Judaism and Extraterrestrials: Theological

Lessons from Science Fiction

MARA WENDY COHEN IOANNIDES

When the existence of life elsewhere is established, and especially

if some contact is made with intelligent beings elsewhere, we will
be confronted by as much of a challenge to our established way of
thought as when the Copernican revolution displaced the earth
from the center of the universe and set in motion a religious and
philosophical upheaval that has but recently run its course.
–Rabbi Normon Lamm

M
ANY SCIENTISTS ACCEPT THE LIKELIHOOD THAT EXTRATERRESTRI-
als exist. Astronomers, such as Geoffrey Marcy of Univer-
sity of California—Berkeley, believe that one in ten stars
have a habitable Earthlike planet, and Marcy does not dismiss the
idea that aliens exist. Carl Sagan suggested that it “seems very hard
to believe that our paltry little planet is the only one that is inhab-
ited,” and his prot
eg
e, Neil deGrasse Tyson, estimates that “there are
between 100 and 200 civilizations with technology that we can com-
municate with today in the Milky Way galaxy” (Bryce). The Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), established by the Interna-
tional Academy of Astronautics (IAA), has sought “evidence of life in
the universe by looking for some signature of its technology” since
1984 (Pierson). SETI scientists believe that life “will develop on other
planets” given the correct environment and that intelligent life is
“open to speculation” (“Our Work”). The SETI Post-Detection Sub-
committee created a set of international protocols for a meeting of
Earthlings and extraterrestrials in 2010 (Declaration). Astrophysicists
and astrobiologists argue that humanity will eventually make contact

The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 52, No. 5, 2019

© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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with extraterrestrials; in fact, the Committee on Space Research in

1969 was grappling with the protocols for the protection of extrater-
restrial life by human contaminations (Rummel 14), the International
Union of Radio Science, as early as 1976, was putting protocols
together to communicate with extraterrestrials, and the Planetary
Science Vision 2050 meeting “showcased the motivation for contin-
ued space science missions and for a search for extraterrestrial life that
will not dissipate easily or early-on” (Rummel 68).
Jews have debated who is a Jew since biblical times, and the
addition of nonterrestrials should be considered given that scientists
suggest we will likely meet with extraterrestrials at some point. The
debates have centered on the question of heredity, patrilineal or
matrilineal descent, and who can perform conversion. There has been
no conclusion to these debates, but our understanding of who can be
a Jew has steadily broadened over the centuries. Just as Judaism
addresses how to include those who are not part of the original
Twelve Tribes and is currently examining the relationship between
Judaism and artificial intelligence, Jewish science fiction has
presumed that extraterrestrials exist in order to explore and question
the potential of Jews of extraterrestrial origin. Unfortunately, as
science fiction scholars have largely confined their focus to Christian
themes, the idea of Jewish extraterrestrials has received very little
attention. In this context, Jack Dann’s Wandering Stars: An Anthology
of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction reveals how science fiction
writers have employed Jewish law to address the question of Jewish
extraterrestrials. Their stories show how Jewish law could be
interpreted to include non-Earth natives as part of the Jewish
community.

Religion in Science Fiction

William Quinn notes that many science fiction writers address reli-
gion in their work. Indeed, Theodore Sturgeon suggests “our strange
species has two prime motivating forces: Sex . . . and worship,” (99)
although Sturgeon and Quinn argue that science fiction generally
assumes a Christian context. Many of the most famous early science
fiction writers, such as James Blish, C. S. Lewis, Lester Del Ray, and
Marion Zimmer Bradley, apply Christian theology to their work
1202 Mara Wendy Cohen Ioannides

