There is an interesting article in the New York Times today concerning Creation, or what physicists generally believe, the Big Bang theory. The United States has spent billions of dollars in building the Fermi Lab accelerator, smashing atoms together to re-create the basic building block particles allegedly present at the exact point of the Big Bang. A European coalition has almost completed an even larger more powerful accelerator. A huge snag in the Standard Model of particle physics is that according to the basic precepts of Einstein’s theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, equal amounts of matter and anti-matter should have been created in the Big Bang and then immediately annihilated each other in a blaze of lethal energy, leaving a zero amount of matter with which to make stars, galaxies and us. And yet we exist, and physicists (among others) would dearly like to know why.
The Fermi Lab accelerator, in one of its high-energy collider experiments, found that the particle acceleration collisions actually produced two muon particles, a matter muon and an anti-matter muon. But the total of muons was slightly more than the anti-muons. The result is that matter has a slight edge against anti-matter and therefore we all exist. Whew nice to know.
We stand here today, erev Shavuos Zman Matan Torah, and we should open our intellectual eyes to what Chazal call the “blueprint” for creation, the Torah. Our Torah and Gemoroh are not rule books or history books or story books. Our Shulchan Orech is not a set of restrictive regulations. 3300 years ago we stood at Har Sinai and received a way of life that was intended to establish the Jewish people into a holy nation, “Mamleches Cohanim”, a nation of priests. The Torah’s way of life, with its daily minutiae of rules, is as much restrictive as the rules governing physics Standard Model. Each atomic particle and sub-particle has a reason for being what it is and where it is and how it acts and reacts in its surroundings. The Yiddishe neshomoh does too.
Chazal tell us that when Hashem created the universe he created two opposite and conflicting concepts, kedushoh holiness and its opposite, tov good and its opposite. Zeh le’umas zeh boroh Elokim, one opposite the other did G-d create. For everything that Hashem created in our corporeal universe He also created a spiritual intellectual mirror image. Anti-matter seeks to destroy matter, just as tumoh and evil seek to destroy kedushoh and good. But just as Hashem created the slight edge of matter particles over anti-matter particles, He created the universe with a slight edge of kedushoh and good over their opposites. That edge is the yiddishe neshomoh.
Chazal tell us to view the world as being on a scale of judgment and constantly being judged. A person should view the scale as being balanced, equal amounts of kedushoh and zchusim merits on one side and tumoh on the other side. And the actions of the yiddishe neshomoh will now decide which side overwhelms the other. If we do mitzvos and maasim tovim, good deeds and tzedokoh, then we tip the scales to the good meritorious side and to a good judgment. Chas vesholom the opposite. If the Jewish nation adheres to the quantum regulations of a Torah’dik life, then the Standard Model of Creation will hold together and we will exist. The existence of the whole world is based on the Jewish nation and its holy values and the Torah.
