Musings

Banned

If you look at the surveys, some huge percentage of American Protestants and a smaller, but still significant percentage of Catholics, don’t believe in Evolution. I’ve always found the hold of anti-Evolution sentiment, in religious circles, rather puzzling. Aligning your Theology against Science is, surely, a long-run losing strategy — a lesson you’d think the Catholic Church learned after they condemned Galileo.

By contrast, surveys of Jewish opinion strongly favour Evolution¹. Even among the Orthodox, Evolution is broadly accepted². Of course, it helps that biblical literalism was never accorded much respect in Rabbinic circles:

He described those profound truths, which His Divine Wisdom found it necessary to communicate to us, in allegorical, figurative, and metaphorical language. Our Sages have said (Yemen Midrash on Gen. i. 1), “It is impossible to give a full account of the Creation to man. Therefore Scripture simply tells us, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. i. 1). Thus they have suggested that this subject is a deep mystery, and in the words of Solomon, “Far off and exceedingly deep, who can find it out?” (Eccles. vii. 24). It has been treated in metaphors in order that the uneducated may comprehend it according to the measure of their faculties and the feebleness of their apprehension, while educated persons may take it in a different sense.

Rather than viewing Science as some foreign sphere, at best irrelevant, at worst opposed, to theological discussions, Rabbinic tradition has generally taken scientific knowledge as simply another source of insight into theological questions. From the Talmud to the writings of Maimonides (from which the above passage is drawn), they are filled with discussions of what passed for the best scientific knowledge of the day.

These laws, however, presuppose an advanced state of intellectual culture. We must first form a conception of the Existence of the Creator according to our capabilities; that is, we must have a knowledge of Metaphysics. But this discipline can only be approached after the study of Physics; for the science of Physics borders on Metaphysics, and must even precede it in the course of our studies.

Which brings us to the strange case of Nossom Slifkin, an Orthodox rabbinical scholar and self-taught zoologist. A year ago, on the eve of Yom Kippur, three of his books were declared heretical by a group of 23 prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis, for their citation of modern Biology, Evolution, and Cosmology.

A bitter controversy erupted with the Orthodox community

But if the ban was intended to draw interest away from Slifkin’s ideas, it had the opposite effect. Within a few days, his out-of-print book was selling at used book stores for four times its original price of $24.95. Unprompted by the author, an international group calling itself Jews For A Re-Evaluation Of The Rabbi Nosson Slifkin Ban wrote a counter-petition, urging the 23 signatories to change their minds. Hundreds of outraged students protested the ban in long Internet postings, and numerous ultra-Orthodox rabbis, including Rabbi Aryeh Carmell of the Jerusalem Academy, penned scholarly essays in Slifkin’s defense. Rabbi Tzvi Hersch Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, threw his support behind Slifkin, telling The Forward that Slifkin had used “impeccable traditional Jewish sources to back up his views.”

…

One New York rabbi who has inside knowledge of the Slifkin ban tells me that it represents a major “breaking point” within ultra-Orthodox society. “Over the past 15 years, the rabbis of Bnai Brak and the more open American ultra-Orthodox rabbis have been split on a number of important policy decisions,” says the rabbi, who asks to remain unnamed. “The Slifkin ban is a huge break. It’s a kind of power struggle, and those who didn’t sign the ban are outraged right now. I’m talking about rabbis with long white beards who are furious about it.” Slifkin’s views, according to this rabbi, are shared by countless figures within the ultra-Orthodox community. “He’s saying out loud what a lot of people have been talking about quietly all along. To those people, he’s a kind of figurehead.”

Googling around, you’ll find zillions of blog posts and forum discussions of the ban and its aftermath. There’s much hand-wringing about how this has undermined the religious authority of the Rabbis who promulgated the ban (though opinion is divided as to whether to blame the proponents for having acted foolishly, or the opponents for openly challenging their decision).

Arguably, though, this short term loss-of-face pales as a threat to rabbinical authority beside the folly of insisting that the world is 6000 years old, and modern Physics be damned!

There is, after all, not likely to be much of a market for a Haredi Dino Theme Park.