(Quinn). From a Christian perspective, it is understandable that they

are trying to understand how others might interpret their beliefs.
Thus, quite a bit has been written about Christianity as addressed in
science fiction, but little has been said about Judaism in science fic-
tion. Despite the 1974 publication of Dann’s collection, non-Chris-
tian science fiction is infrequently published and rarely
acknowledged. When science fiction writers consider religious
themes, they tend to focus on interpretations of aliens as gods or
imagine the differences between human beings and aliens, such as
longer life spans for aliens than humans. Sturgeon does, however,
suggest that science fiction considers the possibility that humans
could convert to an alien religion (49).
By simple logic, then, writers could conceive of aliens adopting
human theologies. Jean-Bruno Renard is one of the rare scholars who
ask, “comment les Extraterrestres vont-ils accueiller les religions des
Terriens? [how would extraterrestrials see great Earth religions?]”
(146). Published in 1974, the stories in the groundbreaking Wander-
ing Stars were part of an explosion of American Jewish fiction in the
1970s. This material addresses Jewish themes that “advocated the
norms of Jewish tradition” (Berger 221). This anthology was ahead of
its time in that the stories address Jewish identity, something that
was not popular until the 1980s (Berger 221). Many of the stories in
Wandering Stars show how Jewish science fiction writers write about
Judaism, beginning to fill the lacuna of non-Christian science fiction.
In these stories, Jewish writers overlay Jewish theology and philoso-
phy on science fiction to present a different examination of the uni-
verse than their Christian counterparts. Many Jewish science fiction
writers, especially those selected here, focus on religious issues that
they believe need to be addressed within the religious context.

Jews and Extraterrestrials

Jewish science fiction writers do not write without some precedence

in Judaism, however. Perhaps the first rabbi to discuss the existence
of extraterrestrials was Chasdai Crescas (d. 1410). In his Or Hashem,
he concludes that there could be extraterrestrials (Kaplan). He uses
one particular line from the Talmud; in Avoda Zara 3b, it is said,
“He rides alight cherub, and floats in eighteen thousand worlds.” It is
 1203

this one line upon which Crescas bases his belief. Rabbi Phineas Eli-
jah (b. Meir Hurwitz of Vilna), at the end of the eighteenth century,
addressed this issue in his Sefer Ha-Berit (Book of the Covenant), often
referred to as the encyclopedia of human knowledge. He believes in
the existence of aliens based on two biblical verses (Jacobs 99). The
first is Isaiah 45:18: “For thus saith the LORD that created the heav-
ens; G-d himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath estab-
lished it; he created it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be in
habited: I am the LORD; and there is none else” (The Tanakh). Hur-
witz believed that “it” here referred to the heavens and the earth, not
the earth alone. Thus, the heavens too must be inhabited (Jacobs 99).
The second verse Hurwitz uses is Judges 5:23, where Deborah sings:
“‘Curse ye Meroz,’ said the angel of HaShem, ‘curse ye bitterly the
inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of HaShem, to
the help of HaShem against the mighty’” (The Tanakh). According to
the sages in the Talmud, Meroz is another planet: “Some say that
Meroz was [the name of] a great personage; others say that it was
[the name of] a star, as it is written [there]: They fought from Hea-
ven, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera” (Moed Katan 16a,
Talmud). Thus, the cosmology conceptualized by scientists, such as
the Greek philosopher Democritus of the fifth century BCE, influ-
enced Hurwitz. Thus, there are medieval and early modern rabbis
who argue that scripture provides reason to believe in inhabitants of
other planets.
The great twentieth-century Reform Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut
examined this issue as well. By the time he was doing so, the Sun
was established as the center of the solar system, planets and stars
were known to populate the universe, satellites had explored the
galaxy, and men were in the process of traveling to the moon. Plaut
believed in the existence of aliens. He found it “harder to believe”
that G-d had put sentient beings on only one of a vast number of
planets in the universe (38). His verification for his understanding
was the numerous different ways G-d is referred to in the Tanakh
(e.g., haShem, El, Elohim, Adonai, El Shaddai) that, to him, implied
various communities using these terms, each peculiar to their com-
munity. Because there are numerous names for G-d, Plaut argues,
there must be different perspectives of who or what is G-d (Jacobs
103).
1204 Mara Wendy Cohen Ioannides

