Seeking Ferret

Yeah, I overheard some ~9th graders talking excitedly about similar ideas during Tikkun Leil this year, and while most of me didn't want to damp their enthusiasm, it now seems really silly to me to pin too much of your emunah on any specific mechanical correlation between the days of creation and the current scientific calculation of the age of the universe. First, because scientists are still gaining important new observations that are adjusting their calculations in ways that might ruin any current correlation as surely as the Rambam's dependence on Aristotelian physics was ruined, but more primarily, because the important question isn't whether or not Bereishis and the Big Bang are correlated, the important question is why Hashem would use such an esoteric, allusive, metaphoric representation of scientific Creation to open a book that is fundamentally not a science textbook. Whatever the purpose(s) of Bereishis, it is not to teach Jews how matter and energy came to be.

But anyway, more on that when I finish the reread.