New Heavens and a New Earth: The Jewish Reception of Copernican Thought
"Jeremy Brown has written a deeply researched and insightful account of a fascinating chapter in the often-fraught encounter between religion and science: the impact of the Copernican revolution on Jewish thinkers from its first appearance to today. This is an enthralling work, a wonderful addition to scholarship on a subject that continues to engage us today." --Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks, author ofThe Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning"This fascinating volume offers both a definitive history of the Jewish encounter with Copernican thought and a carefully-nuanced analysis of how religion and science interact. A model study." --Jonathan D. Sarna, Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University and Chief Historian, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, PA"New Heavens and a New Earthpresents a fascinating study of a major subject of early modern and modern Jewish intellectual history. Jeremy Brown has written a comprehensive, intelligent, well researched, and well-written survey of the long history of Jewish responses to Copernicus. His masterful treatment of the subject is clearly the best written to date, revising, correcting, and significantly enlarging all previous accounts. Brown's work is a major contribution not only to the history of Jewish thought on cosmology and science but is also important in providing scholars a comparative lens through which to consider Jewish responses with those already well-known within the Christian world and beyond." --David B. Ruderman, Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Pennsylvania"Reams have been written about the gradual acceptance of Copernicus's sun-centered system, but this book blazes a new trail: the Jewish reception of heliocentric cosmology. A moving earth challenged the tenets of the Jewish faith, and, as in Catholic and Protestant circles, it took centuries to shake off a strictly literal reading of the Torah. Brown's volume now makes it easy to examine the similarities and differences of these faith traditions on a critical scientific hinge point." --Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science, Harvard University