(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, Oct. 7, 2010.)
Among the stories of Bereshit we find the recurring theme of one righteous person among the wicked many: Noah, who was somewhat less evil than everybody else on Earth, prior to the flood; Abraham, who the midrash tells us was the first to choose monotheism over idolatry; Lot, who was surely no saint, but was the only one in Sodom and Gomorrah to merit being saved. Over and over, the central characters of the Genesis narrative are held up as rare light in gloomy times.
During a class that I was teaching at the Waxman Hebrew High School and Youth House on a recent evening, a student made the claim that all Muslims wanted to kill Jews. Given recent news events, I suppose that it would not be too hard for a twelve-year-old to put this idea together. I would wager that there are a fair number of Jewish adults who believe the same thing.
It is an unavoidable human trait to view groups of people in such simple terms. Our lives are so complicated that we take any available shortcuts for understanding the world. The desire to judge a person’s character based on obvious and yet irrelevant information (color of skin, religion, ethnicity) is simply too tempting.
Non-Jews have for centuries painted Jews with particular stereotypes that we know not to be true; it is difficult for us not to do the same of other groups. The human reality, of course, is that every society, every group, every culture has its own richly-textured fabric of individual personalities and characters. We like to see this in our own peer group, but not in the other. This is perhaps by evolutionary advantage, as it must have made sense to our ancestors to assume that all saber-toothed tigers would attack if given the opportunity, or that we could not trust the guys on the other side of the river who looked funny, made unintelligible sounds, and competed for the same food source.
And so the Torah, divine and yet so human, reinforces this simplistic understanding of the world. Everybody in Sodom and Gomorrah was bad. The generation before the flood deserved to die. So too the Egyptians. Reducing a group to a single adjective (e.g. wicked) might work in the ancient tales of our people, but such thinking is dangerous in today’s world.
I replied to this student that it is unfair to paint “all Muslims” with one brush, and that just as there are Muslims that for sure want to kill Jews or Americans or Christians or other “infidels,” there are far more who do not want to kill anybody. And the same goes for every other group, including our own.
I would prefer that we learn to view the other through the rabbinic lens of Pirqei Avot, where Yehoshua ben Perahya says, “Hevei dan et kol adam lekhaf zekhut.” Give each individual the benefit of the doubt. Only then may we, in the words of the Psalmist, seek peace and pursue it.
Showing posts with label beraishis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beraishis. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Bereshit 5771 - Can Entropy Be Reversed?
(Originally delivered on October 2, 2010.)
And so it begins again: Bereshit bara elohim. “In the beginning God created,” or “When God began to create...” or “At the beginning of God’s creating of heaven and earth,” depending on your translation. And, on the first day, Yehi or, “Let there be light.”
Once upon a time, I was a voracious reader of science fiction. The beginning of the Torah always reminds me of a short story by Isaac Asimov, written in 1956, called “The Last Question.” It is a series of vignettes about how successive generations of people ask successively bigger and more complex computers the question, “Can the entropy of the universe be reversed?”
Entropy is a measure of disorder. It’s the scientific term for a mess. When Hannah and Zev pull all of their toys off the shelves in our living room and scatter them about the floor, the entropy of the room increases.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy in a closed system always increases. Our universe is a closed system, and so the disorder of the universe, the entropy, always increases, and this can never be reversed, so that at some distant time in the future, all of the structure of the universe will cease to exist, and chaos will be complete.
So in the Asimov story, each time the question about entropy is asked, the computers return the same answer: “There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
At the end of the story, the final, most comprehensive, most transcendent computer is asked the question, and, realizing that all possible data has been collected, determines how to reverse entropy, and says, “Let there be light.” And there was light.
I will come back to entropy in a moment.
* * *
Just before Sukkot, I attended a fundraiser for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. One of the speakers was an Israeli who, during reserve service in Lebanon in 2006, was caught in a car that was hit by a missile, courtesy of Hizballah. He was burned from head to toe, and was initially taken for dead, but managed to survive. His presentation was tragic, graphic, and he delivered it with subtle humor and an elegant touch.
