Born in Crete in 1591, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo received a traditional rabbinic education and was one of many Jews of his day who studied medicine and the sciences at the university of Padua. Among his instructors there was Galileo Galilei, whom he would later refer to as “rabbi [literally, my teacher] Galileus” in his Hebrew writings. Delmedigo was among the very first to publish the Copernican theory of the universe.
In this conversion with J.J. Kimchi, Jeremy Brown describes how traditionally-minded Jewish thinkers responded to the heliocentric theory, ranging from early adopters like Delmedigo to those like Moses Schreiber (a/k/a Hatam Sofer, 1762–1839) who dismissed it as incompatible with the Torah. The two conclude by discussing why, despite skeptics like Schreiber, Judaism did not find itself in the same sort of intense struggle with modern science as did the Catholic Church, and the ways both faiths have gone beyond these conflicts to show that science and religion can “walk side by side.”
Read more on Podcast of Jewish Ideas: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/24-copernicus-and-the-jews-dr-jeremy-brown/id1676948818?i=1000647510241