Excuses for the age of the world

But the Lubavitcher Rebbe rightly asked what a scientist is intending by saying in Kiddush that God made the heavens in six days, etc. and so on in the commandment of the Sabbath. What do you really think, Rabbi - or what tip would you recommend for us to intend in our sanctification of the Sabbath and in our saying this version. This is a question of the intention of the mitzvah, of telling lies before the Lord, and so on. Not just a theoretical question about the information found somewhere in the Torah scroll. This is a practical question!

Until you ask what we intend in Kiddush, ask how we understand the Torah. What did the Torah itself mean when it spoke of creation in six days? That is what I intend in Kiddush too. The creation of the world in six metaphorical days. In other words, I intend that He created the world, and it really doesn't matter in how many days.

But you are striking precisely on the seventh. There is a certain urgency in this feeling of a metaphorical general intention from which we deduce a very delimited and defined practical commandment - whose definition is its essence. The seventh day. Exactly. In addition and on the other hand: your general intention of the creation of the world can also work well on another level - in the observance of the Torah's whole code; I observe the commandments not because of one moment when God descended in the sight of the whole people and revealed himself at Sinai, but this is merely a metaphor for experiencing a cumulative revelation of the Jews during the First Temple period, of prophets and sages and priests who drew inspiration from Moses, etc. and from the movement of prophecy and law that brought about - until the acceptance by the whole nation of a belief in the feasibility of a collective revelation in the sight of all. This acceptance could have occurred in the covenants as in the covenants of Josiah and Ezra. To say: The very belief in the myth of the status of Mount Sinai in the people of Israel is the status of Mount Sinai. This is a revelation of God in the hearts of the Israelites who believe - ever since - that prophecy is democratic and that all of Israel is under God's care. Such a belief is not found in other nations. This is a metaphorical perception of the unique status of Mount Sinai, and only one example out of many that can be speculated upon. A perception that accepts the conclusions that such a status would have drawn without accepting its factuality. It accepts the heteronomic validity of the commandments without accepting the concrete event that validates them. And these are the things about the creation of the world that you believe in: Just as the creation in six days is a metaphor for the religious conclusion that God is behind the error of the creation of the world (when six days may be interpreted as a small amount of time on the one hand and as a calculated process on the other. A small amount of time, in relation to the great power of God who created the world, in a few days, so to speak, and on the other hand did not squirt it out of his sleeve as an artistic whim. Rather, he had an intention in the matter and therefore in the first three days he created the area that was populated in full parallelism in the next three, as famously stated in Cassuto) even though he did not do so as depicted in the Torah, so the status of Mount Sinai functions as a metaphor for God being behind the phenomenon of the world of Jewish fulfillments and prophecy, even if in practice these were given by him in a long historical process. This is an argument that you do not accept in the fifth notebook, despite the conceptual similarity between them. I will add that in Kiddush the difficulty is greater because in your own words you are forced to declare the family the meaning of the mitzvah, which is not correct (because six days), which is not the case in the observance of the mitzvot, which you are not forced to declare that you are observing them because of the revelation of Sinai. (Baruch Schwartz, a biblical scholar, even “proved” this in his article on the significance of the Mount Sinai event: According to biblical scholarship, certain mitzvot were observed even before the story of the Mount Sinai event was accepted. This means that the story validates the mitzvot that were already observed without it and does not invalidate them. I will quote from it later). In my opinion, the peace of mind of reciting Kiddush is imaginary - and in this matter the Lubavitcher Rebbe was very right (even if he did not offer a satisfactory solution).

Indeed, if it were possible to see the Mount Sinai status as a metaphor for another giving of the Torah, there is no problem with that. I just don't think there was another giving of the Torah. The Torah has to be given from heaven in order for it to be valid. If you suggest that it was given from heaven in some other way, I have no problem with that.
I see no problem with saying in Kiddush that God created the world in six days. These are six stages or whatever, and that's what is meant. I didn't understand what is wrong with you in that.
Regarding the questions of when the myth of the Mount Sinai status was received, and whether the commandments were kept before it or not, I do not accept it. These are speculations of biblical research and I do not attribute much validity to them. Therefore, all the conclusions based on it have no substance in my opinion. And even if someone ever keeps the commandments without the Mount Sinai status, I disagree with him (meaning I would not keep them that way).

