Imu Shalev: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha… diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, I’m Imu Shalev, and in this episode, Rabbi Fohrman is going to deal with one of the hardest questions readers of the Torah face today. How do we reconcile Torah and science? There are so many things science and research have revealed to us that seem to fly in the face of what the Torah says – things like evolution and the origin of the universe. Are we supposed to just disregard anything that scientists say if it doesn’t fit with the Torah?  Or should we be questioning the Torah because of the way it contradicts science? In this episode, Rabbi Fohrman uses Parshat Noach as a springboard to offer a third option - a way to reconcile these seeming contradictions. And his approach is profound, yet at the same time, amazingly simple, and it really changed the way I think about Torah. I hope you find it as eye-opening as I did.

So, here he is, starting things off by bringing up one of those thorny science questions. And that is, why don’t we hear about dinosaurs in the Torah?

Rabbi David Fohrman: So where did all the dinosaurs go? Well, I guess they probably didn't have room on the big boat for them during the flood. That’s one of the sort of folk legends about the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Certainly the dinosaurs are the most visible, mysterious component of the vanished world. I know, at least, that when I take my kids to the Museum of Natural History, that's the draw, the Dinosaur Room. There's Raptosaurus Rex battling Megalosaurus, and they’re huge, and they’ve got fangs, and your seven-year-old is wide-eyed, and that's why you even bother to go to the Museum of Natural History in the first place. Then the painful question, the question that the seven-year-old girl asks her father, stares up into his eyes: “Daddy, how come these aren't in our book?” I mean, the Torah is supposed to contain the great history of it all, so... where are all the dinosaurs? That's what I want to talk to you about today.

So I’d like to give you a general framework for thinking about this question…  but not really just this question, but really puzzling things about Torah itself, and I’ll elaborate some of that later. But, let me jump in and give you the paradigm now.

How To Read a Book

A while back, I read a fantastic book, and it is called How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. He tries to give you a manual as to how to attack a book, how to go about understanding it. One of the very first things he says is that you have to decide early on what kind of genre the book is, and if you misinterpret the genre of the book, then you are lost from the very beginning, and you really have no chance at really understanding it.

Imagine that you were reading a Chemistry textbook, and you did not understand that it was a Chemistry textbook, so you thought you were in fact reading poetry. You would ask the wrong questions about it. Or if you were reading poetry, and you thought you were supposed to be reading a Chemistry textbook, you would also ask the wrong questions.

So, imagine you are actually reading poetry: you are reading Carl Sandburg’s poem “The Fog Crept in on Little Cat Feet.” And imagine you are teaching that poem, and somebody in the back of the room raises their hand and says, “Teacher, teacher, I don't understand... How could the fog creep? It doesn't have feet. It’s not a cat. This whole poem…it just doesn't make any sense.” You would say, “You just don't understand the genre. There is no answer to that question. It is the wrong question!”

You could ask, if you want: “The imagery of the fog creeping…what's it meant to convey?” — but that is an entirely different question. That's a question that makes sense for poetry. The bottom line is, you have to understand the genre. If you misinterpret the genre, you misinterpret everything.

What Kind of Book Is the Torah?

And, so now, the great question is: What kind of book is the Torah? How could we begin trying to read this book without having any idea what kind of genre it is? And the problem is, it’s not so easy to figure out what kind of genre the Torah is. It’s got 613 laws — them’s a lot of laws, so maybe it is a law book, a legal treatise. But, it’s really not such a good legal treatise, because it sure has a lot of stories in it. What are all these stories doing in a legal treatise? It’s just out of character. It's got lots of philosophy in it – could it be a philosophy book? Yeah, but it has too many laws and stories for it to be a philosophy book. So, what kind of book is it?

Here’s what I think it is. It is a guide book. It’s a book intended to guide individuals and a nation how to develop a relationship with those around them – a relationship with people around them and a relationship with their God – how to do that at the collective level, if you are the nation of Israel, and how to do that at the individual level, if you are one of the people of Israel.

What does this guide book consist of? What does it take to guide someone in this? One of the things it takes is laws. There are certain laws that you have to follow, certain laws that you have to know. The laws are very, very important, but it doesn't just take laws. It takes more than laws.

So if you say to yourself: “All it takes to be a good person is to follow the 613 commandments” - that's actually, probably, not entirely true. The Ramban (Leviticus 19:2) talks about being a מְנּוּבַל בִּרְשׁוּת הַתּוֹרָה – somebody who keeps, punctiliously, all the commands and still is a morally obtuse person. How is that possible? It is possible because law alone is too narrow a discipline to completely regulate human behavior, and the Torah itself accepts that. And that's why there are stories.

The stories are there to teach you values – stories that tell you about what happened with our ancestors and the way God dealt with them and the way they dealt with God. And there are timeless lessons that apply to us, today, that are not about laws but are about larger truths that we’re supposed to find a way to integrate into our lives. And, there are certain philosophical notions that we need to understand – so the Torah talks about those ideas, too. It takes all of that to guide us.

Torah as a Guidebook - Not a History Book

So now, back to Mortimer Adler. If the Torah is a guide book, what does that then mean? It means that everything it tells you – its laws, its stories, and its philosophy – is all going to be told from the perspective of a guide book. Everything is going to get slanted to be told from that perspective.