Now I am supportive of the work that FIDF does, and this former soldier’s story was quite moving.
However, it also included slides of him in the hospital, recuperating from the burns that covered his body and the shrapnel that tore holes in his flesh. It was designed to shock. We are apparently so inured to everything, so apathetic, that the only way that anybody can listen long enough is if we present a grave threat, a serious danger, or graphic violence. It’s kind of like television news. You know, if it bleeds, it leads.
I have tried softer approaches to the message I am about to deliver. Now, please permit me to shock you.
I have been here for three years now. In that time, I have officiated at:
3 beritot milah (including that of my own son)
2 baby namings
9 weddings
and
at least 26 funerals.
Now, one might be able to explain these figures away by pointing out that more people are involved with synagogues and/or rabbis later in life, skewing the results. Also, more people require a rabbi’s service in times of death; not everybody holds a traditional baby naming, for example, and the rabbi is optional at a Berit Milah. And of course, nearly half of all marriages involving American Jews include one non-Jewish partner, and I cannot officiate at such marriages.
Sometimes, though, I worry about the future of American Jewry. Will the forces of entropy drag us down, or will we overcome them?
Here are a few other items that have caught my attention in recent weeks:
Item 1.
As some of you may recall, I spoke on Rosh Hashanah about the key role that the Youth House plays in building our Jewish future, about making actively Jewish adults.
Two weeks ago, a Youth House parent reacted to the sermon by telling me that many parents prioritize their children’s activities based on what will get them into good colleges, and that if I want kids to come to the Youth House, I have to demonstrate the value of attending. What do they get out of it?
Effectively, what he was asking was, I want my child to go to a good school. How will the Youth House help him do so? Is it worth the investment of money and time?
Item 2.
During the High Holidays, there were hundreds of children in and about this building. Many went into the various age-appropriate services that were offered for them. Many, and especially those older than 13, did not. There were, I hear, plenty of teens in the parking lot, playing in the playground, glued to the screen of their electronic devices, and so forth.
Two of the members of the Youth House staff, our Youth Director Joe Pearlman and our Religious Activities Director Itamar Futterman, approached some of these teens to try to get them to come into the teen service that they hosted in the Youth House. And the reactions they got were variations of, “No, way. I’m not going in there. You’ve got to be kidding me,” and so forth.
Now, just a look around this room will show you how strong this community is. We can be comfortable with how many people are here today in services, or even how many come on a Shabbat morning without a bar or bat mitzvah. Even last Thursday, the first day of Sukkot, many members of this community, including many young children were here, joining together in the festival tefillot.
But I am a little bit more concerned about our teenagers, those between the ages of 13 and 18. Where are they?
I am happy that Aaron and Eric are two boys (now men!) whose families are heavily involved with Temple Israel, and who have a positive involvement with and attitude towards Judaism, Jewish life, and the synagogue. I am also certain that I will see them both around this building frequently in the coming years.
But about 50 children ascend this bimah every year to demonstrate their capability in reading Torah and Haftarah, and sharing with us the words of divrei Torah that they have crafted themselves.
And many of them, I rarely see again. Teens that I have worked with, that I have exchanged words of Torah with, that I have established a bond with. Teenagers from whom I have learned many new ways to understand our tradition. And that saddens me.
I read a great article in the NY Times about a week ago. It was about how parents often worry about precisely the wrong things: that is, they worry about perceived dangers that are violent, and not about the more subtle, less sensationalized dangers.
For example, many parents do not let their child wait for the school bus outside alone, for fear of abduction by strangers, which affects only about 100 children each year in the entire country. But few seem concerned with the poor diet and lack of exercise that has driven up childhood obesity rates. Nearly 1 in 5 children today are obese.
Well, here is something that some of us have not thought of. While some of us are very concerned with getting our children into college, some of us are pushing Jewish life out the window in favor of a myriad of other activities.
