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Agreeing to Disagree: American Orthodox Jewish Scientists’ Confrontation with Evolution in the 1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Rachel S. A. Pear
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Abstract

While tension between religious commitment and evolution has often been perceived as a Christian American phenomenon, the current article joins a growing body of literature that illustrates how some Jewish Americans have also struggled with Darwinism. This article will focus in on the case of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists (AOJS), and document its members’ engagement with evolution in the 1960s and 70s. Although founded in New York in 1948, the AOJS did not grapple with the issue of evolution in its first decade. When evolution did come to the fore in the 1960s, a time when the Christian American discussion of evolution also escalated, AOJS members expressed a spectrum of views on the matter. Those who strongly critiqued evolution, however, were more prolific in their writing on the subject than those who expressed positive attitudes towards evolution. This article highlights historical and sociological factors within American and Jewish life in the second half of the 20th century that are related to this outburst of antievolutionism on the part of some AOJS members in this period. It further illustrates that the negative view of evolution promoted by some members was not suppressed or censured by the association, despite the fact that it may well have been a minority view within the group. Lastly the article suggests that the American Orthodox scientists adopted the model of agreeing to disagree on the matter of evolution because they placed the value of Orthodox Jewish unity above other scientific and social considerations and goals.

Keywords

evolutionDarwinismJudaism
Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 206 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2018

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References

Notes

This article is based on part of my Ph.D. dissertation written within the rubric of the Science Technology and Society graduate program at Bar-Ilan University and under the advisement of Professors Noah Efron and Oren Harman.

1. A leading example of scholarship on American Christian views is Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Expanded ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); Muslim views are currently being explored by scholars such as Salman Hameed, for instance in “Evolution and Creationism in the Islamic World,” in Cantor, Geoffrey, Dixon, Thomas and Pumfrey, Stephen, eds. Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 133–152 Google Scholar; and an anthology that provides an introduction to Jewish views regarding evolution is Cantor, Geoffrey and Swetlitz, Marc, Judaism and the Challenge of Darwinism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Moran, Jeffery P., American Genesis: The Evolution Controversies from Scopes to Creation Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), x–xi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the books by Larson, Edward J. such as his classic Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America 's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997)Google Scholar; and for American Jewish responses to the Scopes trial and into the decades beyond, see Rachel S. Pear's, A. “Differences over Darwinism: American Orthodox Jewish Reponses to Evolution in the 1920s,” Aleph: Historical Studies of Science and Judaism 15 (2015): 343-87CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Arguing about Evolution for the Sake of Heaven: American Orthodox Rabbis in the 1930s-50s Dispute Darwinism's Merit and Meaning,” Fides et Historia 46 (Winter/Spring 2014): 21-39; And It Was Good? American Modern Orthodox Engagement with Darwinism, 1925-2012 (Ph.D. diss., Bar Ilan University, 2013).

3. Laats, Adam and Siegel, Harvey, Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. For a fascinating in-depth historical review of the Jewish responses to an earlier scientific controversy, the Copernican heliocentric model of the universe, see Brown, Jeremy, New Heavens and a New Earth: The Jewish Reception of Copernican Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar In my review of this book, in Studies in Jewish Christian Relations 10 (2015): 1-3,I briefly draw some parallels to the current controversies regarding evolution in Judaism.

5. For example, Shapiro, Adam R., Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Numbers, Ronald, Darwinism Comes to America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 4.Google Scholar

7. Offenbacher's letter invitation can be viewed at: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ebdb03_0ff47ac96bbc4b02ae3de4115f40162f.pdf (accessed December 4, 2017). See also Offenbacher, Elmer, “The Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists: The First Two Decades (1947-1967),” Bekhol Derakhekha Daehu Journal of Torah and Scholarship 15 (2004): 5–36 Google Scholar, for a list of the dozen attendees at the meeting.

8. For an overview of the entrance of American Jews into the sciences in the twentieth century, see Efron, Noah J., Judaism and Science: A Historical Introduction (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007), 176–210.Google Scholar

9. Offenbacher, “The Association,” 6.

10. I interviewed Offenbacher on repeated occasions over the course of 2011 and 2012 in Jerusalem. All quotes from him should be seen as arising from these interviews, unless otherwise specified.

