Isaac Asimov's epic 'Foundation' series is now a TV show

• Author: STEPHEN SILVER/JTA
• Published date: 24 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The series, which follows a mathematician struggling to convince a galactic federation that their society is on the brink of collapse, blends anxieties of the 1940s and '50s, when the source material was originally written, with modern global concerns like climate change.

It was co-created by Josh Friedman and David S. Goyer. Friedman identifies as Jewish, while showrunner Goyer, son of a Jewish mother, wrote and directed the dybbuk-themed 2009 horror movie "The Unborn."

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But what of Asimov himself, a biochemist at Boston University and one of the most influential sci-fi writers of all time? That's a much more complicated question.

Isaac Asimov was born in Russia in 1920, and his family emigrated to the United States when was 3 years old. He had Jewish parents who were themselves raised Orthodox, and they raised him in Brooklyn. However, Asimov gravitated to more humanist beliefs from an early age, and as an adult identified vocally with atheism until his death in 1992.

So on the one hand, Asimov became one of pop culture's most prominent atheists; and on the other, he was open and prideful about his Jewish heritage.

The author addressed his beliefs and background in his posthumous 1994 memoir, "I, Asimov," stating that his father, "for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart." While acknowledging that he and his father had never discussed such matters, he speculated that his father, having been "brought up under the Tsarist tyranny, under which Jews were frequently brutalized," had "turned revolutionary in his heart."

Asimov did not have a bar mitzvah, which he attributed to his parents choosing to raise him without religion and not, as some suspected, "an act of rebellion against Orthodox parents." However, he said, he "gained an interest" in the Bible as he got older, although he eventually realized that he preferred the type of fictional books that would one day make him famous: "Science fiction and science books had taught me their version of the universe and I was not ready to accept the Creation tale of Genesis or the various miracles described throughout the book."

Having the first name "Isaac," in the 21st century, isn't necessarily a certain giveaway that a person is Jewish. But in Asimov's time, it almost always was. And while Asimov sometimes faced pressure to change his name for...