Finding Hashem In Nature- Losing Hashem In Science

Opinion & Comment
Finding Hashem In Nature—Losing Hashem In Science

By R' Dovid Kornreich

There seems to be a contradiction in two different works of the Maharal of Prague. In his Chidushei Aggodos to Menochos 64b he discusses the statement, "Cursed is the one who teaches his son Greek wisdom." The Maharal is quite emphatic that the study of the natural sciences (chochmas hateva) that is divorced from any relationship with Torah, is forbidden. He explains the statement of the mishna in Ovos of Ben Bag Bag, "Hafoch boh hafoch boh dekuloh boh," in a way similar to many classic meforshim: All true wisdom is found in the Torah.

But we have an apparently antithetical statement of the Maharal in Nesivos Olom, Nesiv Hatorah chapter 14, where Greek wisdom is very narrowly defined as "melitzah veloshon." This is understood to mean the parables and symbolic metaphors that the Sava Debei Athuna (the Elders of Athens) employed to couch deep philosophical insights and arguments (similar to those mentioned in Bechoros 8b where the gemora records how Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya bested them at their own game). The Maharal in Nesiv Hatorah uses this narrow definition of Greek wisdom in order to make the study of nature halachically permissible.

But what of his objections to the Greek study of nature clearly stated in Chidushei Aggodos? Nature and philosophy are presumably two totally separate disciplines.

This recalls a similar quandary involving the Greek-Torah interface.

One of days observed every year is Asoro BeTeves. It marks (among other things) the tragedy of the Greek emperor Ptolemy's fateful decree to have the Torah translated into Greek. The details of this translation by the seventy-two sages at the Emperor's behest, called the Septuagint, are recorded in the gemora Megilla 9.

In conclusion there, the gemora issues a surprising ruling. Based of Noach's blessing to his son Yeffes, "Yaft Elokim leYeffes veyishkon be'oholei Shem," the gemora allows only one other language besides Hebrew to be employed in writing a kosher Torah scroll: Greek. Furthermore, Chazal understand that when the Torah tells us that Moshe explained the Torah "very well" (ba'eir heiteiv), it required a translation of the Torah into the seventy languages—one of them being Greek! But what of the supposed tragedy of the Greek translation of Ptolemy?

This is a classic problem discussed by the ba'alei machshovoh. I was privileged to hear one explanation that can possibly shed light on the true view of the Maharal to the study of nature.

The difference is as follows: The translation of the Torah by Moshe, at Hashem's command, constituted a spiritual endeavor. It was the attempt to subsume the diverse wisdom of the nations of the world — symbolized by their languages — under the all-encompassing divine wisdom of the Torah. This translation would be a refraction of the singular, absolute eternal truth into the various colors and hues of the complex, multi-faceted world of human civilization. This was one step in the direction of "lesakein olom bemalchus Shakai," and would contribute towards unifying the nations of the world in subordination to the will of Hashem and to fulfilling His design for all of creation as a whole.

But Ptolemy's goals for his translation were quite the opposite. His objective was to put the Torah (lower case "t") into his library of quaint literature to be studied academically along with all other obsolete ancient cultures.

Chazal saw the tragedy of this translation as an ongoing one. A serious setback was incurred to the cause of the Torah's historic mission to expand the borders of malchus Shomayim to encompass the worldly wisdom. Instead of refracting the Divine light of the Torah outward, it was darkened and confined by the Greeks to serve the agenda of an atheistic culture that worshiped the human mind and body. The mistress had been usurped by her hand-maiden.

This crucial distinction perhaps can shed light on the difficulty in the Maharal mentioned above.

Looking more carefully at the second reference in Nesiv Hatorah, one finds the recurrent phrases "chochmas ha'umos" (in distinction to "chochmoh Yevonis"), and "la'amode al hametzius." The Maharal says that to merely observe reality and note its patterns and structure is the wisdom available to every person. It is, undoubtedly, the wisdom that Hashem has implanted in the very substance of His creation, awaiting our discovery and appreciation.

In a simple observation of the marvels of the natural world, one is immediately filled with inspiration and closeness to the unfathomable mind of its Creator. One stands in awe and rapture at the subconscious feeling that Hashem had us and our puny capacity to appreciate this vast wisdom in mind when he designed our amazing universe. (See the Rambam in Hilchos Yesodei Hatorah, chapter 2.) This, says the Maharal, is chochmas ha'umos, not chochmoh Yevonis.

What is Greek Wisdom/Science?

It has been noted that the ultimate agenda of Greek civilization from the very beginning, starting with Alexander the Great, was global domination. The Greeks engaged in aggressive efforts to Hellenize the ancient world and become the dominant culture.

Similarly, the underlying objective of all Western understanding of nature is to eventually obtain absolute mastery over our universe. Scientific knowledge is the key to power over all nature (for good or for evil). It is in the pursuit of that power (which the Western world has inherited from the Greeks) that the recognition of Divine Providence in our world is diminished.

Let us not be naive to think that the scientific pursuit of knowledge is simply for the love of knowledge or to marvel at the wonders of creation. See Shiurei Daas vol. 2 and his penetrating analysis of the Dor Haflogoh by means of parallelism to the overarching scientific theme of Western culture. There was a similar collaboration of all mankind in pursuit of delving into nature to harness its powerful secrets and to thereby become self-sufficient beings who are masters over their own destiny. It was a conscious universal effort to set the universe "free" from all Divine "interference" with their humanistic agendas.

The drive to master nature guides all scientific inquiry; and it is obvious that it cannot be trusted to know its place in G-d's scheme for humanity. Science has no immunity to heresy, and history has proven the opposite to be true. We need to find ways to immunize ourselves against the corrosive G-d- absent world-view that science seeks to impose on reality.

Many religious academics mistakenly confuse the two types of natural science distinguished by the Maharal above. They assume there is theological validity to all legitimate science — as if nature and the modern scientific understanding of nature are synonymous.

This false equation naturally leads to an erroneous conclusion: If all current established theoretical science can be accepted as the Torah truth—since the wisdom invested in nature is Hashem's wisdom — then what follows is that our understanding of the Torah must be adjusted to conform to this other source of Hashem's truth.

This mistake has led to tragic misunderstandings of the clear facts recorded in the Torah and a severe distortion of our unbroken Mesorah. The mistress has again been usurped by her hand-maiden.

HaRav Elchonon Wasserman dealt with this problem from a different angle. He raises the question of how a Jewish youth can be commanded to believe in G-d, which even the brilliant Aristotle didn't manage.

Some have put his solution rather simplistically. They say his answer is that faith just requires one to draw the logical conclusions from the evidence that surrounds us; if great minds slip up, that is because of personal agendas. It is easy enough to conclude that there is a Creator; one need only survey the magnificent world in which we live.

But I think it's more complicated than that. HaRav Wasserman was discussing the evidence of design in nature that clearly point to an intelligent Designer Who has a purpose for what He designed. Aristotle and his heretical belief in an infinitely old universe challenged that purposefulness.

But let's not overlook one important fact. This rejection of creation and purposefulness was not totally blind irrationality. It was based on the overwhelming evidence up until 60 years ago that the world runs like a self- sufficient closed system. It was this evidence from the natural world that provided the excuse for Aristotle and many scientists for centuries to irrationally ignore the more obvious and conclusive evidence for a purposeful creation.