11. For another mention of the changes regarding the use of skullcaps on American University campuses, see Kraut, Benny, The Greening of American Orthodox Judaism: Yavneh in the Nineteen Sixties (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2011)Google Scholar, which discusses the beret worn at Columbia University by Orthodox students in the early 1960s.

12. Offenbacher, “The Association,” 8.

13. See Pear, And It Was Good?, for examples.

14. The Offenbachers are listed as the editors of the periodical.

15. Offenbacher, Elmer, “Censoring Science Texts,” Intercom (Spring 1959): 2.Google Scholar

16. Ibid.

17. Numbers, The Creationists. See also Larson, Edward, Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

18. For American Jewish population estimates (1660-2000), see Sarna, Jonathan, American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 375.Google Scholar For an introduction to different groupings within American Orthodoxy, such as Modern Orthodoxy and ultra-Orthodoxy, see works by historian Gurock, Jeffery such as “Resisters and Accommodators: Varieties of Orthodox Rabbis in America, 1886-1983,” American Jewish Archives 35 (1983): 100–187 Google Scholar; and by political scientist Liebman, Charles S. such as “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” American Jewish Year Book (1965): 21–98 Google Scholar; as well as by sociologists Adam Ferziger and Chaim Waxman such as Waxman, “From Institutional Decay to Primary Day: American Orthodox Jewry since World War II,” American Jewish History 91 (2003): 405-21.

19. Levi, Leo, Vistasfrom Mount Moriah: A Scientist Views Judaism and the World (New York: Gur Aryeh Publications, 1959), 21.Google Scholar I interviewed Levi in 2012, at which time he still maintained that evolution was untrue.

20. Ibid., 11. According to Offenbacher, Levi had at first obtained a haskamah (endorsement) from Rabbi Hutner for his book, but it was later revoked.

21. Hugo Mandelbaum, “An Interpretation of the View,” Intercom 4 (July 1961): 6. For more on Mandelbaum, see Kranzler, David, Holocaust Hero: The Untold Story of Solomon Schonfeld, an Orthodox British Rabbi (Newark: Ktav, 2004)Google Scholar and Mandelbaum, Hugo, Jewish Life in the Village Communities of Southern Germany (Jerusalem: Feldheim Press, 1985).Google Scholar

22. Heilman, Samuel C., Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy (Berkley: University of California Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Leibman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life.“

23. A photocopy of two pages from Intercom, which described the symposium, were given to me by Offenbacher who stated that the copy came from the January 1963 issue of Intercom although the page numbers could not be read and I have not located another copy of this issue within library collections.

24. See also Herbert Goldstein, “Is There a Jewish View of Creation?” Intercom 7 (November 1965): 9-10, in which he stated this same perspective regarding literalism in Judaism having been absorbed from Christianity, calling it a “metal straight jacket of foreign origin.“

25. Simon, Edward H., “On Gene Creation,” Proceedings of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1966): 87–91.Google Scholar

26. See Oreskes, Naomi and Conway, Erik, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issuesfrom Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (London: Bloomsbury, 2010)Google Scholar, for a different example of physicists doubting a scientific issue outside of physics, and Sheldon, Myrna Perez and Oreskes, Naomi, “The Religious Politics of Scientific Doubt: Evangelical Christians and Environmentalism in the United States,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology, ed. Hart, John (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 348-67Google Scholar, for one analysis of potential links between the evolution and environmental discourses.

27. Numbers, The Creationists.

28. However, Numbers also emphasized that biologists were central in antievolution Christian groups, such as the Christian Research Society, as well.

29. Simon, “On Gene Creation,” 90.

30. Spetner, Lee M., “A New Look at the Theory of Evolution,“ Proceedings of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, vol. 1 (Jerusalem-New York: Feldheim, 1966): 79–86.Google Scholar In the interim, the author also published it as an article in The Jewish Observer, the mouthpiece of the ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel; it has since been reprinted many times, as will be discussed below, and it has been referenced by Christians as well as Jews.

31. Spetner, Lee M., The Evolution Revolution: Why Thinking People Are Rethinking the Theory of Evolution (New York: Judaica Press, 2014).Google Scholar

32. Spetner, “A New Look,” 79.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Lee Spetner, telephone interview, 2011.