Let me tell you all something, my friends: your child or grandchild will, most likely, not grow up to become a star athlete or the first violin chair of the NY Philharmonic or the next Kristin Chenoweth. But he or she WILL be an adult Jew, one who will (God willing) be a part of a Jewish community, and perhaps raise a Jewish family as well. And that is why they need to be here now. Not in the parking lot. Not at basketball practice. Here, at Temple Israel, on Shabbat morning, and if not sitting next to you then at least sharing it with their peers at the Youth House or Junior Congregation or Morah Ronnie Katz’ toddler service.
Adam and Eve were forced out of Paradise. It might be interesting to argue over whose fault this is, but the salient feature is this: this nation, with its vast wealth, religious freedom and tolerance, and infinite choice in all matters was Paradise to our immigrant forbears. But it will soon cease to be Gan Eden if our grandchildren have no connection to the ancient mass of wisdom known as Judaism.
Our entropy increases.
The good news is that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has a workaround. Entropy may be reversed if you put some work into the system. My living room is not exactly a closed system, but it seems that the only way that I can restore order is if I pick up Hannah and Zev’s toys and put them back on the shelf. And that is precisely what we need to do.
I am working hard this year to make sure that the Youth House is appealing to teens, that it provides serious, intellectually stimulating content coupled with fun social events. Our Fall Retreat Shabbaton, next weekend, will do exactly that, and it is also open to all in grades 8-12, even if your teen is not enrolled at the Youth House. And did I mention that I am personally leading a trip to Israel for teenagers in February? It’s also open to everybody in grades 8-12.
And of course we all want the best for our children. We want the best opportunities, the best college, the brightest future. Continuing Jewish education through high school and, for that matter, university and adulthood, can be a part of that picture, ensuring the most brilliant, dazzling future for all of us. No college admissions officer will look down on time spent learning the texts of our rich, literary tradition.
Two weeks ago, when tornados blasted through Brooklyn and Queens, the power went out in the Youth House about 20 minutes before the end of classes. We brought all the students downstairs, and, in the dark, Itamar led us all in an activity in which students passed a roll of toilet paper from person to person, telling each other about themselves. It was the first opportunity of the year for the entire student body, from grades 7 to 11, to get to know each other, albeit in unusual circumstances. Two days before Yom Kippur, just before our annual bout of introspection and teshuvah, Vayehi or. And there was light.
Let us work in partnership to form stronger Jewish identities in our teenagers and imbue them with a love of Torah, avodah (serving God), and gemilut hasadim (acts of lovingkindness), I need the commitment of parents who are willing to put the work into this system. Join with me for the Jewish future.
And so it begins again: Bereshit bara elohim. “In the beginning God created,” or “When God began to create...” or “At the beginning of God’s creating of heaven and earth,” depending on your translation. And, on the first day, Yehi or, “Let there be light.”
Once upon a time, I was a voracious reader of science fiction. The beginning of the Torah always reminds me of a short story by Isaac Asimov, written in 1956, called “The Last Question.” It is a series of vignettes about how successive generations of people ask successively bigger and more complex computers the question, “Can the entropy of the universe be reversed?”
Entropy is a measure of disorder. It’s the scientific term for a mess. When Hannah and Zev pull all of their toys off the shelves in our living room and scatter them about the floor, the entropy of the room increases.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy in a closed system always increases. Our universe is a closed system, and so the disorder of the universe, the entropy, always increases, and this can never be reversed, so that at some distant time in the future, all of the structure of the universe will cease to exist, and chaos will be complete.
So in the Asimov story, each time the question about entropy is asked, the computers return the same answer: “There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
At the end of the story, the final, most comprehensive, most transcendent computer is asked the question, and, realizing that all possible data has been collected, determines how to reverse entropy, and says, “Let there be light.” And there was light.
I will come back to entropy in a moment.
* * *
Just before Sukkot, I attended a fundraiser for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. One of the speakers was an Israeli who, during reserve service in Lebanon in 2006, was caught in a car that was hit by a missile, courtesy of Hizballah. He was burned from head to toe, and was initially taken for dead, but managed to survive. His presentation was tragic, graphic, and he delivered it with subtle humor and an elegant touch.
Now I am supportive of the work that FIDF does, and this former soldier’s story was quite moving.
