Is there any difference between the approach to study in a yeshiva and that in a university?

Both of them challenge and stretch the mind. Both are concerned with finding truth. But their aims are different. Abraham Joshua Heschel's essay "The Meaning of Torah" explains it. Heschel says:

I came to the University of Berlin to study philosophy. I looked for a system of thought, for the depth of the spirit, for the meaning of existence. Erudite and profound scholars gave courses. They opened the gates of the history of philosophy. I was exposed to the austere discipline of unremitting inquiry. Yet, in spite of the impressive intellectual attainments offered to me, I became increasingly aware of the gulf that separated my views from those held at the university. The questions I was moved by could not even be adequately phrased in categories of their thinking. The problem to my professors was how to be good. In my ears the question rang: how to be holy. To Judaism the idea of the good is penultimate. It cannot exist without the holy.... Man cannot be good unless he strives to be holy.

In those months in Berlin I went through moments of profound bitterness.... I walked alone in the evenings through the magnificent streets of Berlin. I admired the solidity of its architecture. There were concerts, theatres and lectures by famous scholars, and I was pondering whether to go to the new Max Reinhardt play or to a lecture about the theory of relativity. Suddenly I noticed the sun had gone down, evening had arrived: "From what time may one recite the Shema in the evening?" I had forgotten that sunset is my business - that my task is "to restore the world to the kingship of the Almighty".

The university trains a student in historical perspective, critical skills and technical expertise. It does not guide a person to holiness, to "restoring the world to the kingship of the Almighty". It does not claim to do so. Like the yeshiva, it takes words seriously, but unlike the yeshiva it does not cherish the Word of God. It does not instil what Heschel calls "sensitivity to spiritual meaning... a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell, as if He were waiting to enter our lives...."

The university is concerned with civilisation; the yeshiva is concerned with eternity. Despite its critics, university education has its value, but it is the yeshiva that has both value and values.

Why do some people think there is a conflict between religion and science?

Probably the first scientific discovery in human history followed the Divine promise, "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease." (Genesis 8:22) When early man saw that these words were actually verifiable in his own experience, he discovered that there were patterns in time and, by extension, patterns in everything. This became the axiomatic fact that could be relied upon and utilised in planning one's life.

This being the case, it is surprising that for the last four hundred years there has been talk of conflict between religion and science. It is surprising, because without religion, science would be impossible. Only because religion posits and guarantees that there is order and pattern can science dare to formulate hypotheses and examine them. No wonder the poet Edward Young said in the 18th century, "An undevout astronomer is mad." The scientist, whether he or she recognises it or not, must be a religious person in the deepest sense because science is based on faith, the faith that there is a pattern in nature A.N. Whitehead said that the confidence of science in the intelligibility of the world comes from the religious insistence on the rationality of God.

Science increases one's awe and reverence for the creation. If it is realistic, then science also admits its tentativeness; hypotheses are never the last word, and only in religion has Man found the last word.

In addition, science without religion, as Einstein said, is lame. The scientist can discover wonderful things but not necessarily know how to handle and apply them; the Nazi experiments might have had technical scientific value, but it is only because of religion and morality that we know they were reprehensible and wrong.

Those who toppled religion and worshipped science - with its temples of its own, its saints, its priests, its mysteries and its rituals, even its sacred language - are more inclined these days to see it as another god that failed because of its sheer inability to give guidance as to values and directions in life. With the modern threats to human stability and survival, scientific man needs religion more, not less.