Our group sets out to address an ancient problem from a new perspective. The problem, which has intrigued and been debated for centuries, is Jewish survival as a people in exile, dispersed over the four corners of the earth since antiquity. The proposition we set out to explore is that effective communication, over time and across space, was key to the survival of Jews as "one people, scattered" (Book of Esther, 3:8), forming what many consider "the mother of all diasporas".

Beyond approaching a major hisorical quantary in a new way, we are also developing a novel scholarly agenda. This agenda is the re-understanding of Jewish civilization from a communications perspective and, more generally, proposing that history and communications be studied jointly. History, after all, aspires to trace all aspects of human life and understand it in all its complexity. Communication is one significant, albeit neglected, aspect of human history; but in addition, it is a potential key to grasping and untangling historical complexity. For by its nature, communication is the story of linkages, of interconnections and interrelations. It may therefore serve as a central site, anchoring a multifaceted perspective on historical development in all its richness. At the same time history, which is the great warehouse of human experience, can serve as the ultimate database, and a giant multifunction laboratory for testing, fine-tuning and even generating ideas and theories about communication.

 

Two major revolutions in physics took place at the beginning of twentieth century: the discoveries of quantum theory and general relativity. Both theories are extremely successful in their domains of applicability, and yet they are incompatible. Therefore, a deeper theory which would give quantum theory and general relativity as suitable approximations is needed. But attempts to obtain this deeper theory, called quantum gravity, which we hope would also unify all the fundamental interactions, have so far not been successful, despite the work of many brilliant physicists for more than seven decades.

While there are no conceptual problems in understanding general relativity, this is not true of quantum theory. The real difficulty in understanding and interpreting quantum theory may be the reason why we have not yet obtained the deeper theory. One of the first conceptual problems to arise during the creation of quantum theory was the wave/particle duality of light and matter. For example, when a photon strikes a photographic plate, it creates a localized spot as if it were a particle. Yet the same photon when it is constituent of a light wave has a wave aspect. All other particles, such as the electron, neutron and proton, exhibit this wave/particle duality as well.