Rather than trust the physical evidence in favor of heresy, Rav Elchonon implies, all these scientists (who lived and died before the evidence of "the Big Bang" was accepted) were supposed to ignore one type of heretical evidence and instead accept the other forms of evidence pointing to a purposeful creation as fact. Now this can only be rational and reasonable if you say that the heretical evidence could be fundamentally questioned while the other type cannot. How can ironclad evidence of a closed system of matter and energy be rationally questioned?

The answer is quite simple. All this type of evidence relies on the assumption that the regularity we can prove exists only today should also exist infinitely into the past. That is an assumption that can be reasonably questioned. This assumption is then possible to definitively discount by relying on the objective unbiased report of the Torah tradition and its classic interpreters to inform us of what really happened in the past.

In the end of the rational process that Rav Wasserman plots out for the non-Jew to avoid heresy, one eventually has to seek the conclusive truth about the world from the Torah as well.

See the Rambam in Hilchos Melachim chapter 8 (Halochoh 11) where he rules a non-Jew must be convinced of the truth of monotheism and proper conduct specifically through the Torah of Moshe. Choosing to dismiss the straightforward understanding of Torah and Chazal and stubbornly rely on unaided human observation and reason alone, is the result of what Rav Wasserman called "personal agendas."

True, the non-Jews weren't given the Torah. Nevertheless they are responsible to deny star and nature worship (or heretical theories about them) — in spite of all the empirical evidence of their efficacy — simply because of the Divine command to Moshe in the Torah which is accessible to everyone through honest investigation.

As Rav Wasserman points out, a heretic can be executed without prior warning. He has an obligation to arrive at the truth about the world and avoid the scientific misinterpretations of nature by filtering his assumptions through our tradition that, the Kuzari and the Ramban say, originated from Odom, to Noach, to Moshe Rabbenu, all the way till our time.

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Age of the Universe (my apologies for the sacrastic tone)

Opinion & Comment
Age of the Universe

by R' Dovid Kornreich

Why is everybody else so sure?

It is an unquestioned ikkar of science that the universe is billions of years old. To deny it in scientific and academic circles is tantamount to denying the law of gravity. (Wait a minute. Quantum theory doesn't accommodate a law of gravity! So let's say it's tantamount to denying the necessity of cause followed by an effect. No, no — that isn't good either. Quantum theory claims that nature does not operate in a strict cause and effect relationship.) In any event, you will undoubtedly be buried under a heap of scorn and ridicule for being even ever-so-slightly skeptical of this fundamental tenet of rational thought.

What makes everybody so sure?

We see a ratio of radioactive decay present now in igneous rocks. We see tree rings, thin varves of lakes and ice cores with layers upon layers. We measure starlight coming from galaxies that are millions of light years away. These cumulative processes — decay, layers, light travel — all take time, a long time. The scientist asks himself, "How long must this process have taken in order to look the way it does now?"

It's simple logic. Measure how long it takes today to form one ring, or a dozen. Measure how long it takes today for a certain percentage of isotopes to decay. Measure how fast starlight travels today.

Then you simply work backwards. You extrapolate from what you currently consistently observe, to then assume that this process has always taken place in the exact same way since it started. Then you can calculate mathematically when it must have started. That is what gives you ages that run into the billions. It's as simple as that.

Fortunately, it is equally as simple to throw one big monkey wrench into this perfectly logical construct. Just take away the right to assume that what we see today is how things have always been into the indefinite past.

"But waitaminute!" says the rational scientist. "I have a right to extrapolate! By what authority can you take this right away from me?"

And his complaint is quite valid. What logical basis do nice frum Jews like us have to deprive the dendrochronologist, geologist, physicist and cosmologist of their scientific right to extrapolate?

"If you aren't willing to extrapolate back into the past," reasons the scientist, "then you shouldn't take any risks about the future either!"

This means we shouldn't get on airplanes because we should worry that the way things work today won't necessarily be the same way they will work tomorrow and the plane could crash unpredictably in mid-flight. If there was no consistency in nature in the past, why should we expect consistency in the immediate future? Aren't we undermining the basic principles of experience that we ourselves take for granted in our daily lives?

So we need a good reason to deprive the scientist of the right to extrapolate and arrive at those billions of years of pre-history and still support our own everyday extrapolations. Do we have any?

Yes. Its called Ma'aseh Bereishis. Let's go step by step.

Opposing World Views

All things have a beginning. Even the scientific community came around to this deep, subtle idea about fifty years ago when the evidence for the expanding universe became overwhelming.

The truth is that science doesn't have a clue about how or why the beginning "began." They all realize logically that we have no human way to relate to a process of nonphysical existence coming into physical existence. So they don't claim to be able to describe that transition (yet).

The problem is that science is committed to the belief that once that transition was finished, the result was an underdeveloped state of matter whose development was completely and utterly subject to the natural laws of physics. It is this assumption of the natural formation of the universe which allows unhindered extrapolation from the way the universe works now, backwards.

How long did this developmental period last? Now from purely hypothetical considerations (read: their imagination of what the beginning of a physical universe should look like), cosmologists have relegated the emerging of matter from energy to a very, very, very small period of time. They assert that the intense energy release subsequent to the super-hot big bang, quickly faded into history, never to tamper with the behavior of matter ever after.

This assumption conveniently eliminates the messiness of a longer emergent period which, lacking the familiar forces of nature, could easily wreak havoc with all their neat orderly extrapolations which claim to arrive at reliable ages of various natural processes.

Now I can sympathize with that. After all, the scientist would rather claim he can know something about the origins of the universe and try to describe its details instead of remaining with a big question mark. He wants to have a job that pays him to construct realistic mathematical models of how the universe could have developed naturally from the very beginning. Poor chap.

In our terminology, we would say that this guy "has to say a shiur" on the formation of the universe within the parameters of natural law. No mysterious periods allowed.

But as believing Jews, no such commitment to finding natural ways for the universe to develop exists. We say this mysterious transition from nonphysical to physical lasted for six full days which resulted in a fully formed world.

Many midroshim tell us that this six day period obeyed laws of quite a different nature than the physical ones that the world obeys now. After that, we can basically assume consistency in nature (with a few notable exceptions) just like the scientist. Why?

"Ki vo shovas mikol melachto asher boro Elokim la'asos" (See Ramban to Bereishis 2:3 and his droshoh to Koheles on page 187 in Kisvei Ramban, Chavel ed. Vol. I)

More explicitly, both the Rambam and Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch, who are otherwise known as being quite "science friendly," limit the parameters of theoretical scientific investigations to the present and the future. Not the past.

First the Rambam: "The essence of the matter is what we have mentioned: What is observed in a state of wholeness and completion does not provide instruction about its state before its completion." (Moreh Nevuchim II chap.17)

Over 600 years later, we have HaRav Hirsch echoing the same concept in Collected Writings (Vol. VII page 265): "Judaism is not frightened by the hundreds of thousands or even millions of years which the geological theory of the earth's development bandies about so freely. Judaism would have nothing to fear from that theory even if it were based on something more than a mere hypothesis, on the still unproven assumption that the forces we see at work in our world today are the same as those that were in existence with the same degree of potency, when the world was first created."