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, a twentieth-century Orthodox Rabbi who

lived through the beginnings of interplanetary exploration and early
discussions among exobiologists regarding the possibility of alien life,
also believed in the existence of extraterrestrials. Along with basing
his understanding on Crescas’s and Hurwitz’s arguments, in “Second
Look: Extraterrestrial Life,” he uses the Zohar to explain “that the
seven [worlds] are separated by a firmament and are inhabited.
Although they are not inhabited by man, they are the domain of
intelligent creatures.” There are words in the Zohar for angel, so,
Kaplan reasons, clearly the “intelligent creatures” referred to here are
different from angels and cherubs. Additionally, Rabbi Norman
Lamm, an American Modern Orthodox Rabbi, believes that “the exis-
tence of rational, sentient beings on a planet other than earth is no
longer a fantastic, remote possibility conjectured by imaginative and
unrealistic minds” (107).
For his part, Rabbi Hurwitz concluded that extraterrestrials do not
have free will; free will, he argues, is the exclusive domain of humans
(Jacobs 99). Presumably, he argues this from the standpoint that
humans had the choice to accept the covenant with G-d or not (Gen.
17:12–17). Byron Sherwin, a Jewish theologian, explains that even
“by making the wrong choice, . . . [one] demonstrate[s] that they are
capable of moral volition, of making a choice. By sinning, they
become not only more completely human, but also godlike” (106,
emphasis original). Thus, Sherwin explains that understanding
choices makes one godlike. Therefore, cannot any sentient being who
can understand and choose, be godlike and thus able to be Jewish?
The science fiction writers who explore the religious possibilities
latent in human encounters with aliens explore these theological
questions, while also working within Judaism’s legal dictates on the
question of who can become a Jew.

Jewish Legal Definition of Jew

According to Jewish law, there are two main ways to become a Jew.
One way is to be born of a Jewish parent. All Jewish movements
accept matrilineal claims, while the Reform Movement also accepts
patrilineal as of 1983 (Central) and the Reconstructionist Movement
did so in 1968 (Staub). The second way is to choose to become a Jew,
 1205

to convert. All the movements concur that conversion is a mixture of

desire and education; there is, however, no agreement as to how to
test desire and what education really means.
The implication by all the Jewish movements at this time is that
their members are human because, understandably, they have never
addressed the question of any nonhuman desiring to join the Jewish
people. Science fiction writers who imagine religious encounters with
extraterrestrials depict those encounters as hinging, in part, on a per-
ception of extraterrestrials as sentient or humanoid. Thus, it is useful
to establish the definition of the human before speculating on the
nonhuman. The Talmud, in Chagigah 16, describes six characteristics
of humans:

1. In three they are like ministering angels:

iThey have understanding;
iiThey walk upright;
iiiThey speak in the holy language (Hebrew).

2. In three they are like animals:

iThey eat and drink;
iiThey propagate;
iiiThey defecate.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explains that “the function of

man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational princi-
ple” and that “human good turns out to be activity of soul in accor-
dance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in
accordance with the best and most complete” (bk. I). There is quite a
bit of parallel between the Talmud and Aristotle: both see humans as
animals (Aristotle bk. VI), and both see humans as above animals. In
Aristotle’s case, people are above animals because they “help each
other by throwing their peculiar gifts into the common stock” (bk.
VIII). Finally, both see the divine in humans (Aristotle bk. X). In
these views, humans are sentient animals who have a spark of the
divine, however one chooses to define this, and who have the ability
to help each other toward a common good.
For hundreds of years, one of the defining characteristics of human-
ness was the ability to use tools. In 1960, Jane Goodall, primatolo-
gist, ethologist, and anthropologist, discovered that chimpanzees use
1206 Mara Wendy Cohen Ioannides

tools, and Louis Leakey, paleoanthropologist and archeologist,

declared, “We must now redefine man, redefine tool or accept chim-
panzees as human!” (qtd. in Goodall). Goodall’s work has also
sparked debate concerning chimpanzees’ use of language—one of the
defining activities of humans in the Talmud and for Aristotle.
Although Chagigah 16 does not list communication as a skill for ani-
mals, Aristotle highlights the ability to function as a community,
which would require the ability to communicate complex ideas.
Goodall, however, is less concerned with the details of language and
more concerned with emotions: “Do they feel pain or sadness? Do
they have minds capable of thinking or planning?”
Professor John Loike, a cellular biophysicist, and Rabbi Moshe
Tendler, a Jewish medical ethicist, “propose that according to halakha
[Jewish Law]" a human being must possess at least one of the follow-
ing three characteristics:

1. having been formed within or born from a human,

2. expressing moral intelligence,
3. being capable of producing offspring with a human. (2)