However, it also included slides of him in the hospital, recuperating from the burns that covered his body and the shrapnel that tore holes in his flesh. It was designed to shock. We are apparently so inured to everything, so apathetic, that the only way that anybody can listen long enough is if we present a grave threat, a serious danger, or graphic violence. It’s kind of like television news. You know, if it bleeds, it leads.
I have tried softer approaches to the message I am about to deliver. Now, please permit me to shock you.
I have been here for three years now. In that time, I have officiated at:
3 beritot milah (including that of my own son)
2 baby namings
9 weddings
and
at least 26 funerals.
Now, one might be able to explain these figures away by pointing out that more people are involved with synagogues and/or rabbis later in life, skewing the results. Also, more people require a rabbi’s service in times of death; not everybody holds a traditional baby naming, for example, and the rabbi is optional at a Berit Milah. And of course, nearly half of all marriages involving American Jews include one non-Jewish partner, and I cannot officiate at such marriages.
Sometimes, though, I worry about the future of American Jewry. Will the forces of entropy drag us down, or will we overcome them?
Here are a few other items that have caught my attention in recent weeks:
Item 1.
As some of you may recall, I spoke on Rosh Hashanah about the key role that the Youth House plays in building our Jewish future, about making actively Jewish adults.
Two weeks ago, a Youth House parent reacted to the sermon by telling me that many parents prioritize their children’s activities based on what will get them into good colleges, and that if I want kids to come to the Youth House, I have to demonstrate the value of attending. What do they get out of it?
Effectively, what he was asking was, I want my child to go to a good school. How will the Youth House help him do so? Is it worth the investment of money and time?
Item 2.
During the High Holidays, there were hundreds of children in and about this building. Many went into the various age-appropriate services that were offered for them. Many, and especially those older than 13, did not. There were, I hear, plenty of teens in the parking lot, playing in the playground, glued to the screen of their electronic devices, and so forth.
Two of the members of the Youth House staff, our Youth Director Joe Pearlman and our Religious Activities Director Itamar Futterman, approached some of these teens to try to get them to come into the teen service that they hosted in the Youth House. And the reactions they got were variations of, “No, way. I’m not going in there. You’ve got to be kidding me,” and so forth.
Now, just a look around this room will show you how strong this community is. We can be comfortable with how many people are here today in services, or even how many come on a Shabbat morning without a bar or bat mitzvah. Even last Thursday, the first day of Sukkot, many members of this community, including many young children were here, joining together in the festival tefillot.
But I am a little bit more concerned about our teenagers, those between the ages of 13 and 18. Where are they?
I am happy that Aaron and Eric are two boys (now men!) whose families are heavily involved with Temple Israel, and who have a positive involvement with and attitude towards Judaism, Jewish life, and the synagogue. I am also certain that I will see them both around this building frequently in the coming years.
But about 50 children ascend this bimah every year to demonstrate their capability in reading Torah and Haftarah, and sharing with us the words of divrei Torah that they have crafted themselves.
And many of them, I rarely see again. Teens that I have worked with, that I have exchanged words of Torah with, that I have established a bond with. Teenagers from whom I have learned many new ways to understand our tradition. And that saddens me.
I read a great article in the NY Times about a week ago. It was about how parents often worry about precisely the wrong things: that is, they worry about perceived dangers that are violent, and not about the more subtle, less sensationalized dangers.
For example, many parents do not let their child wait for the school bus outside alone, for fear of abduction by strangers, which affects only about 100 children each year in the entire country. But few seem concerned with the poor diet and lack of exercise that has driven up childhood obesity rates. Nearly 1 in 5 children today are obese.
Well, here is something that some of us have not thought of. While some of us are very concerned with getting our children into college, some of us are pushing Jewish life out the window in favor of a myriad of other activities.
Let me tell you all something, my friends: your child or grandchild will, most likely, not grow up to become a star athlete or the first violin chair of the NY Philharmonic or the next Kristin Chenoweth. But he or she WILL be an adult Jew, one who will (God willing) be a part of a Jewish community, and perhaps raise a Jewish family as well. And that is why they need to be here now. Not in the parking lot. Not at basketball practice. Here, at Temple Israel, on Shabbat morning, and if not sitting next to you then at least sharing it with their peers at the Youth House or Junior Congregation or Morah Ronnie Katz’ toddler service.
