The Day of the Rabbit

B”H

Today, in the daf yomi cycle, Chulin 59a was studied, where the Gemara mentions certain rules regarding the shafan, i.e. the rabbit.

Additionally, this week we are in Parashat Ree where also the shafan (rabbit) is mentioned and described as “maale gerah”.

Some people who believe that the hyrax may be the biblical shafan, are conscious that the hyrax does not practice classical rumination, nor caecotrophy, not even merycism, so I asked them the following:

Please provide a definition of maale gerah that includes the hyrax and all the animals the Torah called maale gerah.

Trying to save their position, they published recently in the Jewish blogosphera the following answer:

Rumination-style movement of the mouth of the animal in a way which would lead the people who were living in the times of Matan Torah to believe that the animal is a true ruminant (brings up the cud) would be enough for that animal to be considered Maaleh Gerah.

Which I refute B”H by the following:

The Torah wrote that the gamal, shafan and arnebet are maaleh gerah. Could it be that it meant to say that they only give an appearance of having this characteristic?

I.That couldn’t fit into the plain meaning of the pasuk which clearly calls them “maaleh gerah”.

ויקרא פרק יא

(ד) אַךְ אֶת זֶה לֹא תֹאכְלוּ מִמַּעֲלֵי הַגֵּרָה וּמִמַּפְרִיסֵי הַפַּרְסָה אֶת הַגָּמָל כִּי מַעֲלֵה גֵרָה הוּא וּפַרְסָה אֵינֶנּוּ מַפְרִיס טָמֵא הוּא לָכֶם:

(ה) וְאֶת הַשָּׁפָן כִּי מַעֲלֵה גֵרָה הוּא וּפַרְסָה לֹא יַפְרִיס טָמֵא הוּא לָכֶם:

(ו) וְאֶת הָאַרְנֶבֶת כִּי מַעֲלַת גֵּרָה הִוא וּפַרְסָה לֹא הִפְרִיסָה טְמֵאָה הִוא לָכֶם:

II.The gamal (mentioned in the same verse[1] as similar to shafan and arnebet) is actually “maaleh gerah”.

III.The Midrash speaks of the shafan as an animal who indeed has Tahara (“purity”) signs:

ויקרא רבה (וילנא) פרשה יג ה' ד"ה א"ר שמואל

את השפן זו מדי, רבנן ור' יהודה ברבי סימון, רבנן אמרי מה השפן הזה יש בו סימני טומאה וסימני טהרה, כך היתה מלכות מדי מעמדת צדיק ורשע, אמר רבי יהודה ברבי סימון דריוש האחרון בנה של אסתר היה טהור מאמו וטמא מאביו.

So the shafan is “maaleh gerah”, and not just appears to be, as was suggested by some.

[1] Deuteronomy 14:7

The Eternity of the Torah

In a recent post entitled Ever Changing Morality, Rabbi Slifkin writes as follows:

It does weaken our ability to claim that the Torah's amazing morality is evidence of its truth/ superiority. For by what measure can we assert that the Torah is perfectly moral? We can only do so by claiming that it agrees with our own sense of morality…

This assertion is false. From a historical perspective, the Torah is the most dominant work mankind possesses. This alone is a demonstration of its superiority. The two largest systems of morality practiced today (Christianity and Islam) are fundamentally based on the Torah. Without the Torah mankind would lack many elements of societal harmony and self-preservation. Rambam writes that with the advent of matan Torah, a great light descended upon the gentile world. Although the goyim took the Torah and, in many cases, warped its teachings, it still serves as the most influential element in the civilization of mankind.

But the flip side of this is that it also means that those who claim that the Torah is immoral, in its attitudes to homosexuality, women, etc., are also severely weakened in their case. How can they judge the Torah to be lacking vis-a-vis their own modern Western standard of morality, when their own standard is so transient?

This makes no sense. If standards of morality are indeed transient, than what’s wrong with judging the Torah?

The truth of the matter is, the term “transient morality” is a misnomer. As soon as morality becomes transient, it loses its ability to act as an intrinsic standard for human behavior.