While the first and third questions would biologically eliminate

extraterrestrials from the human definition, they might still have
“moral intelligence.” These two scholars based their argument about
moral intelligence on commentaries by the medieval French rabbi
Rashi and the first-century CE Akiva. These commentaries discuss
da’at as “the capacity to differentiate good and evil,” coupled with
free will. They are quite clear that IQ and factual intelligence are not
part of humanness (Loike and Tendler 4–6).
Therefore, a Jew is either a Jew born of a Jew or a being that is
like an animal, except it speaks Hebrew, has understanding (meaning
moral intelligence), and chooses the religious trappings of Judaism.
Sherwin contends that Maimonides did not see G-d’s act of creating
humans in G-d’s image as one of physicality but as one of intellectu-
alism—that humans reflect G-d’s ability to think and reason (76).
The anthropologist Jonathan Marx feels that the important question
about humanness is “the relation of an organism in question to other
living beings,” not physical attributes (238). Currently, not all Jews
are Hebrew speakers or even Hebrew literate; thus, the Medieval
requirement of speaking Hebrew is already negated. Therefore, a Jew
 1207

is a sentient being who can communicate and reason. Can this defini-
tion be applied to extraterrestrials? This is one of the questions
addressed by the science fiction writers in Dann’s collections. These
authors want to help Jews understand how they could interpret Jew-
ish law in relation to a possible future.

Jewish Science Fiction and Extraterrestrials

Jack Dann’s Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and
Science Fiction “is the first . . . science fiction collection [in which] the
Jew . . . will appear without a mask” (jacket copy). His follow-up vol-
ume, More Wandering Stars, “carries on in the tradition of the com-
panion volume. . . Breaking new ground” (back cover). Dann explains
that the stories in the first volume “asked: is Jewishness mystical
experience, a system of laws, a sense of kinship, a religion, or myth?”
(5). The second volume continues this study. Both anthologies
include some of the greatest Jewish science fiction writers who
address Jewish religious questions in their stories. Rabbi Yonassan
Gershom, a Chasidic rabbi and author, contends that the anthology
includes “some good speculative fiction.” Chris Donner, a reviewer
for SF Site, notes that in the first volume, the various writers have
their characters struggle to “reconcile age-old tradition with life in
the present moment,” just as Jews do currently; he even contends that
“the characters are human beings, regardless of their external appear-
ance.” Thus, these stories offer places to examine the future of
Judaism.
In his short story “On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi,” William
Tenn addresses the question of evolved Jews. The story is about the
gathering of the First Interstellar Congress which meets on Venus,
the home of the narrator Milchik the TV man. Milchik “see[s] noth-
ing strange in a bunch of Vegan bivalves basing their religion on the
life and legend of a particular Jew like Moshe Dayan” (22), nor does
he object to the “Reconstructionists who pray from a siddur that is
rewritten every Monday and Wednesday, [the] Japanese Hasidim
who put on tefillin once a year at sunset in memory of the Great Con-
version of 2112” (23), or “the blue Jews from Aldebaran” (25). How-
ever, the Bulbas from Rigel IV are another matter. They are housed
in his bathtub and “look like three brown pillows, all wrinkled and
1208 Mara Wendy Cohen Ioannides

