Science & Technology

Article by https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/17/us/victor-edward-cohn-80-science-reporter.html

Three Thoughts after Totality

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While words and photos will never be able to capture the experience of totality, a few thoughts came to me after driving fourteen hours over two days with my family for this scientific and awe-inspiring pilgrimage.

Predictability and the Unforeseen

The solar eclipse itself was completely predictable from an astronomical perspective – there was even an article from an Ohio newspaper from 1970 letting people know that “the next showing [would be] in 2024.” And if airlines and hotels actually did book travel twenty years in advance, you could know right now that you should travel to Tulsa, Tampa, or Orlando on August 12, 2045 to be in the path of totality.

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(Almost) Eclipsing the Eclipse

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As the wine steward said to Pharaoh in Genesis 41:9, “I declare my sins now.” The sin I declare now is my tone-deafness to the significance of this week’s solar eclipse.  I just didn’t understand why it was such a big deal to so many people, including to many of the Rabbinic Fellows in Clal’s LEAP program, run in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.

In anticipation of our 3-day gathering in NYC, a number of our Fellows asked if/how we were making time and space to experience and reflect on the eclipse. My immediate and initial, and happily internal-only, response was that we were not planning to do so. I appreciated that many people were making a big deal of this event, and even have close friends who were traveling with their families from NYC to Canada or Maine in order to experience the 100% eclipse of the sun, as opposed to the 88% eclipse that could be glimpsed at home, but “interrupt” a gather of Katz Center scholars from around the world and a group of rabbis from across the county, for the eclipse?  I just couldn’t see it.  And then, I realized that I needed a new set of lenses. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist).

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The Eclipse Isn’t Just a Natural Process — It’s a Historical Event

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Our family isn’t great about planning things in advance. There have been years when, say, Pesach would be coming in about a week, and we realized we hadn’t ordered all the food we’d need for the seders, leading to a few rather frantic trips to the kosher supermarket.

So while we had been hearing about the upcoming eclipse, we had sort of figured that a 90% partial eclipse (the path along which we live) would be a decent enough experience, and didn’t spend a whole lot of time mapping out a plan – we’d go outside, say, “Cool!” a few times like we did for the 2017 eclipse, and then go back inside.

But then we heard that a partial eclipse wouldn’t be anything like totality. Having no real point of comparison, I sent a note to my friend Dr. Ethan Siegel, an astrophysicist who writes for Big Think, and asked whether investing all the time, energy, and hassle for getting to see the totality would be worth it. He gave an answer that made us book a hotel right that moment: “As someone who has seen partial, annular, and total eclipses, I have to say that a 90% partial eclipse is about a 5 out of 10; an annular eclipse is about a 9 out of 10; and a total eclipse is about a 1,000,000 out of 10.” So, while we’re definitely a bit nervous about cloud cover, running out of snacks, and bumper-to-bumper traffic, we’ve now got a plan for Monday, April 8, 2024.

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