But alas, those unnatural six days will ruin everything for the scientist.

Isn't that a shame?

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Theories, Geological Evidence, and Assumptions

Opinion & Comment
Theories, Geological Evidence, and Assumptions

by R' Dovid Kornreich

Can We Make Do Without Science?

In our previous article, we deprived the physicist, geologist, astronomer and dendrochronologist (who studies tree rings) of his justification to extrapolate natural processes into the indefinite past to arrive at the incredible ages given by modern science.

We also justified our reliance on the consistency of natural law into the future. Only the non-natural formation of the universe and other events described by Chazal lead us to deny the validity of such backwards extrapolations.

Now we are left with a challenge. Their methodology in and of itself is not bad science. The scientists are not technologically incompetent when they use these dating methods. Only their conclusions based on certain necessary assumptions are mistaken.

So how can we rely on any scientific theory that involves making assumptions? Are we as frum Jews discrediting any and all research that probes beyond directly observable repeatable phenomena? Must we be `kofer' in atomic and subatomic particles that cannot be seen even under a microscope? It would be hard to justify such a rejection in light of the fact that we ourselves take full advantage of all the technological and intellectual benefits that all these disciplines have to offer. (These benefits have recently even included archaeology.) Can we have a rational coherent approach that is self-consistent? What would such a position entail?

The answer is that we need to become discriminating consumers of scientific theories.

We start off with the following a priori position that is never negotiable: The ultimate truth about our reality was revealed to us by the same Creator of that reality through prophecy and various levels of ruach hakodesh preserved by our mesorah.

To my knowledge, you cannot find one unequivocal statement in Talmudic or classic rabbinic literature that attributes the formation of the universe to natural means. On the other hand, there are numerous Chazal, Rishonim and Acharonim that explicitly and unequivocally state the opposite.

As a consequence, those scientific understandings that either confirm or conform to our superior source of absolute truth — the Torah — may be adopted. Those that don't, must be mistaken. And it makes no difference whether the scientists will eventually discover the mistake through investigation or they will not.

It is distinctly possible that they cannot in principle discover their mistake simply because they cannot access the non-physicality of the forces involved in the formation of the world (and its deconstruction and reconstruction during the Mabul period). But mistaken they must be. G-d informed mankind of unnatural formation of the universe well in advance of the theories that try to pretend that all events are natural. This is self-deception on the part of mainstream science.

Now this may sound arbitrary and illogical: If we acknowledge the validity of the methodology in one area of life, how can we deem it faulty or incompetent in another?

The truth is that this approach is completely justified, and there is nothing arbitrary or illogical about it. Not only do we all do it, but in fact science does it to itself all the time.

Let's give an illustration from this very area of earth chronology. There is a sharp debate between `young earth scientists' and the scientific establishment. But the debate is somewhat one-sided. Mainstream science deems the evidence for an old earth so convincing, that even the scientific evidence to the contrary is simply explained away on purely hypothetical grounds.

Most examples of evidence for 'young earth' use extrapolations of currently observable cumulative processes very similar to those used for old earth. Yet these extrapolations in those cases imply that essential components of our planet (including key elements in our atmosphere, ocean and magnetic field) could only have been formed thousands of years ago instead of billions. Among many others, these processes include: Influx of salts and metals into the ocean via rivers, the decay of the Earth's magnetic field, and the small amounts of Helium-4 in the atmosphere.

Let's flesh out some details of the first example. By citing measurements of the amounts of various chemical compounds in the oceans, and measurements of the rate at which rivers are adding those compounds to the oceans, it is argued that a maximum (quite young) age for the oceans can be derived.

In response to this, all the mainstream scientists do is point out the various processes that work in the other direction to remove these compounds from the ocean which could theoretically achieve equilibrium. They do not cite any measurements, research papers, or studies that in fact show that these processes neutralize the evidence.

The "nexta" example (love that Yiddish) comes from smaller than expected amounts of Helium-4 if earth is old. Helium-4 is created by radioactive decay (alpha particles are helium nuclei) and is constantly added to the atmosphere. Helium is not light enough to escape the Earth's gravity (unlike hydrogen), and it will therefore accumulate over time. The current level of helium in the atmosphere would accumulate in far less than billions of years. Therefore the Earth is relatively young compared to their theories.

Once again, the conventional response is to assert that polar wind can account for the escape. And if that won't do the trick (because they haven't actually measured it to know for sure) then there is always the handy "interaction of the solar wind with the upper atmosphere during the short periods of lower magnetic-field intensity while the field is reversing." However, no one has ever measured a single magnetic-field reversal of the earth taking place, let alone how long they last before reaching full intensity. But that doesn't stop mainstream scientists from simply assuming that 20 of them could have taken place over the past 3.5 billion "years" to account for the missing helium. Problem solved.

This means that mainstream scientists don't really accept the burden of proving the young earth evidence to be grossly misunderstood. They feel that it is enough to propose theoretical possibilities. And sometimes they even openly admit that they may never develop the tools to practically investigate their hypothesis that explains away the evidence.

But it makes no difference. Why? Because they feel enough confidence in the balance of the evidence weighing so heavily in their favor that it makes virtually all the counter- evidence pale in comparison. They feel that they can reasonably conclude that there must be some flaw in the counter-evidence without any actual proof.

And don't get me wrong; I have no problem with this logic at all. I think it is perfectly reasonable for scientists to make these assumptions when you take their limitations into account. But this logic works in both directions.

So it is, lehavdil, with the irreconcilable conflicts between science and Torah.

We don't need to assume the burden to disprove the old earth science. If we use the same approach, it is sufficient for us to assert, based on Chazal, that star motion was not constant throughout all time, and that the igneous rocks of the Creation period simply did not form naturally from magma. And/or, it is sufficient to assert, based on Chazal, that the weather conditions which form the annual layering of lake varves and ice cores were not constant throughout all time.

Even the so-called `directly observable' evidence of previous eras from the fossil record can be broken down into a series of tenuous assumptions to which we can offer counter- assumptions:

1) It is the dating methods discredited above which really give the strata an absolute time scale. Without those methods, the layers in and of themselves don't indicate how long each period lasted. They are called `floating histories' that aren't tied to any fixed number of years.

2) The fossils technically can only inform us of the order in which these creatures perished. Hypothetically, all these creatures could have been created in the same period and died off at different periods. To assert that the record also tells us when they appeared is an intuitive leap that can be contested.

3) Similarly, Chazal attest to creatures that were created and then destroyed before the creation of man. And we need not appeal to whole worlds created and destroyed before the six days of Bereishis to find such references. Bava Basra 74 tells of enormous land and sea creatures that were created and destroyed during Bereishis for various reasons. We also have the primordial serpent who was created with legs that were subsequently removed (presumably from this entire species of reptile) long before the death of Odom Horishon.

All these tentative directions of thought provide fertile ground to posit the extinction of numerous other animals during periods that well preceded the large-scale demise of human beings during the Mabul.