twisted, with some big grey spots on this side and on that side, and
out of each gray spot there is growing a short gray tentacle” (24).
This is where Milchik draws the line. In an argument with his son,
Milchik paraphrases the Talmud. He explains “a Jew has to have arms
and legs. He has to have a face with eyes, a nose, a mouth” (Tenn
25). Apparently, many of the delegates to the Congress have the same
problem. Although the Congress had “no question about their cre-
dentials,” they are declared not to be Jews (27).
In a backtracking move, the Deputy Chairman leans on heredity
to explain, “no one can be a Jew who is not the child of a Jewish
mother” (Tenn 27). These Jews were descendants of a community
from Paramus, New Jersey, who had left Earth seven or eight hun-
dred years earlier (31). As deeply committed Jews, they kept strict
genealogical charts that proved one’s lineage “back to the very first
settlers on the planet,” (34) but over time they had physically evolved
to look like the natives of Rigel IV (35). A special court was formed
to adjudicate this issue. They examined every example from the past,
from Ezra onward (Tenn 38). They realized that both the Conserva-
tive expectation of matrilineal descent and the Reform expectation of
choice had been both met1 and not met. Milchik paraphrases the final
statement, “there are Jews—and there are Jews. The Bulbas belong in
the second group” (39).
Tenn presents some interesting problems in this story. Writing
thirty years before Loike and Tendler, he struggles with questions
that they attempt to resolve. These creatures clearly meet the criteria
of “moral intelligence,” but what about the others? Being able to
count lineage is a clear statement of procreation. Being a living
organism indicates they ingest and therefore must eliminate waste.
The question of communication is addressed, but the court is stuck
on the use of Hebrew, as these creatures do not communicate ver-
bally. The most important question to this story is: Are these Jews
by birth or Jews by choice? The conclusion by the court, rightly or
wrongly, is that they are both Jews by birth and by choice. Despite
their descent from human ancestors, they no longer have the appear-
ance of humans. Technically, though, they have been born of humans
because, as Loike and Tender argue, a human child born in an incuba-
tor or even a surrogate animal should be considered human (12).
They argue “to be born Jewish requires one of the following condi-
tions: a human o€ocyte obtained from a Jewish woman and/or being
 1209

born from the womb of a Jewish woman” (13). Here, in Tenn’s story,
one sees the impact of evolution, the evolution of the human into a
new species, just as humans have evolved from other species. Thus,
this story points to the Jewish law’s definition of human as part of
the problem. Does Judaism then need to move to a different term,
like sentient?
Whereas Tenn considers the question of Jewish heredity, Carol
Carr’s story “Look, You Think You’ve Got Troubles” addresses the
question of alien conversion. The narrator, Hector, is the father of an
unpleasant-looking daughter who eventually marries a Martian. At
first, the father struggles with his daughter’s decision to marry an
extraterrestrial, and he later struggles with the creature’s conversion
to Judaism. The narrator in Carr’s story relies on physiology. He calls
his son-in-law More “a plant with legs” (61) and describes him
thusly, “His head is shaped like an acorn and no hair at all except for
a small blue round area on top of his head . . . and he looks boneless,
like a filet” (69). However, his daughter Lorinda announces that “he
converted because of me” and then became a rabbi (70). Hector must
come to terms with his feelings because Jewish law states that, once
someone has converted, “he is deemed to be an Israelite in all
respects” (Y Yebamoth 47b, Talmud). He “admit[s] ... feeling a little
different,” partially because his son-in-law is more observant than he
is (Carr 71). Hector comes to the conclusion that “in a world that’s
getting smaller all the time, it’s people like me who have to be big-
ger to make up for it” (72). Therefore, acceptance of his son-in-law is
required regardless of his appearance or lineage. Here, we can apply
the definition of “moral intelligence.” More chose to become a Jew
and then studied to become a rabbi. This story again pushes “moral
intelligence” from an exclusively human definition to one of sen-
tience.
The final piece in the first anthology that examines this issue is
Harlan Ellison’s “I’m Looking for Kadak.” In this story, Evsise’s rabbi
sends him on a mission to find Kadak so that there is a minyan (the
required ten adults for public prayer) for kaddish (the prayer for
mourning). Evsise introduces himself to his listener, a butterfly,
explaining,

It shouldn’t even surprise that I’m a Jew and I’m blue and I have
eleven arms thereby defying the Law of Bilateral Symmetry and I
1210 Mara Wendy Cohen Ioannides

am squat and move around very close to the ground by a series of

caterpillar feet set around the rim of ball joints and sockets on
either side of my tuchis [behind] which obeys the Law of Bilateral
Symmetry.
(217)

