Friday, September 30, 2005
Jewish Community Reacts to Dover
Stewart Ain, a staff writer for The Jewish Week, which serves the Jewish communtiy of New York, reports on reaction in the Jewish community to the Dover intelligent design trial now being heard in federal court in Harrisburg.
Marc Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, said the Jewish community in general “sees it as an attempt to sneak biblical literalism and Evangelical Christianity into the public schools.” But he noted that there are some Orthodox Jews who agree with Evangelicals that the theory of evolution is an attack on religion.
Rabbi Chaim Schertz of Congregation Kesher Israel, an Orthodox congregation of 250 families in Harrisburg, said he believes that intelligent design “does a disservice both to science and to religion because religious views should be based on faith and not on so-called scientific demonstrations. Science has its own guidelines … [it] has things that are proven. Religious principles are not subject to demonstrations.”