This is not an appeal to creationist pseudo-science or flood geology. These are explanations that go beyond the tools that science has at its disposal to analyze and measure reality.

It is parallel to the tendency of science to sustain its well-established theories against powerful objections by positing the existence of all sorts of spooky things. Concepts such as non-luminous matter and cosmological constants (popularly referred to as `dark matter' and `dark energy'), superstrings, repulsive gravity, compacted dimensions — all these are hypotheticals that have not been directly measured and may not ever be accessible to scientific measurement in the future.

We ought to have enough confidence in our mulit-million-man- mesorah to offset all the theoretical evidence that relies exclusively on tenuous extrapolations of literally astronomical proportions.

We've Been Here Before

There is a parable given by the Sefer Hachinuch in his introduction, concerning the reliability of our tradition in reporting events that defy scientific explanation. He asks us to imagine a river whose waters have been observed by tens of thousands of people to cause lethal poisoning to thousands of unfortunate other people upon drinking. Then, along comes a scientist who takes a sample of the river water and determines that it is absolutely normal and safe to drink. The Chinuch asks: Who would you believe?

Our situation with regard to most (but not all) conflicts between science and Torah pose a similar dilemma. And the answer ultimately comes down to how reliable we think our mesorah is.

The tendency of some to modify or disregard the mesorah in light of firmly established scientific theory reminds me of the tragic episode of Choni Hame'agel in Taanis 23a: He is troubled all his days over the first verse in Shir Hama'alos (Tehillim 126). It describes prophetically the return of the Jews from the seventy-year Babylonian exile when they regarded themselves "as dreamers." Choni Hame'agel is perplexed at the feat of such extended somnolence. He sits down in a field to eat lunch, drifts off — and bang! He wakes up seventy years later. After reconfirming that he has actually been asleep for two generations straight, he tries to reenter society and finds himself misunderstood by all around him. Overcome with feelings of total isolation, he prays for and is granted a final end to his troubles. "O chavrusa, o misusah."

I derive a few important principles from this incident regarding the subject we were discussing.

On the simplest of levels, Choni Hame'agel maybe was bothered by the practical impossibility of sleeping for 70 years without eating. An empirical problem: the human physiology isn't designed to survive so long without nourishment. In any case, he was able to maintain such a problem in his mind to be bothered by it for his entire life, without resorting to an obviously valid, alternative, metaphorical understanding. (This was especially reasonable since even the posuk says, "as dreamers.")

Then Hakodosh Boruch Hu in His infinite wisdom enabled him to experience the resolution of the problem firsthand, which turned out to actually be a literal interpretation contrary to scientific laws.

From the tragic conclusion, perhaps bederech drush, it seems that sometimes it is in our own best interests to remain with an empirical problem and not try to get it resolved at any cost.

We should learn from experience. Solutions offered by great people of past generations have become obsolete due to the relentless forward march of science. Solutions that reconciled Judaism with the now-defunct Steady State theory of the universe, and Haeckel's doctored embryological evidence for evolution, are cases in point. Even now, the most firmly established scientific theories of the previous century are being considered for serious revision on an ongoing basis.

By adjusting one's understanding of Judaism in order to adapt to modern research, one runs the distinct risk of having to update one's beliefs every 50-100 years.

We again conclude with the far-reaching vision of Rabbi Shamshon Rafael Hirsch, applying his sage advice given on a similar topic: (emphasis added)

"For thousands of years, Judaism waited calmly for the closing of an even wider gap between itself and mankind, that is, the disappearance of polytheism. So Judaism can certainly await, with even more complete calm and assurance, the day in which the thinking human mind will bridge a much narrower gap. . . Judaism looks toward the time when science will have attained a more thorough mastery of its subject matter, and scientists will be able to overcome the intellectual fragmentation caused by the division of labor in the sciences, . . . Scientists will then escape the danger inherent in any attempt to construct a whole world from the study of a mere fraction of a fraction of the world's totality. When that time comes, scientists will bow to a world of spirit and of free-willed morality that cannot be reached by microscopes or scalpels, by flasks or balances, but that is nevertheless a reality which every man can derive from within his own self" (Collected Writings, Vol. VII, p. 259, "The Educational Value of Judaism").

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Evolution: Do Not Overrate Its Significance

Opinion & Comment
Evolution: Do Not Overrate Its Significance
by R' Dovid Kornreich

Are the only two options for Evolution either to reject it out of hand because of the Torah's account of supernatural formation of life, or to reinterpret the verses of Bereishis to conform with the theory as much as possible?

Perhaps we can turn to a rov for guidance in whether or not to accept this theory of science. HaRav Shamshon Rafael Hirsch provides a third option that is quite apt for this particular area of science: "Indeed, it is necessary to acquire at least some familiarity with the natural sciences in order not to overrate their significance and impact. Only in the halls of academe does it become clear to us how many hypotheses of our era lack the support of reality, and how many of these hypotheses can be viewed only as possibilities or, at best, probabilities, even though everyone acts as if they had already been proven correct beyond a shadow of a doubt." [This and all subsequent quotes come from Collected Writings vol. 7, "The Educational Value of Judaism." This quote appears on page 262.)

This sentiment is echoed by Paul Davies, a modern professor of mathematics: "Many investigators feel uneasy about stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they freely admit that they are baffled."

Luckily, in this day and age anyone can gain access to the latest developments of advanced scientific research and strident academic debate without having to enter those "halls of academe" mentioned by HaRav Hirsch. Books on popular science written for the layman by leading researchers and instructors in the field can show us clearly just how precarious the theory of evolution really is. In other words, the kasheh of evolution doesn't really start.

Actually, Rav Hirsch in the article just quoted above briefly lays out a tentative Jewish framework for accepting key elements of the theory of "adaptation and heredity" that was current in his time in a total of nine sentences on page 264. This theory has long been outdated. Nonetheless, this attempt has suggested to some that according to HaRav Hirsch one may go along with the scientific tide and accept the doctrine of the scientific community that rates Darwinian evolution as a fact. The verses in the Torah may somehow be made to accommodate the current theory of evolution just as HaRav Hirsch was able to accommodate the one current in his time. But this would be a mistake.

Rav Hirsch made one huge qualification in his limited acceptance of evolution: He stipulated that the theory must, on the basis of facts, first gain complete acceptance by the scientific world. Let us see whether this condition of HaRav Hirsch for accepting evolution has been fulfilled up until today.

Then and now, the theory of evolution was never without serious detractors motivated by a purely scientific point of view. The field of taxonomy, for example, which involves constructing a meticulous (and taxing) catalogue of living creatures according to common features, has always pointed to the clear and distinct immutable quality of all animals that it finds. The species we see retain their distinct identity over time and do not evolve.

Almost completely absent from the catalogue of living creatures (and also from the fossil record, as Darwin himself pointed out) are creatures which evolutionary theory would expect to straddle the line between the various larger groups and thereby imply common descent. This empirical problem for evolution has always been pointed out by various schools of taxonomy, and especially by the recent school of cladistics. This clearly violates the condition Rav Hirsch laid down before he would accept evolution.

But aside from the conspicuously missing predicted evidence for the theory, the alleged facts that are claimed to support evolution by Darwinists simply don't exist, as we shall try to demonstrate.