On the 28th of Tevet 5777

Gilead – Shalom Rav,

The use of ‘day’ as an extended period is common in the Bible. A year is called ‘days, as it is written: ‘The girl will live with us days or a decade’. When the Torah promises ‘that your days may be prolonged on the earth’ and ’that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied’ it speaks of generations of generations. Even in the words of the prophets who prophesy about ‘that day’ ‘the day of the Lord’ it can be simply understood that it is a period. Why, then, cannot we say that regarding the “Act of Genesis,” which is one of the mysteries of the Torah in which “the glory of God hid a thing” (and as explained in the epigraphs of Raya Katza), the Torah uses days as a metaphor for periods? See the book by physicist Prof. Nathan Aviezer, “Genesis in Creation,” for an explanation of the periods represented in the six days of creation.

On the other hand, regarding the event at Mount Sinai, it is an event that took place before the eyes of sixty thousand, whose eyes saw the voices and torches and whose ears heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, who themselves attained the height of prophecy and thereby believed in the prophecy of Moses and fulfilled it upon them and their descendants: “All that the Lord spoke, we did and we heard.”

The Torah's path throughout the Book of Genesis is to describe in ’general and particular’, a general description of the events, followed by a focus on the details that are important to the Torah. Thus comes a general description of the creation of the world and a focus on man; a general description of ten generations and a focus on Noah; a general description of ten generations and a focus on Abraham and his descendants.

Thus the Torah passes over the creation of the inanimate world of plants and animals and focuses on the intelligent man who ’talks’ Whom the Torah created to direct and guide, the intelligent man who appeared on the stage of history, according to researchers, only about six thousand years ago (as explained in the book by archaeologist Dr. Yitzhak Maitlis in his book ‘Parashat Darechi’ which explains Torah passages in light of archaeological research. Maitlis follows in this idea the zoologist Prof. Mordechai Kislev).

With greetings, S.C. Levinger

However, the possibility that the world was literally created in six days – is not unfounded, since all the dates proposed by researchers are based on the assumption that the pace of natural processes is constant. And since our ancestors predicted that this was not the case. After all, at the beginning of our creation, we evolved from a microscopic cell to a creature tens of centimeters long in a ‘meteoric’time of nine months. And from here on out, as time passes, the rate of development slows down.

It is to be assumed that if a researcher from another world encounters an adult human and measures the changes in his size from year to year, which are on the order of a few millimeters, that researcher will come to the conclusion that it took the object of his research hundreds or thousands of years to reach its current size 🙂

Thank you very much for your responses, Rabbi Michi and Rabbi Levinger. I will now respond briefly. I am talking about what Rabbi Michi wrote: “I see no problem in saying in Kiddush that God created the world in six days. These are six stages or whatever, and that is what is meant. I did not understand what is wrong with you in this.” You do not think that the world was created in six stages because we are violating science if we were to think that way. There are no six stages and Abiezer’s lack of success will testify to this (this is in relation to you, Rabbi Levinger. Just look at the push on the fifth day for his “great” laws and the lack of order between the reality of the fourth day when the lights were created only after the creation of plants on the third).

