"Practically Speaking, Torah Does NOT Protect": Apikorsus Defined

This post is a continuation of the preceding one entitled Practically Speaking, Torah Protects. In the previous post we demonstrated that – as opposed to Rabbi Slifkin’s assertion that practically speaking Torah does no provide protection – Chazal were clearly of the opinion that the merit of limud haTorah results in very real and practical results such as physical protection from harm.

In this post we will discuss several ma’amarei Chazal that describe both the spiritual and physical harm engendered by adopting the attitude that “practically speaking Torah does not protect”.     

The Gemara (Yerushalmi Chagiga 1:7) relates,

R’ Shimon bar Yochai taught: If you encounter cities in Eretz Yisrael that have been uprooted, it is because the inhabitants did not support teachers of Torah, as indicated in Yermiah (9:11) “Why did the land go lost…And Hashem responds, because they have abandoned my Torah”. 

Rabbi Yuden, the exilarch, dispatched R’ Chiya, R’ Asi and R’ Ami to travel throughout all of the cities of Eretz Yisrael and establish teachers of Torah. One time they arrived at a city and discovered that it possessed no teachers of Torah. They asked them [the city leaders]:

 “Where are the guardians of the city?” 

 They [the city leaders] brought them the centurions [soldiers guarding the city]. 

 “These are not the guardians of the city!” exclaimed the rabbis. “These are the destroyers of the city!”

 “So who are the guardians of the city?” asked the city leaders.

 “The teachers of Torah,” answered the rabbis. “As it is written (Tehilim 127:1): If Hashem will not build the house, its builders have toiled in vain; if Hashem will not guard the city, its watcher keeps his vigil in vain.”  

 Before we proceed, I cannot resist mentioning that this Gemara is yet another example which proves that Rabbi Slifkin’s fundamental thesis ("Practically Speaking, Torah Does NOT Protect") is kineged (contra) Chazal. But this is not the point we are attempting to bring out here. Our current point is this:

To state that the primary protection for a city is Torah and not soldiers is a concept that can reasonably be understood. But why did the rabbis state that the centurions were the “destroyers” of the city?

My rebbi answered as follows. The issue here is the attitude. It’s the attitude that the centurions are the protectors which is destructive. The soldiers possessed this attitude and so did the inhabitants of the city. The rabbis were remonstrating with the people. They were telling them that such an attitude is materialistic in nature and causes one to lose sight of reality – the spiritual reality. And once one loses sight of the spiritual reality, one risks the possibility of physical destruction.

This type of attitude is discussed at length by Chazal in tractate Sanhedrin (90b). After the Mishna states that every Jew has a portion in the world to come, it lists several exceptions to this rule. One of them is an apikorus (an heretic). On daf 99b, the Gemara discusses this classification. 

'What is an apikorus?' asks the Gemara. 

Rav Yoseph says, for example, those who claim, ‘Of what benefit are the rabbis to us? Their study of Torah is for their own benefit. Their study of Mishna is for their own benefit. 

From here it is clear that Chazal considered one who believes that limud ha’Torah does not afford benefit to others is an apikorus, G-d forbid! But let’s continue studying…

Abaye responds to Rav Yoseph that such a claim ("Of what benefit are the rabbis to us") is even worse than apikorsus (heresy) and falls under the category of mi’galeh panim ba’torah, which means “acting brazenly against the Torah.” Rashi (ad loc.) explains that this category is worse than apikorsus because it involves willful impudence against the Torah. Abaye then goes on to support his claim by quoting the famous verse in Yermiah (33:25): 

"If it were not for my covenant day and night, then the laws of nature (lit. heaven and earth) I would not have established." 

The term “covenant” in this verse is understood by Abaye to refer to the Torah, and so there is an open verse that the study of Torah not only provides physical protection but is actually responsible for the ongoing existence of the entire universe!

Rav Nachman bar Yitzchok supports Abaye’s position from another verse (Bereishis 18:26): 

"Then I will spare the entire place for their sake."

Once again, this demonstrates that the study of Torah by Torah scholars does not only provide personal protection; it even provides local protection and sometimes (as per Abaye’s position) even global protection.

