Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
Print Edition

Where do I come from?

When my daughter Lauren was in kindergarten, the class took a trip to our local zoo to learn about animals. The children were treated to two beautiful, slightly unusual sights that morning: a newborn lion cub lay curled up sleeping next to its mother; an elephant named Sammie was breast feeding her baby. When I picked up Lauren after school, she talked non-stop about these two baby animals and the mothers who cared for them. My own mommy-radar went into high alert and I felt the inevitability of her question coming toward me like a heat-seeking missile.

I let out a deep breath, feeling both anxious and somewhat prepared, since I had preemptively bought a copy of Mommy, Where Do I Come From? in order to have the politically correct, age appropriate answer in my back pocket when she asked.

The truth-seeker in me felt obligated to answer the question of where babies come from with scientific facts which included words like egg and embryo. But the moment the question was asked by my not-yet six-year-old daughter, I realized I could take the conversation in another direction entirely and still give her a legitimate answer.

So I talked about the beauty of love between two people and how sometimes that love expands to include the miracle of creating a baby together. And that it’s a big commitment and you have to decide that you will take care of that baby and learn all the things you need to know to be a good mommy or daddy. Even if you are a lion or an elephant.

My answer seemed to satisfy her for a few days until she handed me Mommy, Where Do I Come From? and asked if we could read it. Obviously, someone in her kindergarten class offered her a different answer than the one I gave.

It’s totally natural for a child to wonder and ask about her origin. Yet, while “Where do I come from?” is a simple question to ask, it is a very difficult, complex and multi-faceted question to answer.

Taking it to another level, we can see a similar complexity manifest in the conversations and disputes that exist today about the origins of the universe. While some believe that the Genesis version of the Creation story is truth rather than theological metaphor, others maintain that evolution is the only credible scientific theory.

The controversy over whether it is constitutional to teach the theory of creationism (or Intelligent Design) was resolved in 2005 in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School, when the US Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional because it violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Nonetheless, Intelligent Design remains on the curriculum in many schools today.

Religion and science are often viewed as adversaries, competing for the hierarchy of truth. But in reality, science owes a lot to the ideas that were born from religious questioning.

Modern science began with the old Greek idea that nature is rationally intelligible but it also incorporated another important idea about the unity of the cosmos. The UNI-verse was seen as a single system ruled by a single set of laws; an idea which originated from the belief in the existence of one G-d.

Judaism deserves a big “shout out” for its approach to and acceptance of the relevancy of science. The Talmud often interpreted science, particularly astronomical calculations, as manifestations of Divine truth. Maimonides, one of the greatest medieval rabbis and scholars, was a physician and scientist who drew from scientific knowledge and factored that into halachic thought.

I don’t pretend to understand the origins of the cosmos any more than I understand the origins of the Divine. But what I do understand is that it is possible to hold inconsistent yet reconcilable ideas when we attempt to understand Jewish wisdom and Biblical texts. This idea — that a single Biblical verse can convey many teachings or that multiple interpretations of a verse can be correct — is not new. Our sages taught us wisely when they wrote:

“There are 70 faces (facets) of the Torah” and “These and these are the words of the living G-d.”

Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News



Avatar photo

IJN Columnist | Reflections


Leave a Reply