I found an article on Haaretz Culture and Literature extra, in which they showed a letter sent to Darwin by some Rav named Naftali haLevi from Radom, Poland. The letter was written in Hebrew, and it talks about how Darwin (referred to in the letter as 'The gentleman who stands as a light to the people, the praised researcher of the generation, son of the dawn, Carles Darwin, long live he'... what pompous circumstance!) created a new theory (he used the word 'Torah' for theory, which basically has the same literal meaning, but with different connotations) which all peoples heard and said is true, except for the Jews (how typical of Jews to speak out of such ignorance about non-Jews...), who did not understand that it actually strengthens their own belief, and that is why he wrote a book (titled Man's Chronicles) to show the connection between religion and the Jewish tradition. Darwin was very happy to see it, and he wrote about him in his autobiography and even mentioned it several times. He wrote him back a letter of gratitude (which didn't survive) and sent him a copy of his book with a warm dedication.
HaLevi was not the first one to refer to the Theory of Evolution in the Jewish world, but he was the first one who tried to show how it can go along with the Jewish religion and tradition. In his book (which Darwin did not read, and would probably not have understood fully anyway) he mentions R. Yehuda (haLevi?), who says in Genesis Rabba 14:10 that man had a tail like an animal's, and it was taken away from him to dignify him.
Well, at least he's not speaking nonsense like the UCC, which justifies its support of the Theory with completely unrelated verses which speak of God's omnipresence. I haven't read the book, and I don't know how well it handles the whole issue of the Divine Creation stories (yes, stories; Genesis ch. 1 and Genesis ch. 2 tell different creation stories), but I highly doubt it goes well with it and the fact that scientists know for a fact the world isn't less than 6,000 years old, as Jewish tradition says it is, without making the whole Old Testament a book of allegories which are all too interperetable to actually have any meaning. But what I fear is that it will go along, and we may find ourselves in a world in which fanatic religions can't be beaten by science, because the religion's leaders are able to find lame excuses every time.
I saw a sketch on Israel's new hit satire programme, Shavu'a Sof (Deadly Weekend, in the Irish sense, and also a pun: sof shavu'a means 'weekend'). It is a programme which shows just how the previous satire programme, Eretz Nehederet, had so many intelligent jokes (which were, at the time, often overshadowed by the shallow 'accent humour' used too often). In the sketch, twenty (or was it ten?) years after the first an current season of Big Brother in Israel, the beastly Bublils (the father, Yosi, and daughter, Einav, from Ashkelon, who are both participants in the current season), along with the rest of the Mizrakhi Jews in the country, become the rulers of the country. The ignorant masses become the rulers: everyone must smoke, the Minister of Defence loses 40,000,000,000 NIS from his budget in favour of cigarettes, and the Minister of Education, Avi Biter, destroys the University of Tel-Aviv in favour of a huge cinema showing only is films (which, as every Israeli knows, are the cheapest, poorest trash ever made by man, women, or any other life form). The few intelligent Ashkenazi Jews (which the country is trying to get rid of, it is not clarified by which means) have to become an underground movement, and are eventually caught.
The creators, understanding the song they'd made into the new anthem (some dumb popular song Yosi Bublil often sings) has the potential of becoming a huge hit, are offering it now as a ringtone. This scares me; I know many people will buy this new ringtone, and I'll have to remember this horrendous vision every time I hear it. It's partially becoming true already.
Unum diem...
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