Reconciling Torah And Evolution

by Rabbi Haskel Lookstein
Special To The Jewish Week

Candlelighting, Readings:
Candles: 5:44 p.m.
Torah reading: Genesis 1:1-6:8
Haftarah: Isaiah 42:5-43:10
Shabbat ends: 6:42 p.m.

The scene took place over 65 years ago. A 14-year-old girl sat on the bed of her 9-year-old brother, discussing what she learned in freshman science. “Do you believe in evolution?” she asked.
“What’s evolution?”
She explained the theory and her brother responded: “Well, it sounds reasonable to me.”
Then came the more difficult question: “Well, how do you reconcile that theory with the description of Creation in Bereshit?”
The boy responded: “I guess you have to say the Torah is the Torah, and the scientific theory of evolution is a scientific theory. There is no real need to reconcile them.”
My sister looked at me with a combination of astonishment and annoyance: “Where is your intellectual honesty?”
I confess, I didn’t understand the term “intellectual honesty” at the time, but I’m not sure I would answer differently today. However, in the intervening years I have found some support for my instinctive response as a child.
That support begins with Rashi’s teaching that the Torah “does not intend to explain the order of Creation,” because if it was chronological, you’d have to ask where the waters came from? In the very second verse the Torah states that a wind from God was hovering over the waters before we’re told that the waters were created. If the Torah intended an exact chronology, the first word would be barishona (“first”), not bereishit (“in the beginning of”).
What we can learn from the story of Creation is that there is “intelligent design,” a first cause, a prime mover in the world. The world did not just happen. There is a God who set things in motion. Matter of fact, many scientists have said that closely observing how the world works actually leads to an awareness of God.
In a recently published book, “The Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology, and Evolution,” Natan Slifkin cites a number of such supporting sources, including Albert Einstein who wrote: “You find it surprising that I think of the comprehensibility of the world to the degree that we may speak of such comprehensibility as a miracle or eternal mystery. But surely, a priori, one should expect the world to be chaotic, and not to be grasped by thought [or order] in any way. ... Therein lies the ‘miracle’ which becomes more and more evident as our knowledge develops.”
As Slifkin writes, “We take order for granted. We have been brought up with the concept of laws of nature. To us, it is obvious that the universe should make sense. But Einstein considered it “miraculous” that the universe evinces order.
There is a hint at evolutionary theory when the Talmud [Hagiga 12a] asks, how could the sun have been created on the fourth day if light was created on the first day? The Talmud answers: “They (the luminaries) were created on the first day, and on the fourth, God commanded them to take their places in the heavens.”
Rashi, citing Tanchuma Yashan, and Bereshit Rabba, adds something quite startling: “The same is true for all the creations of heaven and earth; they were all created on the first day, and each one was placed in the universe on the day for which it had been decreed,” in its proper time and location, in accordance with that first day’s plan.
Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits once asked, when can we say that something was actually created? For example, when was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony created? When an orchestra played it? Certainly not. It was created as soon as Beethoven conceived of the final musical note. Before it was first performed, the symphony was already created.
Similarly, when was the Eiffel Tower created? When steelworkers constructed it, or when Gustave Eiffel, the architect, conceived the tower and finished the plans?
God, the architect of the world, created the world with a plan. At the moment of Creation the world may very well have remained dark, but light had already been created because God conceived it. The same is true with all of heaven and earth, as is suggested by the Talmud, the Midrashim, and Rashi when they say that everything was created on the first day and only came into place on the day assigned to it.
That’s about as close as we can come to reconciling Creation with evolutionary theory. The Torah, then, is not a science or history book. According to the Talmud and many commentators, “Ein mukdam um’uchar ba-Torah,” there is no chronological order to the Torah, but there is a logical order. Rashi always asks why one story or law follows another. The question assumes that the Divine author of the Bible had a logical order in mind, not necessarily a scientific or historical one.
That said, there is no need to deny basic evolutionary theory that explains how simple forms of life evolved into more complex forms. The theory of a Prime Mover, a Creator, is clearly stated in the biblical text and we can then study how things developed from the plan.
I have a feeling that my sister, of blessed memory, would have found that explanation quite satisfying, though with a 65-year lag. n
Rabbi Haskel Lookstein is spiritual leader of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun and principal of the Ramaz School.

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