First, a very brief overview of what the Anti-Darwinian scientists refute. The basic elements of Darwinian evolution are:

1) An extremely simple organism is capable of reproducing. How that first organism came into being and got itself to develop enough so that it can replicate, is still a complete mystery that Darwinists have not penetrated in the slightest. Some scientists have argued that, given enough time, even apparently miraculous events become possible, such as the spontaneous emergence of a single-cell organism from random soups of chemicals. Sir Fred Hoyle, the British astronomer, has said that such an occurrence is about as likely as the assemblage of a 747 by a tornado whirling through a junkyard. Most researchers agree with Hoyle on this point.

2) In the process of reproducing, over the years, very rare mistakes are made. Now, 100 years after Darwin, this is said to be due to purely random mutations inside the DNA and not from the environment.

3) Although the vast majority of those admittedly rare mistakes are destructive to the organism, one mistake is bound to be somewhat beneficial.

4) The organism with the slightly beneficial mutation can eventually, over the generations, come to dominate the population and push out the less fit organisms in competition for resources until the original type vanishes.

5) Cumulative repetition of steps 2, 3, and 4, over and over again for millions of years, will, according to the theory, reach the point where that first simple organism has become the ancient ancestor of the 10-13 million estimated living species today. This diversity is still low, since for each species that is alive today, it is estimated that a thousand others became extinct!

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Interestingly enough, steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 are not controversial. For a long time, mankind has been breeding plants and animals to manipulate his surroundings for economic gain. (The term "GMO" on certain food labels stands for, "Genetically Modified Organism.") We know that certain strains of bacteria and insects have mutated in ways that make them resistant to toxins.

The entire controversial thrust of evolution is in step five.

And here is the second failure of HaRav Hirsch's criteria: All hard laboratory evidence for evolution has only been able to confirm steps 1-4 above. There is not a single test proving that such small changes within a species can accumulate to produce a completely different type of animal.

Less than 150 years ago, Rav Hirsch described evolution in the following terms:
"This [our ability to choose to obey G- d's laws of our own free will] will never change, not even if the latest scientific notion that the genesis of all the multitude of organic forms on earth can be traced back to one single most primitive, primeval form of life should ever appear to be anything more than what it is today, a vague hypothesis still unsupported by fact." (page 263)

Now I quote molecular biologist Michael Denton on page 77 in his classic, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985):
"The fact is that the evidence [for Darwinian ideas] was so patchy one hundred years ago that even Darwin himself had increasing doubts as to the validity of his views, and the only aspect of his theory which has received any support over the past century is where it applies to micro evolutionary phenomena. His general theory, that all of life on earth had originated and evolved by gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe."

The similarities are striking. And don't think Denton took it from Rav Hirsch! The seventh volume of Collected Writing which contains this essay was only printed in English in 1992, long after Denton's book published in 1985.

Thus to invoke Rav Hirsch as the "rav hamachshir" for consuming the theory of evolution at this juncture of scientific progress is a distortion. It seems analogous to a rabbi who announces unreservedly to his unlearned congregation that Judaism can accommodate the need to eat on Yom Kippur. If asked for his sources, the rabbi simply points to the Shulchan Oruch, which allows dispensation for minors and people whose life would be endangered by fasting. This is an utterly irresponsible approach.


A Secular Religion of Evolution

But if they have no facts and no evidence, what then is the scientific justification that evolutionists have to back their claim?

The answer is alluded to by Rav Hirsch's reference to Darwin (or an influential exponent of Darwin) as "the high priest of that notion." (Page 264) The Darwinian hypothesis of descent with modification is a statement of belief for most honest scientists who are aware of the truth. Darwin is the high priest of this 19th century faith. What's interesting is, that for every quote by a leading scientist against evolution one could bring several quotes by the same scientist in favor.

Typical is Francis Crick (awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA): "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to have been satisfied to get it going." Yet Crick still adheres firmly to the theory of evolution.

Or consider Dr. Harold C. Urey (Nobel Prize winning Chemist): "All of us who study the origins of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel that it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. But we believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did."

S. Gould has written that the synthetic theory "as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as text book orthodoxy." But he has also stated that "Darwinian selection . . . will remain a central focus of more inclusive evolutionary theories."

Why the seemingly desperate need to cling to evolution in the face of all its fatal flaws? The reason was succinctly put in Harper's magazine, February 1985, by Tom Bethel:

"I traveled to Boston to meet with Richard C. Lewontin a geneticist, a one-time president of the Society for the Study of Evolution, a well known writer on science . . . I had seen a quote from Lewontin used as a chapter head in a book titled Science on Trial by Douglas Futuyama. The quote, as edited, read: Evolution is fact, not theory . . . Birds evolve from non-birds, humans evolve from non-humans.

"`The cladists disapprove,' I said.

"He paused for a split second and said: `Those are very weak statements, I agree.'

"Then he made one of the clearest statements about evolution I have heard. He said: `Those statements flow simply from the assertion that all organisms have parents. It is an empirical claim, I think, that all living organisms have living organisms as parents. The second empirical claim is that there was a time on earth when there were no mammals.'

" `Now, if you allow me those two claims as empirical, then the statement that mammals rose from non-mammals is simply a conclusion. It's the deduction from two empirical claims. But that's all I want to claim for it. You can't make the direct empirical statement that mammals arose from non- mammals.'

"Lewontin had made what seemed to me to be a deduction — a materialist's deduction. `The only problem is that it appears to be based on evidence derived from fossils,' I said. `But the cladists say they don't really have that kind of information.'

"`Of course they don't,' Lewontin said. `If the birds couldn't have arisen from muck by any natural processes, then they had to arise from non-birds. The only alternative is to say that they did arise from muck because G-d's finger went out and touched that muck. That is to say there was a non- natural process. And that's really where the action is. Either you think that complex organisms arose by non-natural phenomena, or you think they arose by natural phenomena. If they arose by natural phenomena, they had to evolve.

"And that's all there is to it."



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What is a Human Being?

Opinion & Comment
What is a Human Being?

By R' Dovid Kornreich

The secular world bombards us with messages — both explicit and implicit — that human beings are simply intelligent members of the animal kingdom. It would seem that the whole advertising industry is built upon the very profitable premise that we are very much subject to manipulation by internal drives and external pressures. They assume that we will react predictably to the stimuli in our environment, just like a laboratory rat. Some food here to motivate, some electric shock there to discourage — according to them, our decisions, behaviors, and even self- identities are molded by the reality that surrounds us.

Needless to say, this is a very distasteful reductionist view of humanity. What is our response to such a view?

Let us proceed to describe in limited detail what the Torah has to say about the true nature of Man.

Man's Uniqueness Among the Beasts

Literally from the very beginning, Man is uniquely referred to by Chazal as, "Yetzir capov shel HaKodosh Boruch Hu" (Midrash aggodoh Bereishis 11). Hashem fashioned Man as a singular being not "spawned by the waters" or "brought forth from the earth" as was all animal life — as mentioned in detail in the first perek of Bereishis.

The ninth and eleventh chapters of Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer have similar distinctions when elaborating on the details of Creation.

