[Avodah] The Importance of Studying Mathematics and Astronomy

[Prof. Levine]

Volume 15 (2008 - 2009) of The Torah U-Madda Journal contains an 
article by Jeremy Brown titled Rabbi Reuven Landau and
the Jewish Reaction to Copernican Thought in Nineteenth Century 
Europe. The entire article can be read at http://tinyurl.com/2d92z7r

Rabbi Landau was  born in the early 1800s, but the exact date is not 
certain, and there are conflicting accounts of the date of his death 
in 1883.  He married apparently at a young age as was the 
custom-Bruna, the only daughter of Rabbi Yosef Landau of Lafli in 
Romania, and probably adopted the name of his wife's family as his 
own. This town, known as Yas in Yiddish, was a center of Jewish life, 
and the capital city of Moldavia; its Chief Rabbi was an influential 
and important figure.

Reuven Landau was appointed to the position of the Chief of the 
Rabbinical Court of Padutark, where he served for some forty years 
until his death in 1883.

R. Landau wrote several works which were published late in his 
life;  Middah Berurah (1882) on trigonometry; Degel Machaneh Reuven 
(1884) on Aggadah, and Shem Olam (published posthumously in 1890) on 
the correct spelling of Hebrew names. But the book which will concern 
us is Mahalakh ha-Kokhavim (The Path of the Stars), which was 
published in 1882 in Chernovstky and never reprinted. It appeared in 
the last year of R. Landau's life, and represented the culmination of 
his life-long fascination with astronomy and mathematics.

On page 115 the article says

As a young man R. Landau realized that to acquire an expert
understanding in astronomy and the formulation of the Jewish calendar
would require a strong mathematical background. In order to attain
this, he dedicated part of each day to the study of mathematics and
trigonometry. The texts that he used for his course of self-study that
culminated in Middah Berurah are not known. R. Landau articulated
several reasons why the study of mathematics and astronomy was so
important:

... aside from the study of the Torah, among the other ... branches of
wisdom, the study of astronomy is the most honorable and important of
all. There are five reasons for this: 1) The sanctification of the new
month and the calculation of the dates of all the festivals in the Torah
are both dependent on it, and this was the first command that the
Children of Israel were given .... 2) Through the command to calculate
and declare a new month God showed his great kindness and love for
us. By giving us the power to [calculate and] declare a new month, or to
intercalate the year [God handed over great power to the Sages] ....
3 )The other nations of the world recognize and thank Israel for their
skill in this science, for [astronomy] is extremely important to all of the
peoples of the world, and astronomy was first learned from us, as is stated
in many books (and only later, due to our exile and dispersion, was
this science lost to us and learned by the Gentile sages) ... the
astronomer Ptolemy praised us and those of us who developed the nineteen
year cycle, II and Ptolemy himself wrote that this knowledge certainly
came through prophetic insight .... 4) This science is more worthy
than the other sciences because ... its subject and focus are the
heavens and the stars which . . . are eternal. This is unlike the natural
sciences which investigate substances made of the four basic elements,
which do not last. 5) When a person studies [astronomy] in detail, and
understands the sizes of the sun and moon and all of the planets, and
the huge numbers of stars, then he will see the wonders of God ...
which are awesome, and he will recognize the greatness of God and the
smallness of humanity. In this way a person will be inspired to forever
serve God ...

These are the words of a 19th century European rov who clearly felt 
that it was important for a Torah scholar to spend time studying 
certain secular subjects.  YL

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