CHULA VISTA, California –Pepsi has never been much of a popular drink in Israel since the company participated in the Arab boycott in the 1980s. When Pepsi returned to Israel, there was a little bit of hesitancy on the part of Israelis to drink the once-favored beverage.
Boycotts in Israel are not uncommon, but they occur primarily over religious issues. Ironically, Pepsi faced a boycott from one of the most unusual sectors of Israel–the Ultra-Orthodox group known as the “Haredim” ‘lit. “Tremblers.”
In their advertisement, Pepsi depicted the various stages of human evolution, beginning with the primate and ending with the highly evolved Pepsi drinker. The ad upset many of the Haredim in Israel, not for political reasons. The rabbis in Jerusalem felt the ad implied a belief in Darwin instead of the Book of Genesis!
The rabbis are not the only ones who might have found the ad threatening. Some states in our country are still attempting to introduce creationism in the classrooms in one form or the other.
Certain science textbooks used in Alabama public schools continue to include a disclaimer regarding the theory of evolution.
All of this discussion ought to make you wonder:
How can we, as modern Jews, celebrate Rosh Hashanah as the world’s birthday as our liturgy proclaims? This year Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of 5783. Does it not seem mighty strange that people still naively believe that the entire creation is as though it were less than six thousand years old?
Given our sophistication, what relevance does the birthday of man and creation have to do with scientific reality? Who are we fooling? What message might this holiday have for us as we enter the next millennia? How can you seriously believe that Adam and Eve were the first people ever to live on the earth? Or that “God made the world in just six 24-hr. days”?
Do we gather this evening in the synagogue to celebrate fairy tales and myths about the world-of-make-believe?
The Greek word “mythos” is a story about human beginnings. The ancients used myth to explain how everything came into being. But make no mistake, even in the age of the Greeks, science is also an attempt to explain man’s place in the cosmos. And this has been the case with science ever since.
But this is the main difference. Science looks to the physical causes that have brought the world into being, while religion attempts to explain the spiritual reason of all things. From this perspective, the Torah was never meant to serve as a scientific textbook, it is meant to serve as a guide for moral and ethical living.
One of the world’s most distinguished astrophysicists, Paul Davies, offers the following comparison. Think about the famous parable about the blind men in India who were examining an elephant. One person felt the leg and said, “it is a tree.” Another touched the ear and said, “it is a fan.” Another person felt the trunk and said, ‘ It is a water pipe.’ The last blind man felt the tail and said, “It is a rope.” We could say that the blind men’s approach is not unlike the method known as “scientific reductionism.”
Einstein’s famous essay, “The World As I See It” affirmed “science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind.”
He believed science and religion need not be adversarial, but each perspective complements the other. Although Einstein believed God represents an inactive but divine system of order, he also believed the moral teachings of faith and morality could contribute to the evolution of human beings.
In 1925, Dr. Charles Mayo, writing for the Pathfinder, wrote a pithy description of “What Is Man?
Some chemists with a flair for statistics have recently been figuring that the average man is about 5”10 inches tall and weighs about 150 pounds. They have been trying to analyze what such a man is composed of, or they might put it into understandable terms. Here is what the average man consists of:
*enough fat to make seven bars of soap.
*enough iron to make a medium-sized nail
*enough sugar to fill a shaker,
*enough lime to whitewash a chicken coop
*enough phosphorous to make 2200 match tips
*enough magnesium for a dose of magnesia
*enough potassium to explode a toy cannon, with a little bit of sulphur
If one were to add up how much these substances would cost if one were to purchase them in a country store, the amount would add up to what was then only .98 cents! Yet, the chemical elements are put together so that we have some people that have immeasurably blessed our souls. Our mothers, saints, and prophets, great leaders of the human race—were all made of 98 cents worth of chemical materials!
The biblical narrative about Adam’s creation reminds us that we are more than just our physical parts. There is a spiritual and moral grandeur to our existence that we must celebrate. Rosh Hashanah urges us to expand our capacity to understand ourselves and our world. On this day, let us probe and ask the important questions concerning the mysteries of creation. Let us pause and contemplate how every human being is a cosmic reflection of His Maker.
Thus, human life has reverence and intrinsic value. Saving one life is akin to saving an entire world.
The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) once wrote, “Nature is a world of strife and conflict and violence – ‘red in tooth and claw.” In the Darwinian world, through genetic mutations, the stronger more adaptable lifeforms out-survive the weaker ones. Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) and Herbert Spencer ‘(820-1903) coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” and extended the theory of biological evolution to all of life, including ethics.
Science has not always done a great job in teaching us how we ought to value life.
Dr. Haim Ginott offers what I believe to be a possible solution to our social malaise in his best-selling book, Between Parent and Child
Dear Teachers:
I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is: help your students become more human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.
Haim G. Ginott
This is why the holiday of Rosh Hashanah teaches us the importance of showing a reverence toward all human life. Going beyond that, let us apply Alburt Schweitzer’s wisdom to all sentient life on our planet. God put us here to care to further all life.
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Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California. He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com