Yet, on the other hand, there is a school of Torah thought which claims that there is an ethic independent of Torah –

There’s obviously no such school of “Torah” thought. The Torah is the expressed Will of G-d and as such is the ultimate representation of Truth. Its guidelines are absolute. As it happens, the universe is also the expressed Will of G-d. Consequently, an astute observer of nature might be able to glean some of the truths of the Torah, perhaps even the majority. Our father Avraham followed such a system and, according to our sages, managed to glean all of the basic tenets of the Torah! But his conclusions were not independent of the Torah. The claim that there can be an ethic “independent” of the Torah, meaning, an ethic which is capable of expressing a conclusion or idea which is not in conformance with the Torah, is clearly anti-Jewish. To claim that there is a “school of Torah thought” that promotes such an idea is sheer folly.

How I Came To Reject Evolution - Part 3

(This is the final post in a series entitled How I Came To Reject Evolution)

In an attempt to justify his adoption of evolutionary theory in contradiction to our mesorah and the plain meaning of the pesukim, Rabbi Slifkin writes as follows:

Wherever I looked in the animal kingdom, things made so much more sense in light of common ancestry than in light of special creation. Emu wings, goose bumps, whale and bat physiology, archeopteryx - sure, the anti-evolutionists could always contrive some sort of ad hoc just-so story, but it seemed forced. Common ancestry was a simple principle that neatly explained everything. Just look at the picture of the bat skeleton. Why make a creature that functions as a bird, and is even classified with birds in the Torah, yet is physiologically similar to mammals? Bats did not share any fundamental similarities with birds; contrary to what Chazal thought, bats do not lay eggs. Why make whales that function as fish, but with the anatomy of land mammals and without the extremely useful (sometimes life-saving) ability to breathe underwater, like fish? Either Hashem made bats and whales from land mammals, or He was really out to fool us!

Anyone who thinks about this paragraph for a minute can see the glaring fallacy in Rabbi Slifkin’s logic. Let’s deal with his two questions.

He asks: “Just look at the picture of the bat skeleton. Why make a creature that functions as a bird, and is even classified with birds in the Torah, yet is physiologically similar to mammals?”

OK Rabbi Slifkin, what’s the answer? Why did Hashem make such a creature? Evolution? But you admit that it is Hashem Who is functioning through evolution. So in what way does your question indicate evolution any more than special creation?

Rabbi Slifkin asks: “Why make whales that function as fish, but with the anatomy of land mammals and without the extremely useful (sometimes life-saving) ability to breathe underwater, like fish?”

His answer: “Hashem made bats and whales from land mammals”!!

How does that answer the question? Why did Hashem choose to make the whale in such a way that it would not possess the “extremely useful (sometimes life-saving) ability to breathe underwater”?

Rabbi Slifkin’s questions are entirely irrelevant. One can ask “why” on everything in the beriah. Why make flying creatures? Why make creatures which live in the sea? Why make insects? Why make plants? When considering Torah versus Evolution, these are not the questions one should be asking. As Rabbi Slifkin originally stated, the proper question is, what does the evidence tell us regarding evolution? And the answer is clear as discussed in the past two posts. There is absolutely no evidence that bats or whales descended from land mammals. They appear suddenly in the record with no transitional fossils linking them to their supposed terrestrial antecedents. And that’s all that counts.

How I came To Reject Evolution - Part 2

(This post is a continuation of a previous post entitled How I Came To Reject Evolution.)

As we saw in the previous post, Rabbi Slifkin claims that when one investigates the Torah/Evolution loggerhead, the proper approach is to determine whether the existing evidence better supports the Torah or, li’havil, Evolution. I agree.

Rabbi Slifkin then writes that the existence of “millions of extinct species that are intermediate in form to surviving species - fit far, far better with the evolutionary model than with the special-creation model.” Tentatively, I would have to say that I agree with that too. I write “tentatively” because I find it difficult to even envision the idea that the metzius should be different than what the Torah writes. But I think that intellectual honesty would force me to admit that Rabbi Slifkin’s scenario at least seems to indicate, if not prove, the idea of evolutionary speciation, or what is known as macro-evolution. (If any of my chaveirim or readers wishes to explain to me why I would not have to admit this, I would be thrilled).