Then there are no six stages and we have no choice but to interpret the matter metaphorically - except that then we are lying when we conclude that you, because the world was supposedly created in six ‘Stages’ and in the seventh stage the ’ Sabbath, so that is why we also imitate it and observe the Sabbath on the seventh day. As I wrote, this is the simple understanding of the words: ”You shall not do any work…for six days…and on the seventh day is the Sabbath”. Therefore, it seems to me that not accepting the meaning of six days/stages and at the same time sanctifying the Sabbath by speaking about the same content is a problem, and it seems to me that what you wrote on the subject, Rabbi Michi, does not fit your normative perception of the Torah stories, because it suddenly overlooks the historical meaning - the proverb that there were six stages in the creation of the world, God forbid.
Regarding the matter of the status of Mount Sinai and its metaphorical feasibility, I will write later
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Well, we have a disagreement and there is no point in going back and forth. I really don't see any problem with that.
He created the world in the way described in the Book of Genesis, metaphorical or not, six stages or not. That is what is meant. I also don't see a difference between interpreting the Torah and saying it in Kiddush. What the Torah intended is what is meant in Kiddush.
My understanding of the Bible is that it has normative messages, but that does not contradict the interpretation that it is about six stages. Whether there were or not, creation should be treated as something that was done in six stages. The division into stages is in the eye of the beholder (depending on what is defined as a stage), and therefore I don't see how you can firmly state that there were no six stages. But none of that matters, as stated, because the six stages can be historical or simply a division for the needs of the message.

On the 29th of Tevet 87

Gilaed – Shalom Rav,

Any historical scheme that divides history into periods must by its nature simplify a complex reality. But the overall picture that emerges from both science and the story of creation in the Torah is of a world developing in stages. The creation of the universe; the formation of the solar system (the ‘sky’); the formation of vegetation, the establishment of the seasons, the formation of marine animals, winged animals, land creatures and mammals, and finally intelligent man (Genesis 1:134).

The ’fourth day’ does not describe, according to Prof. Aviezer (pp. 54-57), the beginning of the creation of the solar system (this occurred in the second stage – the creation of the firmament), but its completion and stabilization, the stabilization of the distance and rotation relations of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon, which led to a comfortable and stable climate in which regular seasons exist that allow for the stable existence of life, and to fixed time arrangements that allow for the formation of human civilization.

Prof. Aviezer (pp. 93-94) identifies the ‘great crocodiles’ with the gigantic ‘Ediacratic creatures’ from the Precambrian period, which appeared and became extinct, and after their disappearance the world was filled with a vast variety of marine creatures ‘every creeping living soul that the waters inhabited’.

I would say that the large crocodiles should not precede the other marine creatures, but live side by side. Just as in the ’Army of Heaven’ there are ‘large luminaries’ and around them are many stars, so in the ’Army of Water’ there are both large and small creatures.

Best regards, S.C. Levinger

On the eve of Rosh Chodesh Shevat 5777

The story of creation is a story of organizing the world, taking it out of a state of chaos and preparing it to be the ‘Lands of the Living’.

Every reorganization begins with a separation into elements. Separation between light and darkness, between time for action and creation and time for rest and contemplation; knowing the raw materials needed for the process: water and air, soil and food, and knowing the device that will carry out the process: the two lights that will create the time frames and seasons in their cycles, and the great light – that radiates light and heat, activates the photosynthesis process in combination with plants that produces oxygen for breathing, and activates the water cycle in nature through the exchange of heat and cold during the seasons, evaporating the sea water during the hot days and returning it to the land during the rainy days.

When there is a proper infrastructure – a diverse life can emerge, with the person at the center who organizes and leads, and his accumulator – the Sabbath – in which he reorganizes, gathers strength and insights, and refreshes his connections with his Creator, who gives him the strength and wisdom to do good, enabling him to continue the next six days of action in the work of organization and perfection.

With best wishes, S.C. Levinger

In the seventh month of the month of Shevat 7

The story of creation is told in the mythological heroes.
The sun and the moon descend from the top of the pantheon, from the top of the pyramid, and find themselves as ordinary creatures, somewhere between the "grass of the field" and the "creeping beast that the waters have run." Even the "great crocodiles" swim in pastoral peace together with "creeping beasts and there is no number, small animals with large ones." And so man was created in one day with his fellow beasts and creeping beasts, and he filled the earth after his kind, which he was to rule as the first among equals, with his companion woman. All are soldiers in the army of heaven and the army of earth, obeying the orders of the ‘only owner of the house– the Lord of the world!

With greetings, S.C. Levinger