36. See the text of the article here http://wp.yise.org/about/.

37. See, for instance, Ferziger, Adam S., “Between Outreach and 'Inreach': Redrawing the Lines of the American Orthodox Rabbinate,” Modern Judaism 25 (2005): 237-63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gurock, Jeffrey “The Winnowing of American Orthodoxy,” in Approaches to Modern Judaism II, ed. Raphael, Marc L. (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 1985), 41–54.Google Scholar

38. Klahr, Carl N., “Science vs. Scientism,” Intercom 6 (1965): 13–16 Google Scholar. Other examples given are “there is no purpose or direction in human history“; “any historical occurrence in which the course of nature, as we know it, was disturbed is impossible and should be ridiculed“; and “the Prophets were all either skillful demagogues or self-deluded psychotics.“

39. Jung, Leo, “Judaism and Jewish Youth,” Masmid (New York: Yeshiva College Yearbook, 1934), 22 Google Scholar. For more on R. Jung's critique of evolution, see Pear, “Differences over Darwinism.“

40. Marvin Schick, “Forty Years Later: The New New American Orthodoxy,” Jewish Press, June 21, 2006.

41. Spetner, interview.

42. Shuster, George Nauman and Thorson, Ralph E. eds., Evolution in Perspective (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), xii–xiii.Google Scholar

43. Tendler, Moses D., “Evolution, a Theory that Failed to Evolve,” Ten Da'at 2 (1987): 3–6.Google Scholar

44. Moses Feinstein, Igrot Moshe, Yoreh De'ah §323, section 73 (Hebrew; translation mine). For a perspective on Feinstein's response to “deviant movements,” see Washofsky, Mark, “Responsa and the Art of Writing: Three Examples from the Teshuvot of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein,“ in An American Rabbinate: Festschrift for Walter Jacob (Pittsburgh: Rodef Shalom Press, 2001), 149–204.Google Scholar

45. Carl Feit, interview, 2010. Tendler's harshest assessment of evolution would not be published until the appearance of his “Evolution, a Theory that Failed to Evolve” in 1987 (republished in his book Pardes Rimonim: A Manual for the Jewish Family [Newark: Ktav, 1988]). Tendler's antipathy toward Darwin was already alluded in a 1956 article, “Population Control—the Jewish View,” Tradition 8 (1956): 7. This article was included in the 1976 anthology Challenge, which will be discussed shortly; the section about Darwin is absent from the Challenge version.

46. Lubavitch (Lyubavichi) is the name of a Russian town where Habad Hasidism developed, and it now serves as a name for the group, used almost interchangeably with the term “Habad,” which is an acronym for the Hebrew words hokhmah, binah, and daat (wisdom, understanding, and knowledge).

47. Numerous studies of all types about Rabbi Schneerson and Habad have appeared in recent years. See, for example: Eliezrie, David, The Secret of Chabad (Jerusalem: Toby Press, 2015);Google Scholar Fishkoff, Sue, The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch (New York: Schocken Books, 2003);Google Scholar Heilman, Samuel and Friedman, Menachem, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010);Google Scholar Hoffman, Edward, Despite All Odds: The Story of Lubavitch (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).Google Scholar

48. See Eleff, Zev, Living from Convention to Convention: A History of the NCSY, 1954-1980 (Newark: Ktav, 2009).Google Scholar

49. Kornreich, Yaakov, ed., A Science and Torah Reader (New York: Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations Youth Division, 1970);Google Scholar for a recent episode of Kornreich comparing evolution to global warming, see Pear, And It Was Good?

50. Goldman contributed a piece positing that a religious Jew cannot accept evolution due to its inability to be accommodated with a Divine power, leading to the need to “demonstrate even to the nonbeliever the falseness of his secularist beliefs.” He also offered a review of a 1963 BSCS textbook, reprinted in Challenge, 216-25.

51. Offenbacher, interview.

52. Bohensky, Fred, “Straddling the Fence in Science Education,” Intercom 12 (1971): 12.Google Scholar

53. Faier, Harry, “Evolution, Creation, etc.,” Intercom 12 (1971):14.Google Scholar This debate resurfaces in Challenge, which will be discussed shortly, as part of a critique of “the older generation” from the student panel discussion.

