There once was a young Jew of Crete, one Josef Delmedigo¹, whose heart was as big as the world and whose mind was full of stars.

At sixteen, in [t] 5368 he was admitted to the great university at Padua to study medicine and natural philosophy. There, in a great hall of stone, he devoured the lectures on mathematics, ship-building, medicine, engineering and ballistics given by Galileo Galilei, who was still largely unknown in the wider world. In those days Galileo had not yet published his ultimate conclusions concerning the Copernican system, though he had of late undertaken secret investigations with the new telescope, which he had long labored to perfect. 

The young Delmedigo was the sort who found it difficult to sleep at night.  He therefore acquired a habit of wandering the streets of Padua to gaze at the stars and contemplate the secrets of the universe. One moonless evening while passing by Galileo’s tower, he spied a light in the window. Possessed by a sudden fascination, he crept up the many flights of stairs to discover what engaged the master at such a late hour. The light was coming from a bank of candles perched on a large wooden desk, and a single candle burning low atop a canted writing desk supporting mounds of paper. Galileo himself was next to the open window, sitting with his back to the door upon a low stool, his face peering up into the end of what appeared to Delmedigo to be a slender metal tube.

“Magister,” stammered the boy, bowing so awkwardly low that his large hat launched off of his head and rolled across the floor balanced on its vast brim, revealing Josef’s disheveled curls and small black kippah.

Galileo jumped up, nearing knocking over his telescope and producing enough commotion that several papers drifted off of the lectern like falling leaves. He recognized Delmedigo at once — a truculent yet etherial sort — and not quite of this world. He was, the master judged, a young Jew with a quick of mind, but one who spoke before considering the consequences.

“Beware,” a renunciate colleague had whispered a few days before, “That Hebrew will wind up dead within five years if he’s not careful — dead, or famous.” 

The inspiration for the comment had found the monk when, immediately after Galileo’s lecture, Delmedigo had approached the podium and without honorifics or greetings, embarked on a long and entirely valid list of objections to the Ptolemaic system. Galileo’s own remarks on the subject of the two systems had on that day been cautious, even diplomatic. The boy, on the other hand, discoursed in a almost screeching voice and yet with no small fluidity on the technical details of the Copernican theory, pacing back and forth before the dias of the stone hall quite as if he belonged there. Had the boy actually read Copernicus’ treatise? But how was this possible? Copies of the work were few and precious. The two extant at the university were kept locked and under constant guard in the deepest recesses of the grand library. And why, in any case, was the youth so interested in this sensitive subject? It all seemed uncanny at best, and it occurred to Galileo as he stood there listening to the young man’s rather convincing demonstrations that his enemies were not above tricking him into private heresy with just this sort of ruse. 

When he had at last exhausted himself, the boy stood before the great master expectantly, his dark eyes wide. Galileo simply nodded politely and walked away. Though there was a note of the uncharitable in the gesture, it was best to stay away from flammable people, especially when one was liable to be burned at anytime oneself. But Galileo kept an eye on young Josef from that day forward, marking him mentally as either a future acolyte or else a target for denunciation. And now here he was in the dead of night — a lanky phantom in the doorway, appearing unbidden, and at a delicate moment in his researches.

The master had half a mind to dismiss the boy at once — there was much work to complete that night and distrust lingered like smoke in his mind. But something stirred at the great man’s heart as he saw the Delmadigo struggle to explain his presence, and the instinct to forgive this second act of impudence bloomed inside of him. It was not easy to sleep — the youth was stammering now, and I had been walking the streets. Looking at the stars I mean — and also the wandering lights. And speaking of lights I had seen a light in the window and wondered if you O great teacher too were gazing heavenward as the rumors after all said you did each night, and … The boy’s face was flushed and his eyes were once again wide and searching. His wide mouth closed as he fell into silence.

This was no spy. Galileo rose slowly to his feet, straightened the telescope, replaced two sheets of fallen paper on the lectern .

“Sit down,” he said. “Be still as you can and speak no words unless I ask you a question. I wish to tell you a story.”

Delmedigo sat on the small stool as the master had indicated. He picked up his broad hat, and placed it primly on his lap.

“You know of the two great lights” said Galileo in a soft, grave voice.

“The sun and the moon, Magister”, Delmedigo replied.

“No, not those.” Galileo said gently. “One of the lights of which I speak is our great teacher Ptolemy of Egypt. And surely you know of the other.”

“I know,” said Delmedigo.

“And do you know which is the greater of these two lights? For not long ago you made disputation with me in the hall before many, making little secret of your … opinions on this matter.” Galileo folded his hands in front of him, and gazed placidly at the boy.

“If Ptolemy be the moon, then is not Copernicus the sun?” said Josef, sotto voche. It was a question, but not a question. Delmedigo held Galileo’s eyes while he spoke these words. The great man was silent for a moment as if in contemplation.

At last the master spoke. I will here recount little of what Galileo said, for the story as he told it was long and is known in full to none but he and Delmedigo. But this we might tell — he spoke first of the wisdom of the Greeks. On observation and experiment he expounded, and Ptolemy’s spheres and how, imperfectly, they foretell the motions of the heavens like nothing that had come before them. Upon mathematics he expounded, for it was there that the power of all predictive models resided. Thus was Kepler able to demonstrate that the wandering lights conformed to simple principles of geometry. This mystery the Greeks and Arabs had comprehended fully, and yet it was a central idea that had become dark to the rest of the world. So compelling was this ode to the Hellenic epistême that Joseph was just on the verge of questioning the master’s fundamental loyalty to the revolution when Galileo paused, his eyebrow arching wryly.

