Rabbi Shai Cherry, PhD, served on the faculties of Vanderbilt University, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of San Diego.  His early academic research focused on Jewish responses to Darwinian evolution.  After eighteen years of university teaching, Rav Shai side-stepped into the congregational rabbinate in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.  Since 2019, Rav Shai has served Congregation Adath Jeshurun.  Rav Shai is intermittently working on an introductory Judaism book to complement his video class, “Introduction to Judaism” through The Great Courses.  Rav Shai has also published two books, one on the history of Jewish biblical commentary and the more recent on how theology, creation, and Jewish tradition can cohere.

Thoughts on Human Origins

Sometime between the first and fifth centuries, Rabbis of the Land of Israel imagined God’s audience when He said, “Let us make humanity.”  Three answers are offered, but one is particularly prescient: God is speaking to everything that had been created up until that moment, namely, the earth and the animals (Genesis Rabbah 8:3).

Let me be clear, I do not think that the author of Genesis One scooped Charles Darwin and his theory of the transmutation of species.  But I do marvel at the insight that we are, literarily, a divine animal.  Of every animal in the kingdom, it is homo sapiens who have the capacity to enhance or diminish the divine in our world.

The iconography of medieval Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, makes the same point by flipping the script of Genesis One and projecting our anthropic image onto God.  It is only through our righteous behavior that the divine Anthropos is unified.  Our failings, even if unintentional, sever the limbs of the Divine, causing, as it were, impotency.

The Middle Ages also witnessed religious accommodation to the scientific truths of the Greeks.  Within Judaism, Moses maimonides (1138-1204) made the most influential attempt at living as a Jew in a world where science alone could demonstrate truth. Maimonides wrote in his codification of Jewish tradition that the way to love God is by studying God’s works in creation (Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, Ch. 2).  In other words, the way to fulfill the commadnment to love the Lord your God (Dt. 6:5) is to study science! 
 

The Ultimate Purpose of Judaism

Often people ask about the “whys” of religion.  Scholars of religion are not infrequently forced to say, “because it/he says so.”  Why do I not eat lobster?  Because the Book of Leviticus prohibits eating sea animals that don’t have both scales and fins.  Why do I check clothing labels to make sure I’m not wearing anything that mixes wool and linen?  Because the same book, Leviticus, thought such things should not be done.  Since neither of those prohibitions involves morality, per se, I comply knowing that I’m connecting with traditions that link me to thousands of years of my people’s history.

But sometimes the Torah does explain why we are to follow its rules: to live long on the land that the Lord our God has given us.  In the Torah’s original context, “the land” is the Land of Israel.  But if the Torah is to continue resounding with a divine voice, we recognize that its vision carries wisdom for us today and that the entire planet is the land upon which we seek to live long. 

The same collection of bibilical commentry that has God partnering with creation to make humanity, suggests that “from the beginning of the world’s creation, the Holy One, blessed be He, yearned to enter into partnership with earthly creatures” (Genesis Rabbah 3:9).  That makes us co-created co-creators.   

The Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program implicitly asks us to think about our destinies.  Judaism teaches us that we emerged as partners with creation and the Divine. Through scientific education and abiding by rules of righteousness and compassion, our species has the best chance of surviving the environmental and political crises that threaten to stymie our goal of living long on the land.