Adam and Eve were forced out of Paradise. It might be interesting to argue over whose fault this is, but the salient feature is this: this nation, with its vast wealth, religious freedom and tolerance, and infinite choice in all matters was Paradise to our immigrant forbears. But it will soon cease to be Gan Eden if our grandchildren have no connection to the ancient mass of wisdom known as Judaism.
Our entropy increases.
The good news is that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has a workaround. Entropy may be reversed if you put some work into the system. My living room is not exactly a closed system, but it seems that the only way that I can restore order is if I pick up Hannah and Zev’s toys and put them back on the shelf. And that is precisely what we need to do.
I am working hard this year to make sure that the Youth House is appealing to teens, that it provides serious, intellectually stimulating content coupled with fun social events. Our Fall Retreat Shabbaton, next weekend, will do exactly that, and it is also open to all in grades 8-12, even if your teen is not enrolled at the Youth House. And did I mention that I am personally leading a trip to Israel for teenagers in February? It’s also open to everybody in grades 8-12.
And of course we all want the best for our children. We want the best opportunities, the best college, the brightest future. Continuing Jewish education through high school and, for that matter, university and adulthood, can be a part of that picture, ensuring the most brilliant, dazzling future for all of us. No college admissions officer will look down on time spent learning the texts of our rich, literary tradition.
Two weeks ago, when tornados blasted through Brooklyn and Queens, the power went out in the Youth House about 20 minutes before the end of classes. We brought all the students downstairs, and, in the dark, Itamar led us all in an activity in which students passed a roll of toilet paper from person to person, telling each other about themselves. It was the first opportunity of the year for the entire student body, from grades 7 to 11, to get to know each other, albeit in unusual circumstances. Two days before Yom Kippur, just before our annual bout of introspection and teshuvah, Vayehi or. And there was light.
Let us work in partnership to form stronger Jewish identities in our teenagers and imbue them with a love of Torah, avodah (serving God), and gemilut hasadim (acts of lovingkindness), I need the commitment of parents who are willing to put the work into this system. Join with me for the Jewish future.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Bereshit 5770 - Two non-conflicting views on Creation
(originally delivered on Oct. 17, 2009)
I have occasionally stated in public that a particular parashah is "my favorite." Well, I realized for the first time this week that I actually have several favorites. Qedoshim, in Vayiqra (Leviticus), is my favorite for interesting and relevant laws (it was also my Bar Mitzvah parashah). Beshallah, in Shemot (Exodus), is also a favorite, because of Shirat Hayam, the song sung by the Israelites after crossing the Sea of Reeds. I am somewhat partial to Vayishlah, because of the story of Jacob's wrestling with the angel, perhaps the most fitting metaphor for Jewish life. But the one that I most love for its commentary possibilities is clearly Bereshit. There is just so much there to talk about- the Big Questions - where did we come from? How did the world begin? And how did our ancestors respond to these questions?
Also particularly appealing about Bereshit is its challenge to the modern, thinking person. Today, most of us do not favor Biblical answers to the Big Questions. Scientific inquiry has long since put to rest any notion that the world was created in six days, 5770 years ago. Nonetheless, the following items about Creation as it is told in the Torah are indeed thought-provoking:
1. That there are, in fact, two creation stories found in the opening chapters of Genesis.
2. There is, in both stories, interplay between God and humans.
3. The themes of love, temptation, loss, and mortality are evident in Creation.
These are human stories, with so much interesting material, and so much wonderful commentary. They continue to inspire us.
As a scientific person and a thinking Jew, I have maintained an ongoing struggle with Bereshit (Genesis/Creation) for most of my life, much in the same way that Jacob wrestles with the aforementioned angel. (This is, of course, what makes us "Yisrael" - that we struggle with God and theological issues.)