Notwithstanding any kushyos or objections Rabbi Slifkin may have, it is abundantly clear from countless ma’amarei Chazal that limud haTorah produces physical benefits in a very practical way, and nothing he says or asks can change this fact. Furthermore, we have demonstrated from several ma’amarei Chazal that Rabbi Slifkin’s attitude that “Practically Speaking, Torah Does NOT Protect” is not only contra-Chazal but is even categorized by them as apikorsus and mi’galeh panim ba’torah r”l!  In this writer's humble opinion, Rabbi Slifkin would do well to cease his strident and ongoing assault against the Torah and its students. 

I would like to end with the famous ma’amar Chazal quoted all over in Shas. 

Talmeeday chachamim marbim shalom ba’olam. 

Those who study the Torah increase peace in the world! The Gemara in Brachos (64a) lists five pesukim to support the idea that Torah brings peace to the world, and includes things that are merely related to Torah such as “places of Torah” and even "those who love Torah". Rabbi Slifkin believes that Torah does not provide any practical protection. As we have seen, his attitude is diametrically opposed to that of Chazal’s. 

To our readers: If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave a note in the comments section and I will do my best to respond. If I have made any errors in the ma’amarei Chazal I quoted, I would greatly appreciate being notified.

Practically Speaking, Torah Protects

Rabbi Slifkin's personal disapproval of the Chareidi attitude to the IDF is well-known to his readers and has been extensively documented over the past two years in his numerous posts on this topic. A central subject in his writings is the Charedi claim that limud HaTorah provides protection, a claim which he seems particularly bent on refuting. As we’ve mentioned in the previous post on this topic entitled Bitachon and the IDF, for the most part we have ignored his writings due to the fact that his posts have long ago ceased being academic in nature. Unfortunately, his latest post on this topic – Practically Speaking, Torah Does NOT Protect – is exceptionally egregious in its siluf (distortion) of Chazal’s idea. Something should be said to address the issue.

Rabbi Slifkin asserts: 

There is no unequivocal claim in the Gemara that someone learning Torah receives protection from being killed by a terrorist… It's just as well that the Gemara does not make any such claim, because such a claim is quite clearly not true. 

The only thing “quite clearly not true” is his assertion. Ironically, his post appeared on November 16, the very day that the world was learning Sotah daf 21 in Daf Yomi. The Gemara compares the learning of Torah to light. Just as light protects the world, so too does the learning of Torah. In fact, the Gemara specifically goes on to provide a mashal of how the Torah protects an individual from listim, robbers (read: terrorists)!  This ma’amar Chazal alone serves to defeat Rabbi Slifkin’s thesis. Nevertheless, let’s spend some time analyzing some of the more salient points in his post.   

Rabbi Slifkin asks, rhetorically: 

"Torah scholars do not need protection"? We saw the terrible tragedy of the Torah scholars who were massacred in Har Nof… "Someone on their way to do a mitzvah (shaliach mitzvah) cannot be harmed"? Some of the stabbing victims of the last few weeks were on their way to daven or to give shiurim. "When you're learning Torah, you can't be harmed"? We saw otherwise in the tragedy a few years ago at Mercaz HaRav. 

Let’s conduct an experiment. Let’s repeat Rabbi Slifkin’s argument, but instead of Torah, let’s substitute, li’havdil, the IDF, with the objective of demonstrating that “Practically Speaking, the IDF Does NOT Protect.” Here’s the way the argument would read.   

It's just as well that the State of Israel does not make the claim that the IDF provides protection for the people of Israel, because such a claim is quite clearly not true. ‘The people of Israel are protected by the IDF'? We saw the terrible tragedy in Har Nof. 'People in Israel who are travelling on the road are protected by the IDF from Arab terrorists'?  What about the stabbing victims of the last few weeks. 'If you live in Israel, you are protected by the IDF'? What about the tragedy a few years ago at Mercaz HaRav? 

The argument is clearly absurd. Reasonable people do not consider the cited cases as evidence that the IDF does not provide practical protection for the people of Israel.  True, sometimes terrorists slip through despite their efforts. But does this render the assertion that the IDF protects Israeli citizens "not unequivocal," or only true "in some abstract or hyper-qualified sense, but clearly not true in any practical sense today"? Does it lead to "the bottom line that there is no practical truth or ramifications" for the assertion that the IDF protects Israeli citizens? Obviously not.

And just as obviously, when Chazal say that Torah protects, they naturally do not mean that Torah is a 100% barrier against any harm. Only a fool (or a person with an agenda) understands Chazal that way. Chazal, who were painfully aware of the death of almost every talmid chacham in Eretz Yisroel by the Romans in the war of Beitar, knew that Torah does not provide protection unconditionally.

