Very interesting article in Ha’aretz about the power of the Internet and small publishing companies to challenge idiotic dogma(e.g., the world is less than 6,000 years old) enforced by ignorant religious leaders. My father tells me that when he was in heder in Brooklyn, he showed the rabbi a book with pictures of dinosaurs, which the rabbi promptly declared a “goyishe bubbemiseh” (gentile old wive’s tale). The sad thing is, unlike in Israel, where the ultra-Orthodox leaders are unworldy and unfamiliar with scientific literature, our own American Christian fundamentalists actually know better, but still peddle anti-evolution and anti-scientific nonsense.
UPDATE: Here’s a jpeg of a New York Times article on the same controversy involving Rabbi Nosson Slifkin.
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