Midroshim speak of Odom having two unique parents: G-d and the Earth. The Kuzari and the Ramban inform us of the absolute clarity that we Jews are privileged to have about our origins. In his droshoh, "Toras Hashem Temimoh," (Chavel edition Vol. I page 144), the Ramban writes: "And the Torah is further a source of illumination even in its narratives and recording of history. For all of it is great wisdom and roots of belief.

"For we can infer from the simple sentences of Scripture that Levi was seen by Amram the father of Moshe. And Yaakov was seen by Levi. And Yaakov learned Torah from the mouth of Shem son of Noach, for Yaakov was fifty years old when Shem son of Noach died.

"Thus Moshe was capable of announcing in the presence of a large and powerful nation, among its sorcerers, men of witchcraft, and astrologers, the following public declaration: "My father [Amram] told me that his grandfather saw [a man who was present at] the Creation of the world." For the Mabul was like the Creation of the world [not simply a huge flood of water]. And whoever concedes to the [reality of the] Mabul must perforce concede to the Genesis of the world.

"And furthermore, Noach was present at a time in which he could see the First Man, about whom it was known that he himself was solitary in the world without any father or mother.

"It is a certainty that if this statement was false, all would have been aware of it, and he would have been contradicted by the many elders and wise men of the nation who knew history. For is it not common knowledge to our elders, of the popular events of two and three generations past? Of our family history, our housing and real estate, of people who rise to power and build certain edifices, and even events that are retold constantly?

"No-one can fabricate events of this magnitude that [should have been] famous.

"Additionally, he [Moshe] publicly announced [in the Torah] all the nations' pedigrees and the founding of their states; in summary, all the minute details of the Book of Bereishis.

"And similarly Rabbi Moshe [ben Maimon] explained in his book Moreh Nevuchim (III:50) the intention of the narratives of the Torah with all their genealogies were written to inform the truth of the Genesis [of the world] to the later generations . . . "

Thus the Rishonim make the point that Odom was aware of his unique status of not having biological parents. He passed this knowledge as a mesorah of Bri'as Ho'olom to Noach to refute the heretical theory of eternal matter.

Similarly, we make use of this same mesorah to refute the heretical notions that man is but another species of animal with all the physical limitations of a biochemical organism.

This divergence between Judaism and the nature-dominated views of the modern West was brought into sharp focus in the famous exchange between Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky and Yerucham Meshel, then the secretary-general of the Histadrut, on a plane ride. Yonoson Rosenblum, author of a book on the life of Reb Yaakov, depicted that exchange as follows:

"At the end of the flight, Meshel expressed his amazement at the way Reb Yaakov's son and granddaughter kept coming to talk to him and were so solicitous of his needs. Meshel confessed that he only rarely saw his own children and grandchildren.

"Reb Yaakov explained to him, `You believe in Darwin. In your children's eyes, you are just one generation closer to the apes than they are. But for us, the central event in history was the moment when Hashem spoke to the entire Jewish people at Sinai . . . My children and grandchildren honor me as being closer to that Revelation. They view me as someone who had contact with spiritual giants beyond their comprehension, and therefore attribute to me a wisdom and spiritual sensitivity that they lack.' "

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Even in the second chapter of Bereishis where this distinction is left out, one need go no further than Rashi to again find a decisive difference. Only Odom's yetzirah was with two yuds — one for this world, and one for his final Resurrection. This is in contrast to all animals' death which is final.

But this is remarkable. It means that man's physical body can be mystically elevated to a sublime physical existence in Olom Habbo via Techiyas Hameisim. And even while yet living in this world, special human beings have been shown to be capable of reaching this spiritualization of the body — as is recorded regarding Chanoch, Serach bas Osher, Moshe Rabbenu (temporarily) and Eliyahu Hanovi (see Rabbeinu Bachya quoting the Rashba in Bereishis 1:21 discussing the Livyosson).

This surely implies that even the physical component of man cannot have any common origins with mere animals.

Alternatively, the gemora Brochos (61) understands these two Yuds as a reference to man's twin urges: the yetzer hatov and yetzer hora. Again, it needs to be emphasized that this dual nature of man is alluded to in the verse before G-d imbues man with his nishmas chaim, indicating the inherent ability to transform one's natural drives to serve one of two opposite inclinations.

Man's True Relationship With Nature

Nature's fate is inextricably bound with man. It can be brought to perfection and spiritualized by his actions, or it can be corrupted and "materialized" by them. Not vice- versa.

To illustrate this we have the Midrash Koheles Rabba (7:28) cited in the foundational first chapter of Mesillas Yeshorim entitled, "Chovas Ho'Odom Be'olomo." Man is given an awesome responsibility by G-d: "Dedicate your mind not to corrupt and destroy My world!"

The overall theme of Rav Chaim of Volozhin's holy sefer Nefesh HaChaim is to elucidate the metaphysical effects of Man on the worlds around him, including the material one. In particular in Shaar I perek 6 and Shaar II perek 6 he cites many references in the Zohar that provide a powerful "behind the scenes" depiction of Odom HoRishon's formation. All the elements of creation were instructed to contribute of their essence to man so that man would literally be a microcosm whose combined spiritual and physical being would encompass all of created existence.

As a direct result of this fateful relationship, the entire physical creation became more corporeal and distant from ruchniyus, as a result of Man's destructive choices throughout history.

The world's diminution from pre-Eitz-Hada'as existence to a post-Eitz-Hada'as one, marks a most radical and far-reaching metamorphosis. The more Kabbalistic works of the Ramchal such as Derech Hashem (1:3:5-11) and Daas Tevunos describe Odom's precipitous fall from immortality to bring death and decay to the entire world order. (The Ramchal explains the 6,000 years of world history to be followed by 1,000 years of desolation, mentioned Sanhedrin 97, as a direct consequence of this enormous sin.)

The language of all the curses on Odom and Cayin, Dor Hamabul, and Sodom and Amorah describes the very ground that they walked on to be either totally destroyed or otherwise adversely affected. After the Mabul, life needed to feed on other life to survive. Vicious competition and suffering in nature was the necessary by-product of man's own evil choices.

In the last perek of mishnayos Sotah we read of the loss of productivity and quality of the earth's produce as a consequence of the destruction of the Beis Hamikdosh — due to our failings. This deterioration of the physical earth is the horrifying reflection of the negative impact that sin has on the basic fabric of the physical world. As the gemora Sanhedrin (99b) warns us solemnly: "Va'asisem osom — Va'asisem atem."

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In conclusion: It is not that modern man has been formed and conditioned by the natural world, or is dominated by animal drives of survival inherited from primitive ancestors. It is just the opposite. We find ourselves in a very unnatural world, vastly diminished and darkened. It is obstructed by our own actions from the pure light and harmony that is inherent in G-d's benevolent creation.

From all of the above it emerges that we cannot view ourselves as the sum total of our various natural drives and environmental stimuli. Rather it is the very nature of our physical existence which is affected and conditioned by the enormous spiritual power invested in the bechiroh of Man.

