Dear Rivy,
I just saw Christopher Nolan’s movie “Interstellar.” I am baffled. The science is way beyond my comprehension — if it is science at all — and I just do not know what to make of it. I understand that the film has nothing to do with Jews or Judaism; still, I thought you might be able to shed some light on the meaning of this film.
Very glad you are not asking “What’s Your J.Q.?” to clarify any of the scientific references — that would be under the purview of the 336-page book by Kip Thorne, the scientific adviser for the film, called “The Science of Interstellar.” Your enticing Jewish question, which is more within our reach, reminds me of an oft-told Jewish joke.
A zoology professor assigns a class of multinational students a paper on elephants. The British student’s paper is “The human rights of the elephant.” The French student’s paper is “The elephant and his love life.” The Japanese student’s paper is “The elephant and its place in IT.” The American student’s paper is “Elephants and the war machine.” The Israeli student’s paper is “The elephant and the Jewish problem.”
Wikimedia Commons/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
One interpretation of the joke is that we Jews are a pessimistic, paranoid, neurotic people fixated eternally on “our problem.” More on that another time. I prefer the approach of, “Wow! We Jews can put a Jewish spin on anything. Books, poems, art and movies are open to interpretation, and I cannot help but wear my Jewish lens looking at just about all things.” So, “Interstellar,” here we come!
First, a quick rundown for those who are not “Interstellar-ly” aware. IDM succinctly sums it up: “A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in an attempt to find a potentially habitable planet that will sustain humanity.” This occurs as a result of the earth becoming virtually unlivable by virtue of an end-of-days scenario of blight and dust with corn being the last produce able to be farmed. Corn? Why corn? Ah, why corn, so you should ask, of course. Not exactly. There is some convoluted scientific answer to that — not Jewish — so not for now. On to some Jewish takeaways from “Interstellar.”
Time warps and time travel figure prominently in the movie. At one point our NASA space-traveling heroes are moving at the rate of a different galaxy so that seven days can become actually 23 years on earth. This continues and the central character’s daughter ages while he does not. Spoiler alert. She becomes an old woman, and when he returns he is younger than she. That thought, right there is enough to keep us up at night.
What of this idea of time travel and time warps? Of folks transcending time and place? Is this idea of the distortion of space in relation to time, through which people or objects of one period can be moved to another, a Jewish one?
Long before the more recent obsession with time travel — “Rip Van Winkle,” “A Christmas Carol,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” and “The Time Machine” — came on the scene, the Jewish imagination had been transporting people unencumbered by constraints of time and place to far off locals and futures not yet experienced.
In this fantastical aggadah found in Talmud Menachot, Moses is transposed from Mount Sinai and the receiving of the Torah to the Land of Israel circa 1st century CE to the House of Study of Rabbi Akiva. There he is to find the purpose for the spiraling crowns on the letters of the Torah. He is told that one day:
There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiba ben Joseph by name, who will expound upon each tittle, heaps and heaps of laws. Lord of the Universe, said Moses; permit me to see him. He replied, Turn thee round. Moses went and sat down behind eight rows and listened to the discourses upon the law. Not being able to follow their arguments, he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master, “Whence do you know it?” and the latter replied, “It is a law given unto Moses at Sinai,” he was comforted.
A classic time-travel story complete with the foibles of finding yourself painfully outside of your own milieu. Moses is the venerated giver of the Torah, yet he cannot understand its analysis in future classrooms. He is comforted knowing, though, that he is not wholly irrelevant, his worth is timeless and his name still evoked as authority. Rav, the scholar to whom this story is attributed, lived in Babylonia during the 2nd-3rd century.
A similar tension is found in the very Rip Van Winkle-like story which tells of the curious episode of Honi the Circle Drawer who falls asleep only to wake 70 years later when he inquires of people:
“Is the son of Honi the Circle-Drawer still alive?” The people answered him, “His son is no more, but his grandson is still living.” Thereupon he said to them: “I am Honi the Circle-Drawer,” but no one would believe him. He then repairs to the house of study and there he overhears scholars saying, “The law is as clear to us as in the days of Honi the Circle-Drawer”… Whereupon he called out, “I am he;” but the scholars would not believe him nor did they give him the honor due to him. This hurt him greatly and he prayed for death and he died.
This tale is attributed to Rabbi Yochanan who also lived during the 1st-2nd century era, though in Israel. I’m not sure whether or not this is a coincidence. One has a character visiting way into the future, and the other has someone simply living past their own era, but both carry the object lesson of the distress of being found in an era not your own.
A related notion of kefitzat ha-derech, miraculous travel, in which long distances are contracted into much shorter journeys and people are quickly situated in alternate locations, is found in the Talmud in regard to Eliezer, Jacob, and Avishai. This notion then becomes the stuff of many a Hassidic and mystical story. Danny Maseng tells the tale of “How The Baal Shem Tov Came To Be In The Possession Of The Talisman For The Shortening Of The Way.” It incorporates the legend of the island of Djerba, in Tunisia, which was founded by priests, kohanim, from the time of the first Temple along with the famous supernatural legends of the Baal Shem Tov whose wagon supernaturally carried him on fantastical journeys. Shlomo Carlebach would tell epic stories of the Munkatcher Passport, a piece of paper drenched in tears that would be used to extricate Jews from precarious locales.
So what to make of all of this? What is reality and what is beyond reality? I’m not sure. What I do know is that in all of this our minds can create and imagine things that are, ironically, beyond our own comprehension. That might be the most significant and humbling truth of all.