So why am I an anti-evolutionist? Here’s what happened. As readers of this blog know, I am a talmid of Rav Avigdor Miller. I have been listening to his shiurim for close to 40 years now. As anyone who is familiar with the Rav knows, one of his biggest themes is how all of the phenomena of the beriah openly testify to the Greatness (i.e. Power), Wisdom and Kindliness of Hashem. As I listened, the theme of evolution came up over and over. He demonstrated repeatedly that the sheer complexity and design-like properties of life on earth made evolutionary theory preposterous. But I always had a nagging thought in the back of my mind. Evolutionists are scientists. They must have evidence for what they are saying. So even though Rabbi Miller sounded reasonable, perhaps the scientists could show him that the evidence simply disproved his arguments?

And then Hashem had rachmanus on me. I listened to Tape #78 entitled Evolutionists Speak and my world was turned upside down! Rabbi Miller began the tape by saying just what Rabbi Slifkin said. In order to assess evolution we must examine the evidence. He then went on to explain that the only place one can obtain information about the existence of evidence is from evolutionists themselves. After all, they are the ones who are in the field. They are the ones who have made a career of studying the fossils. He then went on to do the impossible, or so I thought. He began to list one source after the next, all evolutionists, all leading scientists in their fields. He began with an examination of paleobotany (the study of fossils of extinct plants) and went on to fish, animals and birds. He listed literally dozens of sources. He noted the author, the name of the book, and the page number. He read out the quotation and explained them in plain English along with the context in which they were found. And every single evolutionist quoted there, every single one without exception, admitted that – as one evolutionist wrote – “essentially continuous transitional sequences are not merely rare, but they are virtually absent”. It was as if a bomb had dropped. It was literally unbelievable!

Of course, I took Rabbi Miller at his word and now became utterly convinced in the falseness of Evolutionary theory. But as I grew older I began to lecture and write on this topic and ran up against constant criticism. Maybe Rabbi Miller was misquoting? Maybe he was quoting out of context? Maybe he obtained the quotes from some Creationist list but the quotes actually did not exist? Eventually I got sick and tired of people challenging the integrity of my Rebbe. So I went online and hunted down each and every author and each and every book quoted by Rabbi Miller in that tape and purchased the books! All of them! And then I went to work. I looked up each and every source quoted by Rabbi Miller. And every single quotation outlined by Rabbi Miller was right there, chapter and verse and page number. And in none of the cases was he quoting the author out of context.

Rabbi Miller’s tapes and books are full of scientific evidence disproving evolution but eventually I expanded my studies in this field and was amazed to find that there are hundreds of sources in the published scientific literature which demonstrate the lack of fossil evidence for evolution. Rabbi Miller’s quotations were just a smattering of the available information out there.

So, why do I reject evolution? Simple. Because the available evidence disproves it while simultaneously proving sudden special creation. As one of the most authoritative neo-Darwinian evolutionists wrote: “The facts are that many species and genera, indeed the majority, do appear suddenly in the record, differing sharply and in many ways from any earlier group, and that this appearance of discontinuity becomes more common the higher the level, until it is virtually universal as regards orders and all higher steps in the taxonomic hierarchy.” (George Gaylord Simpson)

This is exactly what the Torah writes! Species appeared suddenly on earth! What more do I need than that? Indeed, what more does Rabbi Slifkin need than that? What right does he have to accept evolutionary theory when the evolutionists themselves concede the lack of fossil evidence? He writes that the proper thing to do is to evaluate the evidence but then ignores his own advice and accepts evolution despite the evidence!

Of course this is not a ta’anah because, as we’ve seen, Rabbi Slifkin is convinced that there are “millions of extinct species that are intermediate in form to surviving species”. So I am here to inform him, and anyone else who wishes to listen, that he is wrong, horribly wrong.

First of all, scientists have not documented millions of extinct species. In fact, biologists today have documented the existence of approximately 2 million species in total but only about 10% of all known species are documented in the rocks! There are only about 250,000 species captured by the fossil record and not all of them are extinct. And practically none of them qualify as transitional fossils as any paleontologist worth his salt will admit to you.

According to Rabbi Slifkin, the truth about the evidence from the fossil record should cause him to reconsider his position on the theory but will he? Highly doubtful. The obvious question is, why? Rabbi Slifkin loves to level accusations of religious bias against individuals like me and he's probably right. But what he consistently fails to see are his own biases in favor of the scientific community. Is it this bias which simply does not allow him to accept the evidence which stares him in the face? I think the answer is clear.

