procrastinate and learn!

**my appologies in advance, many terms and concepts in this blog may be strange and hard to understand**

In the last few days I’ve discovered a whole new world of blogging – the Jewish blog community! It started with the message boards at Hashkafah (Hebrew for “perspective”), and this led me to GodolHador’s blog (interesting and humorous!), which is one guy’s musings on Torah and Science (evolution in particular), and this led me to the discovery of “the ban!”

An Israeli Rabbi, Nosson Slifkin (his website), has been writing books about Torah and Science for a while now, and a lot of great Jewish leaders (Rabbis) have supported him and written recommendations for his books. Last year, one “great leader” in Israel decided that the books of Rabbi Slifkin are nearly heresy, and called for the books to be banned. I haven’t read the books, but from my understanding, Slifkin writes (with textual support from ancient Jewish scholars) how the first book of the Torah, Breishis, is really a mythological story, not to be taken literally, and that the Chazal (a group of ancient scholars who wrote down the Talmud) had an inaccurate understanding of science.

The assumption of Orthodox Judaism is that the Torah was written by Moses, with the direct instruction from G-d, and that the stories in it are to be taken literally. Apparently, to assume that the Chazal had any shortcoming in their understanding of science is unthinkable, because if they could be wrong in their science, G-d forbid they may also be wrong in their understanding of Jewish law and the Torah. So you can't question anything they said, lest the whole of Judaism tumble down. Rabbi Shapiro's outcry led others to join in, and now Slifkin’s books have been banned by the more extremist religious groups, his books have been removed from the shelves of Jewish book stores, the letters of recommendation have been retracted, and all his lecturing appearances have been canceled.

Reading the above ban poster, and the article from Dei'ah ve Dibur is like reading something from the Middle Ages. "Pox upon the house that has this book!" is pretty much what they're saying. A non-fundamentalist article discussing the issue can be found here.

Now, the religious leaders have no means to enforce this "ban" but their followers are such that the opinions of their Rabbis are sufficient. Individual curiosity would never bring someone to read the book and judge for themselves. If the Rabbis say the books corrupt, no one will touch them with a 10-foot pole.

Basically, the fundamentalist philosophy is such:

It is forbidden to say that:

(a)Theworld is older than 5765 years.
(b) That dinosaurs existed before 5765 years
(c) The theory of evolution has any truth in any form

I honestly haven't throught about the Torah/Science controversy too much because the Torah isn't such a big part of my life (in a practical sense). But I have heard the "literal word of the Lord" argument, and it's a little "out there."

So far I've been mostly sticking to the blogs and message boards on this issue, but I think I'll read some of the articles Rabbi Slifkin links to from his site.

Very interesting!