“Rabbi, what was there before the Big Bang? My father told me there was a Cosmic Egg, but what’s a Cosmic Egg, and where did the Cosmic Egg come from? He didn’t know. He said to ask you.”
“Well,” says the Rabbi, “G-d was there. That’s why we sing ‘Adon olam asher malach…’ ‘The Lord of the Universe was King even before any created thing was made.’
“But how could G-d have been there when the universe wasn’t even created yet? I mean, where was G-d?”
“Well,” said the Rabbi, “that’s a very good question. And I’ll try to give you a very good answer. It starts with a story about Zeno, a Greek philosopher who lived around 2500 years ago, just about the time the 2nd Temple was built. He once said (it was a joke, the kind of joke philosophers finds funny) that nobody can ever go from here to there. Why? Because before you go from here all the way to there, you have to go half way. And before you go half way, you have to go half of half way. And before you go half of half way, you have to go half of half of halfway…And so on. So you can never get from here to there.
Same thing with time. Before it’s a minute from now, it’s 30 seconds from now. And before that it’s 15 seconds, and before that…
Now forget about Zeno, and let’s move up to the present day. A great physicist named Stephen Hawkins used Zeno’s paradox, but in reverse. If we were to hit ‘rewind’ on the universe, it would go back and back and back. Space and time would get smaller and smaller—but never disappear completely, because there would always be a little more space, and a little more time, to go. And that very compact space and time was the Cosmic Egg.”
“But Rabbi, that’s silly. We all know that you can go from here to there. And time can flow from now until an hour from now.”
“Absolutely correct, dear. Very good. So what does that mean? It means that in fact, space and time and everything in them had a beginning. And therefore something, or better Someone, set all of this, all of every place and moment and thing, in motion.
And that’s G-d.”
“So ‘Adon olam asher malach…’ ‘The Lord of the Universe was King even before any created thing was made.’”
“Right,” said the Rabbi. “Go tell your father.”