During his journey he explains, albeit briefly, “Abraham, blessed

be his name, . . . was this very holy Jew even if he wasn’t blue you
shouldn’t hold that against him” (232). Apparently, Jews had forgot-
ten their human origins but understood themselves to be Jews.
Finally, the reader learns Kadak is the butterfly. Evsise finally con-
vinces Kadak to return to the community to say kaddish. The com-
munity has no problem accepting Kadak as a Jew; the problem is, is
he old enough to be an adult? After all, Kadak had only been a but-
terfly for ten years, not thirteen (Ellison 237–38). It did not matter
that Kadak had been a living creature for seventeen years (222). What
did matter was that he had only been a butterfly for ten years, and
according to Jewish law, only a Jewish adult can say kaddish. The
question Ellison then addresses is, when does maturity come to a
Jew? In Leviticus 27:1–8, compensation per person is declared by G-
d, who defined the child from the age of five until twenty and an
adult from twenty to sixty. At twenty, one is counted in the census
(Ex. 30:13–14; 38:26). In Niddah 40:6A, rabbis declared that one
reaches maturity at the age of thirteen and has grown two hairs, and,
according to Baba Bathra 115b, if a boy has not grown hairs by the
age of twenty, he may then be considered an adult. The life cycles of
humans and butterflies both begin with eggs. Human eggs become
children and butterfly eggs become caterpillars. A caterpillar matures
into a butterfly; a human matures into an adult. Unlike humans, who
spend most of their lives as adults, butterflies spend most of their
lives as caterpillars. The lifespan of this particular species is unknow-
able, but, like other butterflies, the state of butterfly-ness proves its
maturity, just as the development of secondary sexual characteristics
does for human beings. The community clearly had problems with
the basics of biology, but they did understand the basics of Jewish
law. Thus, again, the question of humanity must be turned to sen-
tience.
In the second volume, Phyllis Gotlieb addresses the same question
of kaddish. Samuel Zohar Ben Reuven Begelman lives on Tau Ceti IV
 1211

and is the last Jew alive in the universe. The government responds to
his request of a “mourner/gravedigger” with a robot who can “dig
and speak recorded prayers” (Gotlieb 6). This robot then studies
Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek; Torah and Talmud; commentary in
response; and the great writers of Jewish import in every language
(7). When the robot, O/G, arrives on Tau Ceti, he discovers
“small beings . . . speaking clear Hebrew” (10). These creatures, the
Cnidor, name the robot Golem because he is to them “a machine of
deliverance” (10). Additionally, they called it Begelman Rav Zohar
(12).
Golem, after spending time with the Cnidor, believes “that they
now are capable of saying the prayer” that Begelman desires (Gotlieb
14). Begelman and Golem debate if these creatures can “be made
Jews” (14, emphasis original). These creatures, who live in bogs and
have flippers for rear limbs, three webbed fingers on each forelimb,
one teat, and one sexual organ, are sentient and hermaphroditic (10,
14). Because of their hermaphroditic nature, Begelman argues that
they cannot follow the “laws of marriage and divorce, sexual behavior,
the duties of the man at prayer and the woman with the child” (14).
Golem argues that he “was thinking merely of prayers that G-d
might listen to in charity or appreciation” (14). Later in the story,
Begelmen admitted that he found the Cnidor “ugly, and filthy, and
the opposite of everything I thought . . . I despise them. Almost, I
hated them” (22). Begelmen only taught them Judaism because he
was “fiercely, hideously lonely” (22). When he dies, however, he
requests that the Cnidor recite for him Psalm 104 (23).
Gotlieb, through Begelman, has forgotten the Bible. Genesis 5:2
says that G-d created man and woman and gave their name as Adam,
and that Jewish religious texts report that Adam was an androgynous
being (Rabbah on Gen. 1:26). Therefore, that G-d created other
androgynous or hermaphroditic beings should not seem so far-
fetched. The Talmud addresses the question of the hermaphrodite in
Baba Bathra chapter 9, mishna. Here, the question of inheritance por-
tions of sons, daughters, and hermaphroditic offspring is discussed.
Also in the Shulchan Aruch, the question of marriage to, or divorce
from, a hermaphrodite is addressed. The Cnidor clearly project five of
the six characteristics of humans as delineated in Chagigah: under-
standing, speaking Hebrew, ingestion, defecation, and procreation.
However, they do not walk upright. Loike and Tendler, however,
1212 Mara Wendy Cohen Ioannides

