We have liftoff!

I was privileged to be at Rabbi Slifkin's book launch Tuesday evening and it went off without a hitch. It was the first time I met Rabbi Slifkin face to face. A Hasidic master whose name I forgot once said that you could see a man's essence by looking into his face. I could see in the delicate boyish features and the slight build that he is not combative by nature, and was thrust against his will into the center of a storm. I feel so sad for what he's been through these last several years, and so utterly mystified that he can maintain a shred of respect for the people who are trying to destroy him. Rumor has it that he's been threatened with violence by some "religious" crazies in Israel. By golly I'd like to meet those who would do him harm and b'ezrat Hashem send them to the Land of Jumping Elephants .
Rabbi Weinreb from the Orthodox Union, who wrote a foreword to the book, spoke on the sometimes conflicting values of Emet and Shalom. Sometimes the former can be sacrificed for the latter, as when Hashem lied to Avraham about what Sarah said when she heard that she would be having a baby. But this is not such a time, not with so many bright young Jews being alienated from Torah over the issues on which Rabbi Slifkin writes. I myself could easily have been one of them 40 years ago. This is the time to stand up and proclaim loud and clear: Torah is true, science is true, and truth cannot contradict truth.
Rabbi Gil Student, Rabbi Slifkin's new publisher, spoke about "Who in the world do we think we are?" He masterfully demonstrated that we have whom to rely on when we defy those who are trying to suppress Rabbi Slifkin. But I would have answered differently: We are free men and Americans, with the God-given right to pursue knowledge wherever we wish. Give me liberty or give me death.
Tuesday evening's event should not have been necessary. In the usual course of events there's no such thing as a "book launch." A book is written, distributed to the bookstores and sinks or swims in the marketplace. But this book has a small niche market, and too many Jewish bookstores are cowed by the tyrants and won't touch it with a ten foot pole. If the people trying to suppress Rabbi Slifkin want peace they can do what I did with Not By Chance, an anti-evolution screed cited in Rabbi Slifkin's book. I panned the book in a review to be published in Reports of the National Center for Science Education. But I will defend to the death the author's right to write it, the publisher's right to publish it, a bookstore's right to stock and sell it, and anybody's right to read it. I am not an Arab. I know the difference between a "p" and a "b".