An apocryphal story is told of a well-known scientist who once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant turtle." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the turtle standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
Now, we cannot see those turtles. But we do have before us two seemingly conflicting stories before us regarding the origin of the universe: that of Bereshit, and the theory that the scientific community has settled upon, that about 13.7 billion years ago, there was a "Big Bang," when all matter expanded outward in a spectacular explosion, the effects of which we can still measure today.
It is indeed tempting to try to resolve the two stories, to say that the first six days of Bereshit actually took 13.7 billion years, or something similar. But when you get down to the details, the scientific record tells a story that simply cannot be harmoniously reconciled with the first chapter of the Torah.
That does not say, however, that we must remove God from the picture.
When I was in graduate school in chemical engineering at Texas A&M University, which is truly the buckle of the Bible belt, I heard a lecture by a professor of mechanical engineering that was his “proof” of the existence of God. God is evident, said this professor, in the perfection of all of the physical constants of nature. For example, that water is most dense at a point above freezing, allowing sea creatures to have survived in otherwise frozen waters, and Planck's constant in quantum physics, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light – that all of these values are so precise, that they had to be exactly what they were, or life would never have appeared on Earth – this is the primary evidence of God's hand in nature.
Now this man was, like many professors at A&M, a deeply religious Christian, and I presume a reasonably objective scientist as well. His goal, of course, was reconciliation. However, I don't think that this prof's idea adequately responds to the question of Creation. Furthermore, I feel strongly that there is no need to reconcile science and the Torah. I will come back to this in a few minutes.
There is, however, a similar strain of Jewish thought that emerges in the medieval period, albeit not in response to the challenge of science. A certain medieval philosophy favored by some Jewish thinkers, known as Neo-Platonism, argued that our perceived perfection of the universe pointed to perfection of God, and, by contrast, IMperfection of humans. This philosophy appealed, in particular, to the courtier-rabbis of the Golden Age of Spain, in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, and came out in their works, like, for example, in a poem by Isaac Ibn Ghiyyat, an extended tribute to the lights in the sky, created on the 4th day of Creation. It contains the repeated refrain, "Ata asita et hashamayim." “You [God] created the Heavens.”
Here is an excerpt in translation, featuring the seven planets known in the 11th century CE:
"You made the glory of the seven moving stars in contrast to the seven spheres
Created before them, and fixed the stars in the spheres
On the fourth day, you hewed them from the light You created on the first day
On the day on which God created the earth and heaven.
You created the heavens."
There are 21 other stanzas about the various lights in the sky. Says Ibn Ghiyyat, the glory of Creation is reflected in heavenly perfection. Creation is perfect; the heavens are perfect; God is perfect. This is the doctrine of Neo-Platonism. And our goal as humans is to strive to achieve heavenly perfection, to ultimately return from the imperfect world of the flesh to rejoin the perfection of the heavenly God.
Now Neo-Platonism was not originally "Jewish"; rabbis and Jewish philosophers to whom NP appealed made it work with their Judaism. This is a good example that demonstrates that there has, historically, always been room in Judaism for outside ideas: philosophy, art, music, etc. As Conservative Jews, we are certainly open to this.
Likewise, our response to science is not to reject it or ignore it. If that were the case, I would have to go daven somewhere else. On the contrary, the principles of scientific inquiry, in some ways, produced the Conservative Movement. The 19th-c. German idea called "Die Wissenschaft des Judentums" – literally, the science of Judaism – came to study our holy literature and traditions from the perspective that Judaism could be taught and studied critically, using the methods of science.
However, I'd like to advocate for NOT trying to resolve science and the Torah in general, or the Big Bang Theory and Creation in particular, because really, they cannot be adequately resolved. Science tells us (for example) that Creation could NOT have happened 6,000 years ago, in six days. The Torah does.
I cannot deny science. Nor can I deny Judaism. Or, for that matter, God.
We could play games of trying to rectify one with the other, like the professor of mechanical engineering, but this exercise holds the promise of only limited success; ultimately, religious arguments boil down to faith. No matter how elaborate the proof, faith will always be the critical step. But rather, a higher goal is to understand that the authenticity of our religious tradition is not invalidated by scientific evidence that seems to contradict it.