Anyone with even a modicum of theological sophistication understands that it is not the Torah itself which provides protection but rather Hashem who provides protection in the merit of the Torah. Obviously there may be additional conditions and considerations that come into play. Any rational claim that "x protects against something" is not meant to guarantee that “x” is the only factor in determining the outcome. The only logical way to understand Chazal is that Torah does indeed provide protection but sometimes Hashem decides that there are overriding considerations which necessitate an ostensibly harmful result that would normally be shielded against by the merit of the Torah.

Rabbi Slifkin writes: 

Now, many people, even in the charedi world, realize this, at least to some degree. That's why, since the stabbings began, many charedim have been learning self-defense, buying pepper spray, and requesting increased army protection. 

But the reason they do this is not because they "realize to some degree" that Torah learning is irrelevant in providing protection. It's the simple matter of combining emunah and bitachon with hishtadlus. To my mind, everyone in Israel should learn self-defence. When Shaul fell in battle, Dovid eulogized him. The first thing he mentioned is that we need to teach our boys self-defense! Dovid is the paragon of emunah and bitachon in Hashem yet he understood the importance of physical hishtadlus. Bitachon is not a stira to hishtadlus (as anyone with a basic understanding of hashkafa understands). Please see this post for further elucidation.

This concludes our response to Rabbi Slifkin's assertion that "There is no unequivocal claim in the Gemara that someone learning Torah receives protection from being killed by a terrorist". As we have seen from a number of quoted ma'amarei Chazal, his claim is patently false.

In the following post we will deal with the spiritual ramifications of maintaining the view that "practically speaking, Torah does not provide any physical protection" 

Confronting Dinosaurs - Part 2

This post is a continuation of the previous one entitled Confronting Dinosaurs.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

And it's not as though there was only one period of prehistoric creatures. The fossil record shows beyond doubt that there were numerous distinct periods. The therapsids lived before the dinosaurs; the dinosaurs lived before the mammoths. And even among dinosaurs, different layers of rock reveal distinct eras. Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Allosaurus are never found in the same layers of rock as Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, and Velociraptor. The conclusion is that each existed in a different period; the former lived in a period which has been termed the Jurassic, while the latter lived in the Cretaceous period. This is not part of some evil conspiracy by scientists, nor the result of mistakes on their part. Any paleontologist could win instant fame by finding a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil in Jurassic rocks - but nobody has ever done so, which shows that T-Rex lived much later, in the Cretaceous.

Unfortunately, it shows no such thing. Anytime supposedly later fossils are found in supposedly earlier beds or vice versa, evolutionists simply cut up the beds to conform to the dictates of the theory. If Rabbi Slifkin actually bothered to study evolutionary geology, he would know this. The fact is, geologists already knew – over one hundred years ago! – that supposedly earlier strata are regularly interbedded among later strata. And not merely in one isolated instance. This phenomenon occurs frequently all over the globe!

Furthermore, the fossil record Rabbi Slifkin puts so much faith in (The fossil record shows beyond doubt that there were numerous distinct periods) is entirely bogus. Sometimes Jurassic is found before Cretaceous, sometimes after. This disparity is so frequent that in order for evolutionary geologists to account for it they have been forced to come up with a fantastic mechanical explanation called “overthrusting”. They don’t know how it works; they only know that it works. Why? Because they need it to work! When challenged with the idea that such incredible movements of the strata are invoked by evolutionary geologists solely due to the fact that fossiliferous strata happen to be found in an order that contradicts their theories, one writer (a famous Swiss evolutionary geologist) responded as follows: 

the most incredible mechanical explanation is more probable than that the evolution or organic nature should have been inverted in one country, as compared with another

It is upon such nonsense that Rabbi Slifkin puts all his trust, allowing himself to be duped while simultaneously duping others. The above has been discussed numerous times on this blog wherein the scientific literature has been delineated, chapter and verse. Don’t believe the hype! There is absolutely nothing about the existence of dinosaur fossils or the order of the beds they are found in that contradicts the timeline of our mesora in any way.

Confronting Dinosaurs

In a recent post, Rabbi Slifkin writes as follows:

How do you evaluate whether a professed expert on Torah and science is worth his salt? One step (of many) is to see whether he is ready to confront dinosaurs… whether he is ready (and has already thought about) some very basic questions. Like, when the dinosaurs live? Did they live at the same time as people? Did they all live at the same time as each other? And if so, why are their fossils consistently found in different layers of rock?

