October 2026 Blog
When Darwin met the Jews by Daniel Langton When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he could hardly have anticipated that within fifteen years his ideas would be expounded in Hebrew and compared with the teachings of the ancient Jewish sages. Yet in 1874 Naphtali Levy, a traditionally educated Polish Jew, published Toldot Adam (The Origins of Man), one of the earliest substantial Hebrew engagements with Darwinian evolution. Having encountered the Origin in German translation, Levy became convinced that modern science could illuminate – and sometimes correct – traditional Jewish understandings of the natural world. Levy delighted in finding anticipations of evolutionary ideas in rabbinic literature. Genesis 2:7 describes God forming Adam from “dust from the ground” (afar min ha-adamah). Levy cited Genesis
