The kiss and the slap: Modern Orthodox ambivalence towards evolution 1980s–2010s. Issue 3 (3rd July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pear, Rachel S. A.
• Is Part Of: Journal of modern Jewish studies. Volume 21:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 297
• Page End: 318
• Publication Date: 2022-07-03
• Subjects: Darwin -- evolution -- American Modern Orthodoxy -- science and religion; Jews -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Judaism -- Periodicals; Jews -- Periodicals; 305.8924
• DOI: 10.1080/14725886.2021.1896458
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1472-5886

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Research has begun to delve into Jewish responses to evolution as one component of a more general rise in interest in the study of religious engagement with Darwinism. This attention is due to a number of factors including revisions to the history of Christian anti-evolutionism, understanding the need to expand research beyond Christianity, and mounting awareness of anti-evolutionism as a growing global phenomenon The current article focuses on American Modern Orthodoxy (AMO) and describes how the Darwin debates have manifested in this particular community at the end of the twentieth century and into the 21st. AMO has a complicated legacy regarding evolution. Accommodationist perspectives from AMO rabbis dominated the first half of the twentieth century; however, more negative rejectionist positions on the part of some religious scientists came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s. This mixed-bag of heritage led the1980s and onwards to be a period of ambiguity and ambivalence.