And chumash says this very openly in the tochacha.
Forget about women being out on Coney Island Avenue. Take tragedies as a reminder to do teshuva for whatever personal shortcomings you – like everyone else – have.
CDc learnt shev v’al ta’aseh?! Do they also send out reminders to say “Oseh Maaseh Breishis”?
Coffee addict, I have no idea what the gedolim said about the earthquake or the attacks. What I suspect is that anyone who rushes in and publicly purports to know the cause by definition is not a gadol.
AVD: Valid points about generic musar on Tshuvah which obviously is universally applicable to ANY set of circumstances. I’m referring more to the comments we see here in the CR as well as some commentary by rabbonim claiming the earthquake in Turkey was retribution for a particular Palestinian terrorist attack or that those attacks, in turn, were a consequence of specific moral failures by yidden ranging from insufficient adherence to tzinius to just about every possible other inyan where klal yisroel can be more obedient to daas torah.
Gedolei Yisroel have associated particular tragedies to particular bad behaviors for thousands of years. From time immemorial until today and all years in between.
For example, the Tosfos Yom Tov let Klal Yisroel know that Tach V’Tat occurred because of talking in Shul. Other Gedolim told us the reasons why they Holocaust happened. Chazal in the Gemorah told us that Beis Hamikdash was destroyed because the women dressed pritzusdik, because of sinas chinam and give a few other reasons. So there can be more than one reason as well.
Gadolhadorah,
I guess I misunderstood this part of your comment
“We have chashuvah rabbonim and askanim offering conflicting reasons over the past week for the big Earthquake in Turkey, the terrorist attacks in EY and even why the Eagles lost the superbowl.“
Maybe next time indicate that it’s cr rabbonim and askanim
“Coffee addict, I have no idea what the gedolim said about the earthquake or the attacks.“
Then I guess you don’t frequent the main site
Posek HaDor On Turkish Quake: “The Navi Tells Us The Houses In J-m Will Be Destroyed”
Hagaon HaRav Gershon Edelstein Shlit”a Pens Urgent Message in Light of Recent Tragedies
R’Chaim Mintz Shlita in the book “Ask the Rabbi” writes that there is no reason to think that there is life on other planets as Hashem created the world for us to grow close to Him and we can accomplish that mission without looking at other planets (You can look in the book for the full answer).
some kiruv rabbis like to entertain people who are curious about aliens with medrashim about “arur maroz” and such, instead of trying to inculcate what rav chaim mintz wrote – basic judaism, clear as day.
that came out wrong – medrashim are torah, but I meant that they shouldn’t be quoted as implications against basic jewish hashkofa. we have many medrashim that we don’t understand.
AviraDeArah,
Just wondering, aren’t there plenty of creatures and other beings that we weren’t aware of for thousands of years and we’re only revealed recently?
On the contrary, Hashem chose this time to reveal their existence so we can serve Hashem on much greater level with all the new tools (think electricity, radio waves, etc.).
Menachem, can you give some examples of the creatures you’re referring to?
menachem, like i said above, there likely could be resources on other planets, be it mineral, livestock, plants, etc…, but the fascination that people have with it is pure atzas hayetzer; it is because people don’t understand that our world is the only world that really matters, and that people are the only creations that are important…and not just people, but the am hanivchar, and not just the am hanivchar, but the bnei torah are what the world was created for, as the rambam writes clearly, as well as the first rashi in chumash.
Avira,
Indeed, I completely agree with you.ujm,
Bacteria. Unless you don’t consider that a creature. Whatever. (No, I did not mean “dinosaurs” if that’s what you’re asking).Maybe the aseres hashvotim are on another planet. Then we have part of the am hanivchar there too. Could be they had some chochmo that got lost over the years and knew how to get there. Like Chizkiyahu’s sefer harefuois or some chochmo from Shloima Hamelech. Who knows???
Just a thought. And maybe the sambatyon is really a bunch of metiorites gaurding that planet. This is getting better as I type…..American, the mitzvos are all earth-centered; zmanim, 4 minim, all food related mitzvos, etc, are all based on earth. It’s untenable that they would go to a place where they can’t keep mitzvos properly
AviraDeArah,
“the mitzvos are all earth-centered; zmanim, 4 minim, all food related mitzvos, etc, are all based on earth. It’s untenable that they would go to a place where they can’t keep mitzvos properly”
Not Earth centered, but E”Y centered. Zmanim are challenging north of the Arctic circle. In past generations when transportation was harder, the arba minim were hard to come by in much of Europe, as citrus trees do not grow in cold climates. We start saying mashiv haruach by Shemini Atzeres and stop by Pesach because that is the beginning and ending of E”Y’s wet season, but Florida’s rainy season tapers off after Shemini Atzeres and picks up after Pesach. And the seasons and agriculture in the Southern Hemisphere are flipped from the Northern, meaning they plant when E”Y harvests, and harvest when E”Y plants. Your argument could be applied to living on Earth as well. And until we have the Beis Hamikdash, we cannot keep the mitzvos properly anywhere, even in E”Y.
Avram, as you mentioned yourself, there are means in halacha for applying mitzvos outside eretz yisroel. Hashem told us we’d go there, and we indeed kept the mitzvos in the midbar for 40 years before going into EY. The chinuch writes by every mitzvah, almost, that they are applicable in all areas.