To be continued…

How I Came To Reject Evolution

In a post entitled How I Came To Accept Evolution, Rabbi Slifkin tries to explain to his readers the step by step thought process which led to his ultimate adoption of the Evolutionary paradigm for ma'aseh bereishis. Ironically the element that served as the critical turning point for him was the same one that caused me to adopt the exact opposite conclusion. The following are a few selections from his post with my comments interspersed.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

The final critical component was my realization that I was looking at the entire topic in the wrong way. As mentioned earlier, I had solely focused on the problems with evolution - the kashyas. This was exactly what Denton and Johnson had done in their books. As far as I was concerned, the existence of these problems showed that evolution was bogus. But I realize that this wasn't the correct way of looking at things. The correct way was to ask whether the existing evidence better supported evolution or special creation. And this radically changed my perspective on it.

I have two comments to make.

1) In a sense I understand Rabbi Slifkin. In fact, I actually agree with him. I am aware that some individuals may take exception to the following, but I too believe that it is important to investigate the existing evidence. For those who would protest that it is theologically problematic to grant "physical evidence" the same validity as our accepted Torah traditions, I would respond as follows.

The Torah was given to us via the asseres ha’dibros, the Ten Utterances. The Torah constitutes the Will of Hashem. Studying it causes one to become increasingly aware of the Creator’s presence, which, according to the Ramban, is the ultimate purpose of all Torah u’mitzvos (parshas Bo). But there are another set of utterances which preceded those at Sinai.

B’assara ma’amaros nivra ha’olam – The world was created via the Ten Sayings. As such, creation itself is also a revelation of Hashem’s Will, just like the Torah. Studying the beriah for the purpose of becoming aware of Hashem is no less an Avodas Hashem than studying the Torah. People who get into the habit of dismissing physical evidence as a source of True Knowledge are making an error. This is not to say that we should dismiss our Torah traditions each time we come across a problem but I feel it is crucial to at least know what the physical reality is. This leads me to my second comment.

2) Rabbi Slifkin claims that Denton and Johnson focused only on the problems with evolution without taking the existing evidence into account. I too read Denton and Johnson’s books and I can tell you that Rabbi Slifkin is wrong, dead wrong. Their books are all about the existing evidence. More on this shortly.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

For example, previously, I had only thought about the fossil record in terms of hoaxes (such as Piltdown man), and in terms of missing links. But now I realized that the fossils that we do have - primitive hominids, and the remains of millions of extinct species that are intermediate in form to surviving species - fit far, far better with the evolutionary model than with the special-creation model. The missing links were much less significant than the present links!

This paragraph hit me like a ton of bricks. It was like an epiphany, a “eureka”, a revelation. I have known Rabbi Slifkin for over seven years now and have been operating under the assumption that he was aware that there was a dearth of fossil evidence. In fact, in his book The Science of Torah (pages 149-150) he seems to admit so openly. But now Rabbi Slifkin has finally let the cat out of the bag. One of the “critical components” that turned him into an evolutionist was the presence in the fossil record of “millions of extinct species that are intermediate in form to surviving species”. If there are indeed millions of extinct species that are transitional in structure to currently existing life forms, I myself would have a difficult time dismissing such evidence. No wonder Rabbi Slifkin is an evolutionist!

Oddly enough it was my study of the fossil record that caused me to conclude exactly the opposite.

To be continued…

Placing Things Right Side Up - Part 2

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

I find it particular interesting that you mention Intelligent Design. Those who subscribe to it do not suffer from the atheist bias, right? And yet those scientists who do subscribe to ID all accept that all life evolved from a common ancestor.

This is no doubt false. Rabbi Slifkin did not interview every ID scientist. There is no way he could know such a thing. The reason ID scientists do not take issue with common ancestry is because they do not have a scientific argument to disprove it. But that doesn’t mean they all believe it.

Rabbi Menken writes:

Yes, we believe the world is 5771 years old, however this may be defined (there are multiple schools of thought on this point). Yet I am unaware of even one Orthodox person with an education in the hard sciences who believes that, from a scientific perspective, the world appears to be 5771 years old rather than roughly 15 billion.

