Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 - Nicolas Copernicus and His Revolution
Chapter 2 - The Talmudic View of the Universe
Chapter 3 - David Gans and the First Mention of Copernicus in Hebrew Literature
Chapter 4 - The First Jewish Copernican: Rabbi Joseph Solomon Delmedigo
Chapter 5 - ''Copernicus Is the Son of Satan.'' The First Jewish Rejections of Copernicus
Chapter 6 - David Nieto and Copernicanism in London
Chapter 7 - The Jewish Encyclopedias
Chapter 8 - The Eighteenth Century. Jews and Copernicus in the Newtonian Era
Chapter 9 - ''I Have Written a Book For the Young People.'' David Friesenhausen's Mosdot Tevel
Chapter 10 - The Nineteenth Century: Copernicus Without Hesitation
Chapter 11 - ''Let Copernicus and a Thousand Like Him Be Removed From the World.'' Reuven Landau's Rejection
Chapter 12 - The Modern Period
Chapter 13 - Relativity and Contemporary Jewish Geocentrists
Chapter 14 - Conclusions
Appendix
Bibliography

About the Author

Jeremy Brown is associate professor of emergency medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington DC. He has written for Discover Magazine, and his op-ed pieces have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Reviews

"Jeremy Brown has written a deeply researched and insightful account of a fascinating chapter in the often-fraught encounter between religion and science: the impact of the Copernican revolution on Jewish thinkers from its first appearance to today. This is an enthralling work, a wonderful addition to scholarship on a subject that continues to engage us today." --Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks, author of The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for
Meaning
"This fascinating volume offers both a definitive history of the Jewish encounter with Copernican thought and a carefully-nuanced analysis of how religion and science interact. A model study." --Jonathan D. Sarna, Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University and Chief Historian, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, PA
"New Heavens and a New Earth presents a fascinating study of a major subject of early modern and modern Jewish intellectual history. Jeremy Brown has written a comprehensive, intelligent, well researched, and well-written survey of the long history of Jewish responses to Copernicus. His masterful treatment of the subject is clearly the best written to date, revising, correcting, and significantly enlarging all previous accounts. Brown's work is a major
contribution not only to the history of Jewish thought on cosmology and science but is also important in providing scholars a comparative lens through which to consider Jewish responses with those already
well-known within the Christian world and beyond." --David B. Ruderman, Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Pennsylvania
"Reams have been written about the gradual acceptance of Copernicus's sun-centered system, but this book blazes a new trail: the Jewish reception of heliocentric cosmology. A moving earth challenged the tenets of the Jewish faith, and, as in Catholic and Protestant circles, it took centuries to shake off a strictly literal reading of the Torah. Brown's volume now makes it easy to examine the similarities and differences of these faith traditions on a critical
scientific hinge point." --Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science, Harvard University