Ahhh… dinosaurs. Again. Evolutionary scientists claim that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. Combined with their remarkable structure and categorical absence in today’s zoological landscape, dinosaurs have become the very image of the purported Torah-Science loggerhead. Indeed, Rabbi Slifkin’s primary Torah-Science book has a picture of T-Rex prominently featured on the cover.

But here’s the thing. Dinosaurs are actually the easiest thing to answer! The truth is, the dino problem is nothing more than evolutionary dogma combined with media hype. Dinosaurs went extinct some time in the past just as countless other life-forms. Extinction is an ongoing reality which most-likely attended the biological condition from its very inception. So what? Extinction has nothing to do with age. There are over 750 documented species that went extinct in the past 500 years alone. Dino fossils don’t come with an “age” stamp. Fossilization occurs rapidly and there’s no way to know how old a fossil actually is.   

Rabbi Slifkin misleads his readers (or perhaps himself) by asking:  

Did they all live at the same time as each other? And if so, why are their fossils consistently found in different layers of rock?

Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Dinosaur fossils are consistently found in identical rock layers. All one has to do is study the material. But rather than conducting a proper scientific investigation of the material at hand, Rabbi Slifkin chooses to base his conclusions on sensationalist stories in low level media outlets. This blog has already demonstrated on numerous occasions that dino fossils are often found in identical layers and it is merely evolutionary dogma which dupes the public into thinking otherwise. Rabbi Slifkin has no business writing the things that he does. His blog is supposed to be an explication of the “rationalist” approach to Judaism. Rationalists form their opinions based on empirical observation, not subjective belief.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

Interestingly, the Christian Young Earth Creationists (YECs) are eager to confront dinosaurs… Yet there is no parallel to this amongst Orthodox Jewish YECs. Whether they ultimately claim that dinosaur bones are an incredible work of art created by God, or that they lived before the Flood, one finds that Orthodox YECs simply do not want to discuss the topic at all.

Actually, I find this comment insulting. I am an Orthodox Jewish YEC and I have spent countless hours, days, weeks, months, and even years discussing dinosaurs. I personally have penned several dozen posts on this blog dealing with this issue and in fact have discussed it directly with Rabbi Slifkin in online debates and even discussed it with him in person when he came to Toronto. My Rebbi, Rav Avigdor Miller, spent sixty years discussing the issue of dinosaurs. His books are readily available. Rabbi Slifkin’s comment is simply false.

Here’s some more from the good Rabbi:

Forget abstract jargon about radioactive decay and cesium atoms. Think about something tangible and familiar, such as animal life. The fossil evidence clearly shows that there were dinosaurs and all kinds of other creatures which lived before people (since no fossils of contemporary creatures are found in the same strata).

Once again, this claim is simply false. Here's something "tangible and familiar". Dino fossils were recently found on the North Slope of Alaska in the exact same location that old cow bones would be expected to be found.  

Dinosaurs pose no problem to our mesorah. The Torah states that Hashem Created all life forms recently over a period of six days. Science provides no evidence to the contrary and in fact all the available evidence points to rapid creation.  

Whale Evolution and Skepticism

"But has Rabbi Shafran applied his professed "critical thinking" to the alternate understanding of life's development that is taught in his circles? Does he really think that the available physical evidence better supports the notion that whales were created independently, with striking internal similarities to terrestrial mammals, and an inability to breathe underwater like fish, and following a whole chain of extinct creatures that were progressively less terrestrial, rather than indicating that they are actually descended from terrestrial mammals?" 

[R. Slifkin, July 21, 2015]

What does it take, in an engineering sense, to transform a car into a submarine? Quite a bit. And quite a bit of intelligence.

The same is true of transforming a land based mammal like a cow into a whale. There is very little (if any) hard scientific evidence for whale evolution. At least not through apparently unguided processes such as random mutation and natural selection.

Does R. Slifkin really have actual evidence that that whales evolved from a land animal in a few million years? Other than fanciful drawings with only a few so-called "transitional" fossils?

(see pdf for enlarged view)

In the drawing, on the left, is the supposed sequence of transitional fossils from a fully terrestrial animal (like a cow) at the bottom -- to a fully aquatic whale at the top -- in about 10 million years on the evolutionary time scale.

On the right -- is a recent fossil find showing a fully aquatic whale in just the wrong place in the sequence.