As Orthodox rabbi Natan Slifkin writes, in his book entitled The Challenge of Creation,
“To some, the idea that “God makes the trees grow” has been rendered redundant by the idea that “biological processes, based on chemical and physical laws, make the trees grow.” But the truth is that in formulating scientific explanations for things, we have not removed God from the picture; instead, we have discovered a new picture for Him to have drawn.”
My solution: we should take both stories for what they are - different sets of lenses, or myths, arrived at through different paths. And I use the word “myth” not in its typical meaning of falsehood, but rather the way that Rabbi Neil Gillman of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative movement’s pre-eminent philosopher, uses it: that is, a myth is something that explains the information that we take in and helps us make sense of our world.
Thus we have before us in Creation two sets of myths.
One set is our Jewish national story, the Torah. It may not be factually, historically accurate, but it is still our story.
The other set is the collected body of knowledge acquired through scientific inquiry. It is a different story, a different set of myths. It redraws somewhat the lines of Creation and the functioning of the universe, as Rabbi Slifkin suggests. But it does not contradict God’s role in our lives.
God is eternal. So are the laws of physics. And we continue to discover more about each individually; they need not comment on each other.
I have occasionally stated in public that a particular parashah is "my favorite." Well, I realized for the first time this week that I actually have several favorites. Qedoshim, in Vayiqra (Leviticus), is my favorite for interesting and relevant laws (it was also my Bar Mitzvah parashah). Beshallah, in Shemot (Exodus), is also a favorite, because of Shirat Hayam, the song sung by the Israelites after crossing the Sea of Reeds. I am somewhat partial to Vayishlah, because of the story of Jacob's wrestling with the angel, perhaps the most fitting metaphor for Jewish life. But the one that I most love for its commentary possibilities is clearly Bereshit. There is just so much there to talk about- the Big Questions - where did we come from? How did the world begin? And how did our ancestors respond to these questions?
Also particularly appealing about Bereshit is its challenge to the modern, thinking person. Today, most of us do not favor Biblical answers to the Big Questions. Scientific inquiry has long since put to rest any notion that the world was created in six days, 5770 years ago. Nonetheless, the following items about Creation as it is told in the Torah are indeed thought-provoking:
1. That there are, in fact, two creation stories found in the opening chapters of Genesis.
2. There is, in both stories, interplay between God and humans.
3. The themes of love, temptation, loss, and mortality are evident in Creation.
These are human stories, with so much interesting material, and so much wonderful commentary. They continue to inspire us.
As a scientific person and a thinking Jew, I have maintained an ongoing struggle with Bereshit (Genesis/Creation) for most of my life, much in the same way that Jacob wrestles with the aforementioned angel. (This is, of course, what makes us "Yisrael" - that we struggle with God and theological issues.)
An apocryphal story is told of a well-known scientist who once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant turtle." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the turtle standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
Now, we cannot see those turtles. But we do have before us two seemingly conflicting stories before us regarding the origin of the universe: that of Bereshit, and the theory that the scientific community has settled upon, that about 13.7 billion years ago, there was a "Big Bang," when all matter expanded outward in a spectacular explosion, the effects of which we can still measure today.
It is indeed tempting to try to resolve the two stories, to say that the first six days of Bereshit actually took 13.7 billion years, or something similar. But when you get down to the details, the scientific record tells a story that simply cannot be harmoniously reconciled with the first chapter of the Torah.
That does not say, however, that we must remove God from the picture.
When I was in graduate school in chemical engineering at Texas A&M University, which is truly the buckle of the Bible belt, I heard a lecture by a professor of mechanical engineering that was his “proof” of the existence of God. God is evident, said this professor, in the perfection of all of the physical constants of nature. For example, that water is most dense at a point above freezing, allowing sea creatures to have survived in otherwise frozen waters, and Planck's constant in quantum physics, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light – that all of these values are so precise, that they had to be exactly what they were, or life would never have appeared on Earth – this is the primary evidence of God's hand in nature.