And, by the way, Chazal say as much. There’s a famous statement that our Sages make: נְבוּאָה שֶׁהוּצְרְכָה לְדוֹרוֹת נִכְתְּבָה – any prophecy that was relevant for generations ended up getting written in the Torah (Talmud Bavli Megillah 14a). Prophecies that were just locally relevant for a particular generation didn't get written. Why? It gives us lots of insight into what life looked like back then! Because it doesn't guide you, that's why. It’s an interesting fact, but only that which guides you is written.

Let me show you another puzzling aspect of how the Torah writes history. Chazal tell us: אֵין מוּקְדָּם וּמְאוּחָר בַּתּוֹרָה – there is no such thing as chronological order in the Torah (Talmud Bavli Pesachim 6b). Really, there is no such thing as chronological order in the Torah?!? Well, there is, but you can't trust the chronological order in the Torah, Chazal say, because every once in a while, the Torah will actually place something second that happened first.

Now, why would the Torah do that? Why would the Torah deliberately mislead you about the chronological order of events? Because it’s not a history book: it’s a guide book. And if the Torah can guide you by juxtaposing two different episodes with the same theme so that you should understand the theme that worked over overarching periods of Jewish history, the Torah is going to do that, and it’s going to sacrifice the history in order to guide you.

Why Dinosaurs Aren't Mentioned in the Torah?

And now, let's come back to dinosaurs. So I think you may understand where I am going here. The dinosaurs might have been around, but evidently the Torah didn't consider using Tyrannosaurus Rex as a guide to human behavior. So it left it out! And Stegosaurus, too. You want to learn about them? That's what the American Museum of Natural History is for. So you’ll go there. But the Torah is not going to tell you about them, because it doesn't fit into the guidebook. Were they important for what they contributed to the biological record? Very important! But they weren't important for you and how to guide your life from the Torah's perspective. So the Torah is not going to talk about it.

It may well be that the Torah tells one story and science tells another story, and ultimately it’s the same story — it’s a story called reality. But one is intended to tell you the nuts and bolts of that reality, and the other is intended to guide you through it.

When you and I read this guide, let us make no mistake about what we are reading. We are not just reading any old book. We are reading something that is meant to shape us, meant to help us tackle a grand quest as to what is the best way to live our lives and relationships with others. Everything the Torah tells us is designed to help us achieve those goals. But we need to understand the genre in order to be able to understand the messages.

Imu: So, I think this is one of the cornerstone pieces in Rabbi Fohrman's methodology – this idea that the genre of the Torah is…guidebook. It's a really powerful idea, because it explains why certain things are missing in the Torah, right? Why aren't dinosaurs here? Well, because it isn't a science textbook, so it's not trying to be scientifically comprehensive. You don't have to worry that much about dinosaurs or evolution.

But this principle that the Torah is a guidebook, is not powerful only because of its explanation for what's missing from the Torah. It's a cornerstone principle, because it actually helps us understand all the things that are present in the Torah.

You know, years before I ever was exposed to Rabbi Fohrman’s methodology, if somebody were to say to me, “Oh yeah, our Torah is a guidebook.” I would nod and say, “Yeah, of course, it's a guidebook,” right? The Torah guides my life. But what I really mean is that the Torah is a rule book. Rules guide my life, don't they? I'm supposed to do these mitzvot, I'm supposed to stay away from these things. So the Torah’s a guidebook, sure. But, it's not really a book I'd crack open to get any serious guidance about how to resolve a marital dispute, how to deal with my kids, how to conduct myself in business. I'd sooner consult the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People before I consult the Torah.  

There are so many rules and laws that don't really apply to you and me. Torah is filled with laws about farmers or livestock owners. It's filled with rules about Tumah and Tahara, purity and impurity, laws about korbanot, animal sacrifices, tabernacles. 

But what I think is incredible about Rabbi Fohrman’s methodology is he's started to convince me that the Torah is not really just a law book. It is a guidebook, in the fullest sense of that word. It truly does guide you - it doesn't just command you. The laws of farmers, the laws of those who own livestock, the laws of the tabernacle, of purity and impurity – they’re vistas full of richness and meaning. They reveal secrets of the universe to you, and they guide your everyday life.

And if you've been around the block with us at Aleph Beta, you've experienced that guidance. Laws that seemed arbitrary and meaningless carry deep, emotional, spiritual messages. The commandment to shake a lulav and etrog – it's not a random and arbitrary law. It has profound meaning. It teaches you something about how to live your life.

But it’s not just the laws that guide us, it’s a whole bunch of stories. Now, you might say, these stories are stories of good morals – wonderful character traits that we should emulate. But, that's not true of all the stories in the Bible. Do we really need to hear about the war of the four kings and the five kings? Or how about the story of the strange dudaim, the wild flowers that Rachel asks of Leah. Those don't seem to be stories of good morals that we’re meant to emulate. And yet, if you really buy into the principle that the Torah is a guidebook, then you don't gloss over those stories. They’re mysteries worth solving, and there's great meaning behind those stories.

In fact, I invite you all to explore those stories on Aleph Beta, and so many of the stories that the Torah covers. And check out our videos and our podcasts on things like the Mishkan, on things like korbanot, on Tumah and Tahara.

This principle in Noach, that the Torah is a guidebook, has unlocked so many incredible Torah mysteries, and has, at least for me, reinvigorated my relationship with Torah and my relationship with God. As always, thanks for listening

Credits

This episode was written and recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman. 

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Rivky Stern. 

Into the Verse editing was done by Evan Weiner.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. 

Our editorial director is me, Imu Shalev. 

Thank you so much for listening.