Argentine paleontologist Marcelo Reguero, who led a joint Argentine-Swedish team, said the fossilized archaeocete jawbone found in February dates back 49 million years. In evolutionary terms, that's not far off from the fossils of even older proto-whales from 53 million years ago that have been found in South Asia and other warmer latitudes. 

Those earlier proto-whales were amphibians, able to live on land as well as sea. This jawbone, in contrast, belongs to the Basilosauridae group of fully aquatic whales, said Reguero, who leads research for the Argentine Antarctic Institute. 

"The relevance of this discovery is that it's the oldest known completely aquatic whale found yet," said Reguero, who shared the discovery with Argentine paleontologist Claudia Tambussi and Swedish paleontologists Thomas Mors and Jonas Hagstrom of the Natural History Museum in Stockholm.

[Oct. 2011, www.nbcnews.com. The handout drawing on the right is released by the Argentine Direccion Nacional del Antartico shows an artist`s rendition of an Antartic Archaeocetes, after fossils of the creature were found at the La Meseta formation, near the Marambio Base in the Argentine-run area of the Antarctica.]

Until now, the whale series went something like this:

Pakicetids (fully terrestrial): ~50 mya
Ambulocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya
Remingtonocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya
Rodhocetus (a Protocetid, semi-aquatic): 47 mya
Basilosaurids (fully aquatic): 40 mya

Now the timeline looks something like this:

Pakicetids (fully terrestrial): ~50 mya
New Fossil Jawbone (fully aquatic whale): 49 mya
Ambulocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya
Remingtonocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya
Rodhocetus (a Protocetid, semi-aquatic): 47 mya
Basilosaurids (fully aquatic): 40 mya

The fossil record now might jump from fully terrestrial Pakicetids to fully aquatic whales in just a couple million years -- maybe much less than 5 million years [at least according to the shaky dating systems of evolutionists]. In fact, if this find has been correctly identified, then fully aquatic whales might have existed before many of their alleged semi-aquatic evolutionary precursors.[1]

Now I think it is pretty amazing that evolutionists can reconstruct a whole whale from a jaw-bone. But they do this kind of thing all the time. Below is a reconstruction of an important "transitional fossil"  in R. Slifkin's fossil sequence.

(see pdf for enlarged view)

From a few fossils like a skull and a pelvis, Wikipedia shows a fanciful reconstruction of Rodhocetus. Rodhocetus is claimed to be a semi-aquatic mammal developing flippers and a whale-like tail. However there is no fossil evidence for these whale-like properties. I have superimposed red stars on the critical parts that are missing from the actual fossil evidence.  

As Richard Sternberg and others have argued, there are quite a few changes that have to appear in just a few million years in going from a land mammal to a whale [2]:

• Counter-current heat exchanger for intra-abdominal testes
• Ball vertebra
• Tail flukes and musculature
• Blubber for temperature insulation
• Ability to drink sea water (reorganization of kidney tissues)
• Reverse orientation of fetus in the uterus
• Nurse young underwater (modified mammal)
• Forelimbs transformed into flippers
• Reduction of hind limbs
• Reduction/loss of pelvis and sacral vertebrae
• Reorganization of the musculature for the reproductive organs
• Hydrodynamic properties of the skin
• Special lung surfactants
• Novel muscle systems for the blowhole
• Modification of the teeth
• Modification of the eye for underwater vision
• Emergence of expansion of the mandibular fat bad with complex lipid distribution (the fat pad has acoustic properties)
• Reorganization of skull bone
• Modification of the ear bones
• Decoupling of esophagus and trachea
• Synthesis and metabolism of isovaleric acid (toxic to terrestrial mammals)
• Emergence of blowhole musculature and their neurological control

New genes and proteins would have to be adapted or "invented" along the way. To form even a few proteins is well beyond the probabilistic resources of life on earth or the even the universe, even at billions of years proposed in evolutionary time scales. All the changes would have to be co-ordinated to develop a new body plan.

In fact, evolutionist do not even have a single detailed Darwinian pathway that could account for even one of the significant morphological changes needed to convert this speculation of whale evolution into serious science.

Here is a video of the  incorrigible Dr. Berlinksi that evolutionist love to hate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iFnyCjcodY

[1] http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/discovery_of_oldest_fully_aqua052021.html 

[2] http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/discovery_of_oldest_fully_aqua052021.html