by Paula Amann

News Editor

What do science and religion have to teach each other? That's the question congregants at Bethesda's Adat Shalom Congregation are asking this year.

Under the leadership of acting Rabbi George Driesen, the Reconstructionist synagogue is exploring the links between Judaism and scientific thought in a plethora of ways.

Come Dec. 4-5, an Adat Shalom Shabbaton will feature Daniel Matt, a former professor of Jewish spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

Author of God and the Big Bang: Discovering the Harmony between Science and Spirituality (Jewish Lights), Matt will probe the parallels between Kaballah, Jewish mysticism and modern views of creation and astronomy. The California scholar just released the second volume of a new translation and commentary on the Zohar, Kaballah's central text, from Stanford University Press.

"The mystic is looking deep within ... The scientist is exploring the world out there," said Matt in a phone interview last week. "What's intriguing is the resonance between the two."

In addition to Matt's three presentations during the first weekend in December, Adat Shalom is holding a five-part workshop, "An Evolving Exploration of Science and Spirituality." Led by Driesen, the series is culminating with the writing of liturgy that celebrates the wonders of science.

"We are looking for ways to capture and articulate some of the modern ways of understanding the world ... so we can recognize ourselves as sons and daughters of the scientific revolution in our prayer life," Driesen said.

The acting rabbi folded this theme into High Holiday services with a Rosh Hashanah sermon on "The Jew in the Cosmos: Science, Spirituality and Us."

In addition, the rabbi is inviting a half dozen congregants who work in the sciences to offer brief talks during Saturday morning services throughout the year.

As for Matt, he stresses the need to maintain a dialogue between the religious and scientific communities.

"Each approach has part of the answer to the existential question: How did we get here?" Matt said. "Science can teach religion to question dogma, not to accept claims absolutely, to constantly question our understanding of the world and God," Matt said.

Scientists routinely advance their field by disproving old theories. The pious may feel discomfort in altering beliefs, once chosen, he contends.

Yet religion also has lessons for science, which often takes a reductionist view of creation.

"Religion can teach science how to cultivate a sense of wonder in approaching the universe," Matt said.

Some ideas about God also have their echoes in science.

Kaballah, in particular, he noted, has tended to describe "God as energy -- not the person up there pulling the strings, but rather the energy that animates all of existence."

That jibes nicely, he argued, with the scientific notion of matter as frozen energy, embodied in Einstein's famous equation, E= mc2 or energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

In addition, biology's theory of evolution may have implications for interpretation of Jewish texts.

"Taking a more dynamic, evolutionary view of Torah enables us to let it mean new things continually," Matt said.

Meanwhile, Driesen noted that his congregation has many members who work in scientific fields and bring a Jewish perspective to their work.

"Scientists are having religious responses to their discoveries," Driesen said. "We'd like to celebrate that as part of our religious life."