“Let us now speak of your sun. For there is much to tell of him, and soon even more may be declared in the wide world. There is something that I wish for you to see.”

To Delmedigo’s great astonishment — for he knew very little of the telescope mounted on the wooden tripod before him — Galileo motioned the boy to draw closer to the instrument, and helped hm place his eye on its end. But when the Joseph tried to see into or through the tube he could at first observe nothing but a dark smudge.

“Squint not!” cautioned Galileo, “Release the eye for your face’s grip and it will see on its own.”

Delmedigo exhaled and relaxed, and then, almost all at once, a shape came into view — a large, round blotch of light, bright and distinct.

“What is it that you see?”

“I see a light, Magister. A great light and bright to behold.”

“Yes, and do you know upon which light you now look?”

“No Magister.”

“You gaze upon that which your fathers call the tzedek ².”

Jospeh gasped and withdrew, both because the light of the planet blazed forth with the brightness and size of a near-moon, and also because he was not used to hearing words in the Holy Tongue from the lips of gentiles. Focusing once again he gazed once more upon the bright blotch and felt awe rise within him.

“What else do you see?” asked Galileo.  “Does the tzedek walk alone?”

“No Magister … there are two stars in his company.”

“Two? Look closely boy!”

“Three! There is a third!” he gasped.

“You spy the attendants of tzedek.” Galileo suddenly arose from his seat and began to slowly walk about the room a short distance behind the crouching Joseph. “And these three never leave his mighty side, but dance about him in regular mathematical order, for so I have observed these several months.”

Delmedigo’s face grew hot, though his hands were cold, for he knew at once the terror and wonder of Galileo’s words. If these wandering stars attended tzedek and were in orbit around him, then this was proof beyond any question that the Earth was not at center of all spheres.  There were other orbital centers besides the earth — other still, unmoving points. If tzedek was attended by orbiting stars and was their Lord, then why would we suppose the Earth to be stationary at all? There were surely other centers besides tzedek around which stars and planets paraded? Kepler made his demonstration about the sun, but which others beside? 

In that moment something inside of Joseph died, and was reborn, all at once. It was as if the stars in his own head had suddenly re-ordered themselves into a mathematical system that a moment before had been inaccessible and undefined, but now spread before him in both simplicity and power. It was Copernicus who was the greater light, and it was therefore Ptolemy and the noble Greeks who were dimmed — just as Elohim had diminished the jealous moon in the days before time. 

But what terror and love lives in such realizations! Had not God ceased after the sixth day? Why therefore, did this moment feel like a new dawn, a new creation? All at once, from years ago, words unbidden rose to Joseph’s mind. He saw his father seated at the head of the candle-lit table, bread and wine laid out before him. “The Talmud tells us that whoever recites veyechulu becomes a partner with God in the creation of the world.”³ Raising his arms to the skies his father recited the words commemorating God’s rest that begin each sabbath:

And the heaven and the earth were finished in all of their array

The light of tzedek blurred and faded in the boy’s eyes which all at once overflowed. Delmedigo withdrew his eyes from the telescope, wiped his cheek and gazed into the eyes of his teacher Galileo.

“Rabbi!” he whispered.

***

This is the toldot of Josef Delmedigo.

Delmedigo begat Baruch Spinoza⁴, who treasured a copy of the former’s Sefer Elim — the first book in which a Jew publicly endorsed the Copernican cosmology. 

And Spinoza begat the unlucky Hungarian David ben Meir Cohen Friesenhausen⁵ who wrote that:

This planet Earth is tiny and inconsequential, and it is lost among the infinite number of planets. But your soul should rejoice at God’s creation, and your tongue should praise his righteousness. For among all of these creations he chose Israel on this tiny dot and made them holy with his holiness. He gave them his holy and pure Torah with its just laws, and called them my firstborn children in order that he dwell with them forever.

And Friesenhausen begat the scandalous Londoner Mordekhai Levison and his Ma’amar Hatorah Vehahkokmah (Essay on Torah and Science) in which he declares the cosmological controversy to be settled once and for all, and indeed unworthy of further debate.

And thus did Israel become a people of the telescope, and the observatory, and the laboratory, and not the book only. 

Notes

1. Josef Delmedigo, b. [t] 5351 was a polymath, scientist and the first true Jewish Copernican.
2. that is, Jupiter
3. Shabbat 9b
4. Baruch Spinoza, b. [t] 5392, the renowned Dutch-Sephardic rationalist
5. David ben Meir Cohen Friesenhausen b. [t] 5516. An astronomer, mathematician and Rabbi, Friesenhausen was an early figure in European Haskalah — the first broad Jewish movement to integrate rationalism, liberalism and intellectual renewal into Jewish life. Friesenhausen struggled for the majority of this life to make a sustainable living, and clashed frequently with the regional Jewish authorities of this time. It was not an easy life, but a good life — and one lived in anticipation of ages yet to come.

Photo credits:

1. close-up of portrait of Josef Delmedigo from Sefer Elim
2. close-up of Portrait of Galileo, Domenico Cresti (Il Passignano)
3. diagram from Sefer Elim