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Nature and Miracles

Opinion & Comment
Nature and Miracles
by R' Dovid Kornreich

We will approach this famous topic from the vantage point of the Rambam via a seemingly unrelated discussion: Why did the Rambam list the belief in the resurrection of the dead as one of the Thirteen Articles of Faith? Why is this ikkar on a par with G-d's existence, prophesy, Torah from Shomayim, and reward and punishment in order for a Jew to be considered among the Jewish people?

Fortunately, we don't have to speculate. Although the Rambam provides virtually no elaboration of this ikkar in his Commentary on the Mishna where he originally formulated these ikkarim, nor in the Mishneh Torah, nor in the Moreh Nevuchim, he actually devoted more writing on this ikkar than any other.

In his Ma'amar al Techiyas Hameisim, the Rambam put to rest any suggestion that he did not believe in a physical- bodily resurrection of the dead. The idea that he did not believe in that may have arisen because he devoted so little writing to it and so much writing to the non-corporeality of the World-to-Come. Apparently, people mistakenly believed that the Rambam conceived of a spiritual resurrection with his spiritual World-to-Come. It is in fact difficult to understand logically why there should be a physical resurrection for the righteous, if the ultimate reward will anyway be experienced completely on the spiritual plane.

The Rambam said explicitly that he believed in a physical resurrection and also explained why a physical resurrection of the dead is such a core tenet of our belief.

There is probably no greater violation of nature than a resurrection. Changing water to blood, or sticks to snakes are mere (Egyptian) parlor tricks in comparison. There is no natural or even conceptual way to explain why it should occur. And unless you witness it with your own eyes, or hear about it from reliable witnesses, it is completely a matter of faith.

The Rambam then says that the belief in a physical resurrection serves as the litmus test for belief in all the miracles of the Torah. If one feels the need to allegorize the scant verses in Tanach that predict the final resurrection, we have to be very concerned about his motives.

Why is he incredulous? If the Novi is a reliable transmitter of the word of Hashem and he says that there will be a physical resurrection, why should a person doubt it?

The frightening truth is that there are many people who think that violations of nature are impossible. Scientific- minded people who deny any reality that cannot be observed or measured by the physical senses (or sensors) have a real philosophical problem with miracles.

This denial is attributed by the Rambam to Aristotle's heretical belief in eternal and immutable matter. Aristotle believed that the laws of nature are absolute and cannot be broken by any power.

This then leads to a denial in Hashem's creation of physical matter and its natural laws -- yeish mei'ayin -- which is ultimately a breach in the first and fourth ikkarim of the Rambam.

In short, to deny the possibility of a physical resurrection by Hashem, which the Rambam says is a complete and utter violation of the natural realm, is to deny Hashem's omnipotence.

History Repeats Itself

It is ironic that once again in our times, the Rambam has been used by contemporary Jewish authors as a source for asserting that Hashem does not interfere with the laws of nature in principle. All miracles described in Tanach, they say, should be interpreted as somehow conforming to natural law. (Don't ask me how they manage to do this.)

To ascribe this view to the Rambam they overlook the Rambam's Letter on the Resurrection and emphasize two places in his commentary to the maseches Ovos. The first is in the eighth chapter of the Rambam's long introduction to that masechta, called the Shemoneh Prokim, where the Rambam deals with conflicts between man's free-will and Hashem's foreknowledge.

The second is in maseches Ovos itself in Chapter 5 Mishna 5 which lists ten wondrous creations that were brought into existence just before the onset of the very first Shabbos of creation.

In these places the Rambam briefly explains that all future irregularities in the natural behavior of matter were pre- programmed into nature at the very beginning. This is taken by some readers to mean that natural law is absolute and can have no exceptions. This of course plays well with a secular audience which feels uncomfortable with the notion of supernatural miracles.

Rabbeinu Bachya to the Rescue

Rabbeinu Bachya is indispensable here in two ways. First, he describes in detail the critical hashkafic failure of people who, out of their deep respect for and fascination with science, attempt to explain various miracles of the Torah in natural terms.

He explains in his introduction to parshas Mas'ei in Bamidbar chap. 33: King Shlomo (Mishlei 4:7) said: At the beginning of wisdom, acquire Wisdom. Before any other wisdom, acquire the wisdom of Torah . . . "It was for this reason that Sholom Hamelech o"h said here, "At the beginning of wisdom, acquire Wisdom." For if a person does not first study the wisdom of the Torah and does not see the Torah's descriptions of the signs and wonders [mofsim] and the gigantic well-publicized miracles, it is likely that he will be drawn after the natural and will believe in an eternal universe. That is why nature is given the name it has ["teva"] since it will sink (yitba) a person in its depths and he will descend to the nethermost pit if he is not careful with it. It is like one who comes to dive in the deep parts of the ocean but knows not how to swim, and drowns.

"So too, a person is likely to be skeptical based on his familiarity with the wisdom of teva (science) regarding the signs and wonders that were performed by Moshe for the Jews. He will only believe in natural events that can be perceived by the eye. And he will corrupt the path of emunoh by asserting that the miracles in the wilderness were natural events and were not miraculous . . . [And he will say that perhaps they were able to sustain themselves through natural processes.] . . . Thus in order to uproot this corrosive view and to instill belief in these great wonders [mofsim], the Torah comes to mandate that a person must acquire its wisdom before any other discipline and it enlightens our eyes and tells us that that desert was not like other deserts [where people live all the time] . . . and by nature a man could not live there even one day and certainly not a great people of men, women and children . . ."

Second, in his commentary to that mishna in Ovos 5:5 mentioned above, Rabbeinu Bachya gives us the vital background to understand the Rambam's necessity for concluding that miracles are pre-programmed into nature at creation.

He explains that miracles in history can easily make an impression that needs to be carefully avoided. We should not attribute the unnatural intervention of Hashem in the physical world as reflecting a change in Hashem Himself. Hashem's plan for the world needs no later adjustments to respond to man's free-willed actions.

"There is nothing new under the sun," says King Shlomo. If a miracle required a new creation by Hashem, says Rabbeinu Bachya, it would imply that Hashem's eternal will was altered chas vesholom by the unfolding of events and He needed to correct the course with a miraculous intervention.

Of course, it is obvious that this has nothing to do with the idea that the laws of nature are absolute. That notion was already discredited by both the Rambam and Rabbeinu Bachya themselves above. On the contrary. Hashem in His infinite wisdom has built in all the numerous exceptions to physical law from the beginning of time.

Of course all miracles can and will defy natural law; the only issue is how that defiance is orchestrated. The Rambam simply says that it was orchestrated in anticipation of history, and not as an ad hoc response to it.



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The Torah's Rational Evidence of Its Historicity

Opinion & Comment
The Torah's Rational Evidence of Its Historicity

by R' Dovid Kornreich

The summertime parshas Voeschanon, Eikev, and Re'ei, give an interesting selection of rational arguments for the truth of the Torah.

Torah Judaism claims to be true: not just inspiring and spiritual, ethical and moral, but true. These parshos review and re-explore the historic events of open nissim, gilui Shechinoh and Divine instruction that actually took place in a specific location to a particular group of people at a specific time in history.

Moshe Rabbenu, with Hashem's instruction, wrote in the Mishnah Torah various arguments that actually allow us to investigate the truth of the Torah empirically.