Every part of the world has a shkiah, a tzeis…and yes, living in problematic areas such as Hawaii or Shanghai are discouraged bh poskim, because it isn’t clear how to keep zmanim.
But outside the earth, there’s no shkiah at all, no levana, no calendar based thereon, and no materials such as trees. Trees planted hydroponically or in an atzitz sheaino nakuv aren’t considered gidulei karka for things like schach, etc… according to most poskim.
So if there are other planets where the climates/topography etc. approximate those on Earth, a yid on Planet Aleph arguably would be similarly situated c’neged a yid performing the identical mitzvos as he/she were located on Earth an chutz-l[aretz if the metric is EY-centric.
Gadol, what does the topography have to do with the zmanim? There’s no sun, no moon…these are things which are only relevant here
Halakha adapted to a lot of things. We have so much of Torah relating to B’M, and we now live without it. Does it mean we need to strive to live on a planet with 7 moons? No, but if we end up there, we will figure out what to do. Maybe do rosh hodesh for each of the moons.
Aaq, halacha was given with galus in mind, and it was also given before there was a bais hamikdash. Nowhere in normative halacha do we find discussions of such things. To put ourselves in situations where the best we can do is posit ad-hoc theories about what the halacha “might” be, is to push avodas Hashem on the back burner and put our own interests first. This is what “I” want to do, now let’s see how we can fit halacha into it… that’s not an eved to a master, it’s a person who is living for themselves and trying to assuage his guilty conscience.
Avira
Who said they went there volontarily maybe Sancheirev shot them up in a rocket ship which had only enough fuel for a one way trip.“What does the topography have to do with the zmanim”
Nothing. It is another, totally separate, defining attribute, along with zmanin underlying observance of many of the taryag mitzvot. If we are on a planet whose surface is entirely water, I’m sure you can name lots of mitzvot that become totally irrelevant.
“halacha was given with galus in mind, ” – where did it have in mind polar circle or southern hemisphere where seasons are upside down?
The rishonim discuss the southern hemisphere, it’s not really consequential, because chodesh aviv applies to the korban pesach, which can only be brought in Yerushalayim. What other halachos depend on the seasons? And like i said, poskim say it’s better not to live in questionable areas like Hawaii or other places close to or on the international date line, because the halacha isn’t clear.
American, I’ll give it to you that you have quite the imagination
What do Chabad shlichim and other Jews living in areas unclear which side of the international date line do regarding Shabbos, etc?
AviraDeArah,
“we indeed kept the mitzvos in the midbar for 40 years before going into EY.”
A lot of mitzvos were learned in the midbar but had to wait until we were in E”Y to perform them. We couldn’t fulfill mitzvos such as kelayim or shemitta in the midbar, where there was no agriculture.
“Every part of the world has a shkiah, a tzeis…and yes, living in problematic areas such as Hawaii or Shanghai are discouraged bh poskim, because it isn’t clear how to keep zmanim.”
Not the polar regions, though poskim also discourage living there too.
“Trees planted hydroponically or in an atzitz sheaino nakuv aren’t considered gidulei karka for things like schach, etc… according to most poskim.”
Great points!
AviraDeArah,
“To put ourselves in situations where the best we can do is posit ad-hoc theories about what the halacha “might” be, is to push avodas Hashem on the back burner and put our own interests first. This is what “I” want to do, now let’s see how we can fit halacha into it… that’s not an eved to a master, it’s a person who is living for themselves and trying to assuage his guilty conscience.”
Why such hostility and assuming the worst of intentions? Going into space is likely assur for a much more simple reason: pikuach nefesh. Rockets are dangerous, as is outer space. Very few people go into space at all right now, and those who do go at most stay in a low Earth orbit. Most space tourism right now doesn’t even achieve orbit, so the whole trip takes less than an hour from launch to landing (you get to see the blackness of space and the curvature of the Earth for a few minutes, and experience weightlessness as the capsule free-falls back towards Earth).
If rocket or novel transportation technologies become safer and cheaper, more advanced space tourism, e.g., orbiting hotels, lunar resorts, may become feasible. Large-scale lunar or Martian colonization is further off, as there is mounting evidence that the challenges are greater than previously believed, due to harmful effects of long stays in space, radiation exposure due to weak magnetic fields on the moon or Mars, solar flares, etc. It’s also possible that mining asteroids for raw materials could become big business, though I imagine that much of that work would be done by robots. So maybe in our lifetimes we’d see shailos come up about whether a 2 week vacation to the Moon is appropriate, or if a frum business man needs to take a trip to a space station overseeing a mining operation, but who knows? Nobody is trying to skirt mitzvos by taking a hyperwarp cruiser to planet Xorkon 7. It’s purely science fiction and a theoretical exercise. And the latest astronomy research has been suggesting that Earth-like potentially habitable planets are much more rare than previously thought, as the most common star type (red dwarf) likely emits atmosphere-stripping amounts of solar wind. Not that we even have the capability of interstellar travel.
What did Mir do in Shanghai?
> What did Mir do in Shanghai?
Learn?
Kids say that Miami vacations are not cool anymore, Dubai is. So, when there will be a first Pesach hotel on moon and there will be a spirit flight there, the halachik solutions will follow.
Some problems will go away if you stay on a geo-stationary orbit, that is above a specific place on earth. Then, you can apply the times of the closest (Jewish) place on earth, same as you do above the polar circle.
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