[Avodah] Bereishit

Rabbi rabbi at opengemara.org
Fri Oct 5 12:31:12 PDT 2018


On October 5, 2018 8:40:01 AM PDT, Alexander Seinfeld wrote:
>7 things every Jew should know about Ma'aseh Bereishit, even if it was
>not taught in BY:

>1. The Torah is not a history book. It is not Historia. It is Toras
>Chayim. If it says something that sounds historical but contradicts
>scientific History, that's not a kasheh on the Torah, it's more like a
>sha'elah -- "Why did HKBH write this? What's He teaching me here?"

...
>4. Learn the Ramban on the first perek -- sounds a lot like the
>descriptions we have of the Big Bang.

The problem with this answer is that it really doesn't answer it, as the
chronology still doesn't work -- according to science, there were no
plants before the sun and the moon. So either it's all a parable (and
there doesn't need to be any correlation between Torah and science),
or you need another answer (such as the Lubavitcher Rebbe's answer that
the world was created old).


>7. Yet to constantly answer, "Hashem just did/does it that way" is a bit
>facile and reminds me of young people who give this answer when asked,
>"What causes a hurricane?" If we dismissed every question with "Hashem
>does it" without looking into the mechanism that HKBH uses to do it, we
>would be much poorer, and possibly less safe and healthy. Besides giving
>us practical wisdom (how to predict hurricanes, how to fight cancer, how
>to build stronger bridges), knowing the details about how these things
>work should increase our sense of wonder and our Emunah.

The question is if we're working within nature or without. So hurricanes
are natural, but Beriya very well may not (do you have a source that
nature started from day 1 vs day 6 or when Adam was evicted from Gan
Eden)?


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