An Orthodox rabbi and Steven Weinberg walk into an email exchange…

Ever since I posted my obituary for the great Steven Weinberg three months ago, I’ve gotten a steady trickle of emails—all of which I’ve appreciated enormously—from people who knew Steve, or were influenced by him, and who wanted to share their own thoughts and memories. Last week, I was contacted by one Moshe Katz, an Orthodox rabbi, who wanted to share a long email exchange that he’d had with Steve, about Steve’s reasons for rejecting his birth-religion of Judaism (along with every other religion). Even though Rabbi Katz, rather than Steve, does most of the talking in this exchange, and even though Steve mostly expresses the same views he’d expressed in many of his public writings, I knew immediately on seeing this exchange that it could be of broader interest—so I secured permission to share it here on Shtetl-Optimized, both from Rabbi Katz and from Steve’s widow Louise.

While longtime readers can probably guess what I think about most of the topics discussed, I’ll refrain from any editorial commentary in this post—but of course, feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments, and maybe I’ll join in. Mostly, reading this exchange reminded me that someone at some point should write a proper book-length biography of Steve, and someone should also curate and publish a selection of his correspondence, much like Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track did for Richard Feynman. There must be a lot more gems to be mined.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the exchange (10 pages, PDF).