There is an opinion found in Rishonim that the first of the Aseres Hadibros is a mitzvah deOraisa to translate our belief in Torah MiSinai into firm unshakable knowledge by rational argument and investigation. What are these arguments? Some are found in these parshos which, not coincidentally, happen to review the Aseres Hadibros as well!

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Just as a disclaimer, the Torah does not claim to be capable of convincing a hard-core skeptic who is committed to the absolute reliability of modern science to peer into the unobservable past and reconstruct it with a large degree of accuracy.

But most reasonable people will acknowledge that a methodology that relies exclusively on stitching together some ancient pottery and instruments here, and some tablets and inscriptions there, to try to piece together a consistent chronology of events that require massive amounts of conjecture and creative interpretation, is a quite shallow challenge to the Torah.

For instance, in a library in Egypt, the Rambam records in Moreh Nevuchim (Book III chap. 29) that he found ancient non-Jewish records describing important details of Avrohom Ovinu's career, documenting him as a well known historical figure in the ancient world. Modern archaeologists have only recently uncovered evidence of the robust civilization that existed in Avrohom Ovinu's time by chancing upon a set of tablets that sharply revised much archaeological understanding of the ancient Middle East. Before that discovery, they believed that Avrohom Ovinu and his society described in Chumash must have been a complete myth.

Modern scholars simply do not have access to direct historical information — which makes all their conclusions that much more speculative. Contrast that with our historic chain of transmission by an entire, identifiable nation with names and dates that leave a virtually unbroken written record till the modern era.

Rav Dovid Brown z"l in the introduction to his fascinating The Mysteries of Creation, has a very vivid parable that well describes this contrast, too elaborate to cite here.

So much for the disclaimer. Let us proceed with the evidence that the Torah itself offers for its own integrity.

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First, the Torah has an injunction against adding or subtracting mitzvos, in Devorim 4:2. This means that the Torah is for practical purposes a sealed book that may not be tampered with by future generations. This verse effectively eliminates the possibility for any hypothetical human innovator of Judaism to arrive on the scene at a later time and announce an updated version of the Torah. Such an innovator will be charged with adding mitzvos that had not been heard of until he came along.

The Torah here and later (13:1-6) attests that all the mitzvos that will ever be commanded by G-d have already been communicated to the entire generation of Jews living in the wilderness, via Moshe. Some types of innovators or eliminators of certain permanent Divine commandments are even to be summarily executed, either as a novi sheker or as a zokein mamrei.

Devorim 4:9-24 is a detailed account of the mass Divine revelation at Har Sinai.

Posuk 10 reads: "The day that you stood before Hashem your Lord at Chorev when Hashem said to me: `Gather to me the nation and I will let them hear My words in order for them to learn to fear Me all the days that they live on the earth, and in order to teach their children."

In addition to the details of the content of the revelation that follow with the Aseres Hadibros, the verses here and throughout the sedrah further emphasize the imperative for the entire nation to commit these events to national memory. This is not only for themselves, but also to insure that the awesome experience of Sinai be passed on without missing a link, to the next generation and onward.

On these pesukim, the Ramban makes the point that Hashem's very purpose and goal in such an open mass revelation was to make it capable of standing the tests of time, if merely transmitted faithfully. Hashem specifically designed this revelation of His eternal Torah in such a way that it could never be reasonably contradicted or denied, because of its monumental scale that directly impacted an entire generation.

Only claims of private revelations are subject to such additions, subtractions, total revisions and rejections as we see happening in other religions regularly. The possibility of "late editions" of earlier canonic content bring into question the reliability of the original information.

This never occurred in the long history of Judaism until the modern era when the general approach to religion was suddenly subjected to analysis by Western society. This revolution resulted in widespread secularism in the West, and tragically, many Jews were swept away by the strong intellectual winds that blew then and are still blowing now. Many assumed that their faith was just as unfounded and blindly accepted by the ignorant masses as all the rest.

But those that swam against the tide and remained in the fold were able to rely on the rational anchoring provided centuries earlier by the Geonim and Rishonim who paved the way for us.

Falsifiability

Now we come to the challenge (32):

"When you will please inquire to the earliest of days that preceded you. From the day that Elokim created Odom on the earth, and from the ends of the heavens till the ends of the heavens: Was there anything like this great thing or was such a thing heard? That a nation heard the voice of Elokim speaking from within the fire as you yourselves have heard — and lived?"

Moshe is daring us to comb all of history to find a similar claim of any nation who survived a public revelation to record it. But there is the caveat here — "and lived" — perhaps to allow only the real time historical records of real nations to be considered as possible counterexamples. Bold storytellers who concoct myths of long- forgotten nations from bygone fantasy eras will not meet this challenge.

Next (34): "Or has Elokim illustrated extracting for Himself a nation within a nation with trials, with signs, and with wonders, and with war and with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm and with great awesome [events]; like all that Hashem Elokim has done for you in Egypt to your eyes?"

Here the challenge is more subtle.

It claims that the string of open miraculous events that brought about Yetzias Mitzrayim has an enormous impact on the histories of two entire, opposing nations. The falsifiability of this claim at the time was enormous. Egypt is a few days journey away from where Moshe Rabbenu spoke. It was a popular destination of international trade routes. Anyone could expose Moshe as a charlatan chas vesholom by checking out this international incident for himself and report it to the Jews.

This is not a question of discovering digital tampering of photos. It is claimed to be a watershed event that miraculously changed the direction of the history of two whole nations.

Lastly we come to Perek 11:2-7.

Here, as Rashi spells out, Moshe makes the specific direct point that he is not retelling these miraculous events to the descendants of the people who experienced them. He is telling the Jewish people that what he is recording, was directly experienced by the audience themselves! And he instructs the people to preserve this record and to perform these commandments without interruption, lest the vengeance of Hashem force them to reaffirm their heritage.

Moshe here is justifying Divine retribution for non- observance of the Torah with an argument. The argument here is that he is not selling them a tale about their ancestors to which they can later claim ignorance and reject when it becomes difficult to obey. No. The audience themselves are the acknowledged witnesses to all these miracles and are directly beholden to Hashem to fulfill His commands as they pass on these traditions from a firsthand perspective.

Once again, this argument of Moshe serves us today to prevent any future innovator from foisting a "discovered" ancient document upon the Jews later in history to be accepted as authentic. For how can this document hold us accountable for failure to fulfill instructions that we did not personally receive?

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In conclusion, the gemora states, "Hakol biyedei Shomayim, chutz miyir'as Shomayim." All is in the hands of Heaven except for fear of Heaven. Perhaps we can suggest the following interpretation:

Hashem in His infinite wisdom has prepared the antidote before the disease and implanted in His Torah all the ingredients necessary for us to stand up to the challenges of a self-assured modern divination that mocks the concept of absolute truth. Hashem has equipped us not only with deep spiritual wellsprings of faith, but also with the secure knowledge that we posses the only absolute and eternal will of the Creator.

This was Hashem's side of the bargain: "Hakol biyedei Shomayim" — to give us the adequate armor to defend the Torah from intellectual doubts.

We need only summon the moral strength — the "yir'as Shomayim" within ourselves — to carry out this awesome responsibility of living up to the truth.

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