To which Rabbi Slifkin responds:

Agreed. Now I challenge you to write an article for Mishpachah or Ami or Dialogue elaborating on this - that the scientific evidence itself clearly shows the world to be billions of years old, and that nobody with an education in the hard sciences would reasonably say otherwise. (And you can add your detailed explanation of why evolution, although being scientifically unfounded, is not at all theologically problematic.) Then we'll see if the Orthodox community is really okay with this.

Rabbi Slifkin is correct. The Orthodox community wouldn’t be too happy with Rabbi Menken’s attitude. The question is, why? And the answer is simple. The term “scientific perspective” is nebulous. If “scientific” perspective means “materialistic” perspective then yes, the world does indeed seem old. As the Rambam notes in Moreh Nevuchim, a naïve observation of the world could reasonably result in the conclusion that huge periods of time elapsed in its development. But there is an opposing “theory”.

Once one assumes the presence of a Grand Designer (or even the possibility), the term “scientific perspective” vis-à-vis the age of the universe adopts, per force, an entirely different definition. It means “evidence-based perspective”. And according to the “Orthodox world”, the “evidence” is not any more consistent with the evolutionary view than it is with the design view.

The truth is, the design view is far more consistent with what we see than the materialistic view but this is not for now…

Placing Things Right Side Up

(This post continues our analysis of Rabbi Slifkin’s attitude to Rabbi Shafran’s article in Cross-Currents)

In a follow up post entitled Turning Things On Their Head, Rabbi Slifkin takes Rabbi Menken to task regarding his defense of Rabbi Shafran’s article. The following are some comments on this interchange.

Rabbi Menken wrote as follows:

Nonetheless, and contrary to Rabbi Slifkin’s assertions, it is true that a theist is capable of an impartial view of evolution, while anyone unwilling to entertain the idea of a Creator is incapable of the same.

To which Rabbi Slifkin responds:

That is not contrary to my assertions. In fact, it is entirely consistent with what I wrote. But theists who truly have an impartial view of evolution all accept that the evidence supports it!

Ahh… “truly have an impartial view”. Why didn’t someone say so? Sounds like a No True Scotsman argument to me. Rabbi Menken makes an assertion that is internally sound logically, and Rabbi Slifkin responds with an ad hoc attempt to maintain his position by invoking a logically fallacious counterargument. In English this means that according to Rabbi Slifkin any theist who concludes that evolution is unsupported is automatically considered partial because, according to Rabbi Slifkin, all impartial theists consider evolution proven. The fallacy of such an argument is self-evident.

Rabbi Slifkin challenges Rabbi Menken as follows:

By the way, if you have evaluated the evidence for evolution and found it lacking, then I assume this means that you considered the question of why marsupials are concentrated in Australia, why whales are not able to breath underwater like fish, and why every species that is discovered, live and extinct, can be neatly fitted into a nested hierarchal family-tree taxonomy - (for example, there are numerous species with characteristics of dinosaurs and birds, but no intermediates between birds and mammals). Can you share with me the answers that you came up with?

Well, I don’t know if Rabbi Menken ever responded to Rabbi Slifkin (I only skimmed his original article in Cross-Currents for the purpose of writing this post, I did not look in the comment section) but I have a response if anyone is interested.

This “nested hierarchy” argument Rabbi Slifkin is so fond of quoting (he adopted it from the famous PE evolutionist Niles Eldridge) is equally consistent with “Design” theory. Let’s consider the following.

For reasons known only to Him, the Designer decided to Create animal life on earth. He began, like any design engineer would, li’havdil, by designing a small number (50 to 100) basic body plans (referred to as “Phyla” in Linnaean taxonomy). The Designer wanted to create millions of different types of life forms on earth but He chose to stick to the original basic body plans because, after all, they were perfectly functional designs. So, He went on to Design several subcategories to the original category (class, order, family, genus, species) and at each stage He added various additional features in order to achieve the desired variety. To be sure, each additional category was as perfectly designed as the original category because, after all, the Designer is obviously endlessly Wise as is clearly evidenced from His handiwork.

The above, albeit a grossly oversimplified biological depiction of ma’aseh bereishis, suffices to demonstrate that the presence on earth of “categories of life” hierarchaly nested in each other is perfectly consistent with the idea that they were designed.

To be continued…