Mizrachi SA Jewish Observer - Pesach 2016 | Page 46

EVOLUTION

EVOLUTION

JUDAISM AND
EVOLUTION IN THE
BIOLOGICAL AND
SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS
RABBI SHLOMO GLICKBERG

THE CHALLENGE OF
EVOLUTION
Ever since the advent of evolutionary theories in
Europe, researchers and men of learning cast doubt
upon them. However, the main opposition came
from religious scholars, Jews and non-Jews, who
perceived these theories, which contradict the literal
understanding of the story of creation in the book
of Genesis, as heresy. Consequently, they strived to
undermine the foundation of these theories.

Along these lines, Jewish thinkers produced many
books and articles which dealt mostly with the
conflicting aspects, adopting a rejectionist stance,
which negated the feasibility of the developmental
theory, i.e. evolution.
However, besides these Jewish thinkers, there were
others, such as Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (Rav
Kook), who accepted the basic notion of the theory
of development. Along these lines, books and articles
were published espousing the integrative stance,
which perceived the challenge of the new theory and

wished to explain various sources and adapt them to
the developmental theory.
These writings join many earlier Jewish philosophical
sources, which predate by far the evolutionary
theorists, and which show that they considered as
possible the feasibility of species’ development. For
example, an unambiguous evolutionary statement
appears in the writings of Rabbi Ovadia Sforno (Italy,
1476-1550), who brings evidence from the sources
(Genesis 1:26; 2:7) that the creation of man in God’s
image is in fact the end of a long process,

commencing in the creation of a non-cognisant creature, belonging to the animal category. This creature
evolved until it acquired a human mind, as well as its
physiology of man known to us.
This article aims to demonstrate that not only is
Judaism able to correspond with the notion of
evolution through commentary, conscious or
otherwise, but that evolution constitutes one of the
fundamentally deep currents in Jewish
philosophy in two dimensions: biological
and spiritual
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