would say that they are human because they “express moral intelli-
gence” (2). Therefore, Begelman’s initial arguments fail.
This story was first published in 1996. It was not until 1996 that
the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) publicly
announced their support of homosexual civil marriages, and it was
2000 when they supported a Jewish ritual for same-sex marriages
(Central, “Contemporary”; Central, “Resolution”). The Jewish Theo-
logical Seminary only gave their approval to same-sex marriage in
2012 (Goldman). Even though the Reconstructionist Movement sup-
ported same-sex marriage in 1993 (Reconstructionist), in 2000 its
membership was still only two percent of the American Jewish popu-
lation (Ament 8). Not until 2004 did Massachusetts become the first
American state to legalize homosexual marriage. The CCAR accepted
the marriage of sterile postsurgical transsexuals in 1978 (Jacob et al.)
and the Conservative Movement in 2003 (Committee). While science
fiction may predict many things, the genre cannot predict everything.
Should Gotlieb have had the responsa on homosexual and transsexual
marriage, then Begelman might not have struggled quite so much
with fertile hermaphroditic marriage.
There are numerous references to the conflict between the Mesopo-
tamian and the early Hebrew religion in this story. Golem finds pots
in which sacrifices have been buried, Begelmen refers to their god as
Baal, and a small group returns to their pagan sacrificial rite just as
the Hebrews did while waiting for Moses to descend from the moun-
tain. Over time, the ill Begelman heals and cares for the Cnidor,
lighting Sabbath and holy-day candles, naming their children, and
mourning with them over the dead. As time progresses, the Cnidor
take names and wishes for surnames. Begelmen refuses them Ben
Reuven, the name they request, as that is his name, but gives them
all “b’nei Avraham” because “there is no surname they can be given
except the name of the convert, which is ben Avraham or bat Avra-
ham, according to the gender of the first name. And how can they be
converts when they can keep no law and do not even know G-d? And
what does that matter now?” (Gotlieb 17). Finally, he says to them,
“children of b’nai Avraham, Jews have converted, and Jews have
adopted, but never children of a different species, so there is no prece-
dent I can find to let any one of you call yourself a child of Zohar,
but as a community I see no reason why you cannot call yourself
b’nei Zohar, my children, collectively” (Gotleib 21).
 1213

Dann sees this story as a “myth for our time” that addresses the
question “what is a Jew?” (Gotlieb 5). As a creation myth, this story
repeats the story of Abraham becoming the first Jew. For Dann, the
stories in the previous volume address the question of the “mystical
experience” that Judaism could be, but these stories also address the
question of what is a Jew. J. Norman King, formerly in the Depart-
ment of Theology at the University of Windsor, remarks that most
often “the alien [in science fiction] is a substitute G-d-figure and
father-figure” (256). Gotlieb has carried this through, albeit from a
different perspective. Begelman struggles with his relationship with
the Cnidor because he views them as alien—as other. However, since
Begelman is the alien on their planet, it is not hard to see King’s
analogy. They look up to him. They want to be like him. He is the
alien, and he is the father figure, an interesting twist to a common
theme.

Conclusion

Lamm agrees with Maimonides that G-d is not concerned with G-d
alone. To believe that is an anthropocentric understanding of G-d
(153). As Lamm argues, when we discover our alien neighbors, then
we will have to deal with an even bigger theological question: What
is the purpose of humans? No longer will humans be the sole purpose
of creation (153). Science fiction authors address questions we might
well have to consider someday. As good writers do, they have based
their work on what they know—people—and as Bova explains, “the
best science fiction . . . are stories about people. The people may be
nonhuman . . .. But they will be people” (6, emphasis original). As
Isaac Asimov has written, “We come to the conclusion that the Holy
Writings lead the way to science fiction” (“Introduction” 2). Science
fiction writers begin with the known laws of science; Jewish fiction
writers begin with the laws of Judaism. Thus, writers of Jewish
science fiction apply two different sets of laws, making their work
more complex. The authors of the stories in Dann’s anthology
demonstrate that Jewish science fiction writers have made great
advances in considering how religion will need to respond to the pos-
sibilities of space exploration.
1214 Mara Wendy Cohen Ioannides

Note
1. At the time of the publication of this story, the Reform Movement had yet to write their
Statement of Patrilineal Descent.

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Mara Wendy Cohen Ioannides teaches in the English Department at Mis-

souri State University and is the president of the Midwest Jewish Studies
Association. She has edited the only published volume on the history of the
jews of the ozarks and has published nearly a dozen articles, book chapters,
and books on the jews of america, the jews of the midwest, and the jews of
the ozarks.