Now this man was, like many professors at A&M, a deeply religious Christian, and I presume a reasonably objective scientist as well. His goal, of course, was reconciliation. However, I don't think that this prof's idea adequately responds to the question of Creation. Furthermore, I feel strongly that there is no need to reconcile science and the Torah. I will come back to this in a few minutes.
There is, however, a similar strain of Jewish thought that emerges in the medieval period, albeit not in response to the challenge of science. A certain medieval philosophy favored by some Jewish thinkers, known as Neo-Platonism, argued that our perceived perfection of the universe pointed to perfection of God, and, by contrast, IMperfection of humans. This philosophy appealed, in particular, to the courtier-rabbis of the Golden Age of Spain, in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, and came out in their works, like, for example, in a poem by Isaac Ibn Ghiyyat, an extended tribute to the lights in the sky, created on the 4th day of Creation. It contains the repeated refrain, "Ata asita et hashamayim." “You [God] created the Heavens.”
Here is an excerpt in translation, featuring the seven planets known in the 11th century CE:
"You made the glory of the seven moving stars in contrast to the seven spheres
Created before them, and fixed the stars in the spheres
On the fourth day, you hewed them from the light You created on the first day
On the day on which God created the earth and heaven.
You created the heavens."
There are 21 other stanzas about the various lights in the sky. Says Ibn Ghiyyat, the glory of Creation is reflected in heavenly perfection. Creation is perfect; the heavens are perfect; God is perfect. This is the doctrine of Neo-Platonism. And our goal as humans is to strive to achieve heavenly perfection, to ultimately return from the imperfect world of the flesh to rejoin the perfection of the heavenly God.
Now Neo-Platonism was not originally "Jewish"; rabbis and Jewish philosophers to whom NP appealed made it work with their Judaism. This is a good example that demonstrates that there has, historically, always been room in Judaism for outside ideas: philosophy, art, music, etc. As Conservative Jews, we are certainly open to this.
Likewise, our response to science is not to reject it or ignore it. If that were the case, I would have to go daven somewhere else. On the contrary, the principles of scientific inquiry, in some ways, produced the Conservative Movement. The 19th-c. German idea called "Die Wissenschaft des Judentums" – literally, the science of Judaism – came to study our holy literature and traditions from the perspective that Judaism could be taught and studied critically, using the methods of science.
However, I'd like to advocate for NOT trying to resolve science and the Torah in general, or the Big Bang Theory and Creation in particular, because really, they cannot be adequately resolved. Science tells us (for example) that Creation could NOT have happened 6,000 years ago, in six days. The Torah does.
I cannot deny science. Nor can I deny Judaism. Or, for that matter, God.
We could play games of trying to rectify one with the other, like the professor of mechanical engineering, but this exercise holds the promise of only limited success; ultimately, religious arguments boil down to faith. No matter how elaborate the proof, faith will always be the critical step. But rather, a higher goal is to understand that the authenticity of our religious tradition is not invalidated by scientific evidence that seems to contradict it.
As Orthodox rabbi Natan Slifkin writes, in his book entitled The Challenge of Creation,
“To some, the idea that “God makes the trees grow” has been rendered redundant by the idea that “biological processes, based on chemical and physical laws, make the trees grow.” But the truth is that in formulating scientific explanations for things, we have not removed God from the picture; instead, we have discovered a new picture for Him to have drawn.”
My solution: we should take both stories for what they are - different sets of lenses, or myths, arrived at through different paths. And I use the word “myth” not in its typical meaning of falsehood, but rather the way that Rabbi Neil Gillman of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative movement’s pre-eminent philosopher, uses it: that is, a myth is something that explains the information that we take in and helps us make sense of our world.
Thus we have before us in Creation two sets of myths.
One set is our Jewish national story, the Torah. It may not be factually, historically accurate, but it is still our story.
The other set is the collected body of knowledge acquired through scientific inquiry. It is a different story, a different set of myths. It redraws somewhat the lines of Creation and the functioning of the universe, as Rabbi Slifkin suggests. But it does not contradict God’s role in our lives.
God is eternal. So are the laws of physics. And we continue to discover more about each individually; they need not comment on each other.
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