By the Grace of G-d 27th of Sivan, 5737 Brooklyn, N.Y.

Greeting and Blessing:

This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter. In the meantime you have surely received my reply to your previous letter though it was not convenient to reply at greater length. Indeed, it is no more convenient now but I will touch upon one basic point in connection with the periodical Challenge which I managed to glance through.

The subject is both delicate and painful. I refer to the general “apologetic” approach of such literature, which inevitably obscures the truth, or part of it, which amounts to the same thing.

To be sure, this approach is well motivated and rests on the saying of our Sages - (מותר לו לאדם לשנות בדבר השלום (יבמות, ס״ה, ב. Various Gedolei Yisroel relied on this expediency in their time, when they believed it would bring Jews closer to Yiddishkeit, including mitzvos maasiyot.

However, we are dealing with the present time, when it is not necessary to lean so heavily on such an approach. Indeed, from the viewpoint of its usefulness we see that it is self-defeating, for, sooner or later, the person so approached discovers that he has not been told the whole truth, and, consequently, he loses confidence both in the person or circle representing this approach as well as in the ideas regarding Yiddishkeit and mitzvot which they attempted to impart to him.

Anyone in close touch with the young generation in the present day knows that whether or not they are prepared to commit themselves fully, they respect an approach that presents the full truth to them. For example, it is one thing to tell them that if they are not ready to accept upon themselves all the mitzvot, even observing one mitzvah is a great thing; but it is quite another thing to conceal from them the fact that there are 612 more mitzvot.

A further consideration: if one approaches a non-observant Jew telling him the full truth, then even if one does not succeed in convincing him, one will have at least spoken the truth. However, an apologetic approach, involving as it does some compromise (and any compromise is a travesty of the truth, for, there is only one truth) is not only likely to fail, but the approach itself was not truthful.

This brings me to the specific point mentioned in your previous letter about the attitude to evolution and how to reconcile it with the narrative of the Torah about the Creation by interpreting the word "day" to mean "era" etc.

I do not like to make a big fuss about the fallacy of it, for there were prominent orthodox Rabbis who thought that this was the only way to save the young generation from total alienation from Torah since in their time it was the prevalent view among academic youths that everything written in German in the name of science was indisputable truth. However, there is no way of reading the above interpretation into the text of the Torah, inasmuch as the whole foundation of the sanctity of Shabbos - in the Torah shebiksav and shebe’al peh - rests on the literal meaning of the text, as it is explicitly emphasized. "For in six days G-d made heaven and earth and on the seventh day He ceased and rested." The Torah is quite clear on the meaning of the Six Days of Creation and the Seventh Day of rest. It also clearly differentiates between the seventh day as the holy day of the week and the seventh year as the Shemitta year in the cycle of years, and it is just impossible to interpret the word "day" as meaning an “era.” Besides, how is one to understand the words "and it was evening and it was morning," repeated six times in the Creation narrative, which could not be forced into any but the literal meaning, any more than the meaning of the word "day" itself.

One also hears, of course, citations from Kabbala and Midrashim which speak of various worlds. But these too, have been taken out of context and misinterpreted in support of the apologetic approach, though well intentioned. Nevertheless, the ill-effects of this approach are still felt, especially today.

One point, which I raised in my letter (published also in "Challenge") is, why go into such forced interpretations when science itself declares that evolution is no more than a theory based on hypothetical postulates? Moreover, the various theories on the age of the universe are not subject to an "average," for they are mutually exclusive and contradictory, since the maximum of one is below the minimum of another. Furthermore, and this is no less significant as pointed out in my said letter, the theories are based on the assumption of conditions being equal as we know them now. However, when it comes to dating, as e.g. carbon 14 and likewise geological data, all scientists agree that if radioactivity was several degrees higher than today, all so-called evolutionary process would have been greatly accelerated to an unknown degree, since it is impossible to duplicate such conditions for an adequate length of time for the purpose of verification. Yet scientists generally agree that thousands of years ago radioactivity was greater than it is today. It is also to be expected that such a cosmic upheaval as was wrought by the Flood, as it is described in the Torah (and, l'havdil, in the traditions of other cultures) would have created a tremendous change not only in radioactivity but also in many other natural processes, into which we need not delve here.

The main point in connection with "Challenge" - with all due respect - is that the overall impression one gets from it is that most if not all the articles in it are couched in apologetic terms, as if the Torah has to be on the defensive vis-a-vis science, whereas science itself does not claim infallibility; rather, the opposite.

I might add that the situation is the other way around: Science declares that it is based on theories; that it can speak in terms of probability but not certainty, and that in general it is a product of human observation, but cannot know the actual reality of things. Yet precisely the Torah assigns to science and scientific conclusions much greater importance than science claims as I have had occasion to point this out, by way of example, in the case of pikuach nefesh, where the Halacha relies on the opinion of a medical specialist as to whether or not to suspend the laws of Shabbos and Yom Kippur, and in other instances such as the kevius of the months and the years, etc. - but - of course - only when there is no contradiction to daas Torah.

I trust that my above remarks will be accepted in the spirit they have been offered, and, even more importantly, that if they are accepted, the next publications will he permeated with conviction and pride without reservations - that our Torah is Toras Emes and at the same time, Toras Chaim - our true guide in life, and may the dissemination of these new publications exceed that of the one under review.

With blessing,

P. S. In saying above that the Torah is called Toras Emes and Toras Chaim in the fullest sense is the answer also to those who object to equating the Torah with a scientific text or scientific status. They are certainly right that the Torah is not, G-d forbid, a textbook of physics, or medicine, or even history; for the Torah (from the word horo'oh) has been given to teach us the way to live the everyday life. But at the same time it is Toras Emes in all its details, including its historical events and where it comes in contact with some aspects of science.

PP. S. I am taking the liberty of sending a copy of this letter to your co-editor, Prof. . . .