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ABSTRACT
Research has begun to delve into Jewish responses to evolution as one component of a more general rise in interest in the study of religious engagement with Darwinism. This attention is due to a number of factors including revisions to the history of Christian anti-evolutionism, understanding the need to expand research beyond Christianity, and mounting awareness of anti-evolutionism as a growing global phenomenon The current article focuses on American Modern Orthodoxy (AMO) and describes how the Darwin debates have manifested in this particular community at the end of the twentieth century and into the 21st. AMO has a complicated legacy regarding evolution. Accommodationist perspectives from AMO rabbis dominated the first half of the twentieth century; however, more negative rejectionist positions on the part of some religious scientists came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s. This mixed-bag of heritage led the1980s and onwards to be a period of ambiguity and ambivalence.
Acknowledgements
Material in this article was gathered for my dissertation written within the rubric of the Graduate Program in Science Technology and Society at Bar-Ilan University. I would like to thank the University for its support and particularly my advisors Professors Noah Efron and Oren Harman for their guidance. I would also like to thank all of those interviewed who made this article possible, the two reviewers chosen by the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies and the editors of the journal who improved the article significantly.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Riskin, Listening to God, 51.
2 Interview conducted at Weiss’ home in Jerusalem in 2011. See also Weiss, Reluctant Return.
3 Material on Feit in this article was gathered through multiple interviews in Jerusalem in 2010–12.
4 Material on Schroeder was gathered through a phone interview in Jerusalem in 2011.
5 Schroeder, Genesis, Introduction.
6 Schrodeer, Genesis, 136.
7 See Cherry in Cantor and Swetlitz Jewish Tradition and Shatz, “Is There Science in the Bible?” for categorizations of Schroeder and Aviezer as representing a similar perspective of bold concordism or hermeneutical literalism in the spectrum of Jewish views on evolution.
8 Material on Aviezer was gathered through an interview at his office in Bar-Ilan University in 2011.
9 Aviezer’s personal website.
10 The material on Sterman is from a phone interview conducted in Israel in 2011.
11 For more on these anti-evolution stances see Pear, “Agreeing to Disagree”.
13 For discussiona of some other writings of Soloveitchik that relate to evolution see Pear And It Was Good? and “Arguing about Evolution”.
14 E.g. Jonathan Mark’s “No Debate Over ‘Intelligent Design’: Most Rabbis Have Little Trouble Reconciling God and Evolution,” (The Jewish Week, March 25, 2005), claims that ID “is exactly what is being taught in every Jewish school in the country, from Reform Hebrew schools to Yeshiva University.” These kinds of statements make no distinction between theistic evolutionary (TE) frameworks and ID.
15 See also the review of Michael Behe’s 1996 book Darwin’s Black Box: the biochemical challenge to evolution, which was the calling card of the ID movement, by evolutionary biologist H. Allen Orr in The Boston Review. https://web.archive.org/web/20070630185235/http://bostonreview.net/BR21.6/orr.html.
16 E.g. Spero, “The Biblical Stories” and, Goldberg “Genesis, Cosmology, and Evolution”.
17 Issued on June 19, 2000. Found at: http://advocacy.ou.org/2000/ou_disappointed_by_high_court_refusal_to_hear_evolution_disclaimer_case/.
18 The material on Slifkin was gathered through an interview that took place in his home in Ramat Beit Shemesh in 2011.
19 Slifkin, “The Problem”.
20 In a review entitled “When Quote Mining Becomes Quote Mania.” See http://www.talkreason.org/articles/SlifkinReview.cfm posted on July 15, 2007.
21 https://ncse.ngo/rabbinical-council-america (the date posted does not reflect when the statement was issued).
22 Also see the reaction of Agudath’s Public Relations Director Rabbi Avi Shafran which can be found here http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2005/12/22/rabbi-avi-shafran-on-intelligent-design/#more-549.
23 E.g. “Judging Darwin and God” The Seattle Times, December 23, 2005; “Darwin’s Jews” The Jewish Week, February 24, 2006; “Wayward Religious Reconcilers” The Jerusalem Post, November 8, 2006.
25 “Evidence of a Designer’s Purpose” The Jerusalem Post November 20, 2008.
26 E.g. “In Defence of My Opponents,” http://zootorah.com/controversy/controversy.html.
27 Although this was stated in the interview, see also Slifkin’s response to Yaakov Kornreich’s December 2009 article, “Is Global Warming a Scientific Hoax?” including to the section “The Evolution Analogy.”
28 The National Academy of Sciences also published Science, Evolution, and Creationism in 2008. Klinghoffer has spent much time attacking these TE supporters, see for instance his biography of Francis Collins on the Faith and Evolution website of the Discovery Institute http://www.discovery.org/a/10491.
29 Giberson, interview, 3 http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/CT-FDG.pdf.
30 Some of Feit’s thoughts seem similar to British Chief Rabbi Jonathan’s Sacks chapter on Darwin in his 2011 book “The Great Partnership” (Schocken: New York).
31 A video produced by Aviezer for educational purposes that seems to convey a similarly critical message of Darwin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC8IvomlA6Y.
33 This same issue has arisen for other museums as well, such as the Jerusalem Nature Museum and the new Steinhart Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv E.g. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-opening-impressive-new-nature-museum-with-a-discreet-evolution-exhibit/, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/jerusalem-museum-covers-exhibit-on-evolution-when-haredi-visit-1.6045697.
34 Fruchter and Bieler “Case Study”.
35 LookJed May 14, 2012 https://www.lookstein.org/resource/lookjed_archive/read.php?1,20529,20539#msg-20539.
36 See also Wertheimer, “Can Modern Orthodoxy Survive”.
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Rachel S. A. Pear
Rachel S. A. Pear is a fellow at the University of Haifa’s Center for Jewish and Democratic Education where she is the research coordinator of the Templeton World Charity Foundation funded project “Dialogue in Science and Religious Education.”