Saturday, September 23, 2006
A Connection to the Past
Gary Stern of the Westchester Journal News takes a look at how the Jewish faith looks at the Torah and the age of the earth:
We are at the threshold of the Jewish year 5767.
That's 5,767 years since the creation of the world. Or so tradition says.
But at a time when growing numbers of evangelical Christians are thumbing their noses at science — insisting that the Bible says the earth is really 6,000 years old — what do modern-day Jews think their calendar year means?
...
For some time, most Conservative, Reform and other non-Orthodox Jews have looked at the Jewish calendar year as a metaphor for the Jewish journey and as a connection to the past.For Orthodox Jews, who generally believe the Torah was given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago, the meaning of 5767 is more complicated.