54. “Two Letters from Lubavitch,” Intercom 14 (May 1973): 3-6.

55. Ibid., 4-5.

56. In this same issue of Intercom, readers were introduced to the Soviet Jewish scientist Dr. Herman Branover, who had just been permitted to emigrate from the U.S.S.R. In subsequent years, Branover, who became a Lubavitch devotee in Riga, was to become a main disseminator of Habad views on science and Torah, seemingly attenuating the need Schneerson felt to work with the AOJS (Offenbacher, pers. comm.).

57. Numbers, The Creationists.

58. Offenbacher “The Association,” 15; see also Elmer Offenbacher's biographical notes on Domb in Encounter: Essays on Torah and Modern Life (New York: Feldheim Publishers, 1989).

59. Carmell later became a mentor to Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin, an Orthodox theistic evolutionist who gained notoriety in 2005 for having his books banned due to his views (see Pear, And It Was Good?), and seems to have been the predominant reason for Challenge's pro-evolution elements. There is no information given about these “student panels.” They may represent Carmell's cumulative experiences, and they may be serving as his mouthpiece.

60. Carmell, Aryeh and Domb, Cyril, eds., Challenge: Torah Views on Science and Its Problems, 2nd rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Feldheim: 1978), 264-67.Google Scholar They similarly attack Prof. Jacques Monod's interpretation of evolution in his work Chance and Necessity (London: Penguin Books, 1971). Ironically enough, the end notes on the panel section references Morris and Whitcomb's “The Genesis Flood” describing it as “an exhaustive scientific account of all of the difficulties inherent in the evolutionary account of origins” (281).

61. Carmell and Domb, Challenge, 278-79.

62. Ibid., 26.

63. Ibid., 10.

64. As reproduced on Alan Brill's blog, http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/aryeh-kaplan-a-lost-homily-from-his-d-c-pulpitand-outreach-at-suny-albany/ (accessed January 8, 2018).

65. Swetlitz, “Responses to Evolution,” illustrates that rise in interest in Jewish mysticism and its application to the question of evolution was not limited to Orthodoxy. See also Pear, And It Was Good? for the development of the trend.

66. A transcription of this 1979 lecture was executed by Reuven M. Caplan in 2004 and entitled “The Age of the Universe: A Torah True Perspective by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan.” It can be found at http://www.simpletoremember.com/faqs/Kaplan-SimpleToRemember.com.pdf.Quotations here are taken from this version of the transcript. An interview and email correspondence with Rabbi Abraham Sutton, a student of Kaplan's who edited some of his works after his untimely passing, added insights into Kaplan's views.

67. In February 1972, Leonard Kaplan's name first appeared as associate editor, and his essays were published by the journal. By December he was listed as Aryeh Kaplan.

68. Caplan, “The Age,” 3.

69. Ibid., 10.

70. Intercom 21 (1985): 5.

71. Ibid. Offenbacher also added that the AOJS experienced the precipitous drop in the public esteem for science in the 1970s.

72. Offenbacher, interview.

73. Offenbacher, “The Association,” 25-26.

74. Gurock, Jeffrey S., The Men and Women of Yeshiva: Higher Education, Orthodoxy and American Judaism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).Google Scholar See also, Nagel, Zev and Butler, Menachem, My Yeshiva College: 75 Years of Memories (New York: Yashar Books, 2006).Google Scholar

75. For instance, Gurock, The Men and Women, 172, 215.

76. As discussed, for instance, in Waxman, “From Institutional Decay.“

77. While this topic is discussed in many of the sources referenced thus far, it is also important to point out the article by Soloveitchik, Haym, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” Tradition 28 (1994): 64–130 Google Scholar; this issue is discussed with respect to an opposite trend that appeared in the 1920s, when Mordecai Kaplan broke with Orthodoxy to found Reconstructionist Judaism, forcing a focus on dogma to come to the fore, in Pear, “Differences over Darwinism.“

78. Pear, And It Was Good?

79. Pers. Comm.

80. Spetner, interview.

81. Herberg, Will, Protestant Catholic Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City: Doubleday, 1955).Google Scholar