An academic group seeking to bridge the divide between Judaic and scientific studies plans to build its program into an international fixture — but not without raising major funds first.

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, director for the Center for Jewish Studies, said the Judaism, Science and Medicine Group would need roughly $3 million to advance its work, which the group is trying to raise through sponsorship and grant money.

With the funding, Tirosh-Samuelson said the group could proceed with more research projects, membership expansion and outreach efforts to both international scholars and community members, all with the goal of facilitating a dialogue between Judaic studies and the sciences.

The group was created in response to what Tirosh-Samuelson calls a “harmful gap” between science and religion.

“Judaism ultimately needs to respond to the information we have about the sciences,” she said.

Tirosh-Samuelson helps put into practice ideas from Jewish studies professor Norbert Samuelson, who first conceived the idea of the academic collective.

“The group is made up of people in a number of academic fields — physicists, biologists, chemists, philosophers,” Samuelson said. “The goal is to make intelligent Jews aware of the challenges that come from science and to help intelligent scientists understand Judaism.”

Misunderstanding science provides many intellectual challenges for modern Jews, Samuelson said.

“Science today is a bigger challenge to Judaism than even anti-Semitism,” he said. “Yet science is not a threat, but a challenge.”
One goal of the group is to eventually create an independent center for this kind of study.

“We’d ultimately like to have a house facility separate from the Center for Jewish Studies for scholars to come and study the connections between science and Judaism,” he said.

Models for ASU’s center would include Oxford’s Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Judaic Studies, Samuelson said.

Including ASU’s name with prominent universities like Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania helps the group take its program to an international level, he said.

But despite these similar Jewish studies centers, Samuelson said the discussion between Judaism and science at ASU is unparalleled.
“Nobody else does exactly this,” he said.

The next immediate step for the group is majorly expanding the project’s reach, Tirosh-Samuelson said.

The expansion, however, can’t happen without funding.

Tirosh-Samuelson said the group already welcomes 60 members to its annual conferences, but she wants to expand the group to 300 academics.

“The idea is to have people from all denominations of Judaism,” she said. “What unites them is a commitment to scientific discussion.”

The group also wants to reach out to Jewish schools in an effort to improve science education, but Tirosh-Samuelson said this process is made difficult by denominational teaching differences within the schools.

“We want to create a mechanism for that discussion,” Tirosh-Samuelson said. “We have to ask ourselves, how do you reconcile the views?”

Increasing research projects and bringing in new scholars would also increase the group’s body of work, she said, making for more diverse discussion.

Tirosh-Samuelson said her ASU connection has helped in creating innovative conversations that cross academic fields.

“ASU offers an atmosphere very conducive to an integrative type of work,” she said. “This allows us to be socially embedded and part of the conversation. We provide a minor variation on a major theme.”