In July 1925, Jewish San Francisco was gripped by a battle of beliefs that was unfolding in a small town courtroom on the other side of the country.
On the stand was a worldview that looked to science to explain the mysteries of the universe. In opposition, and supported by the law of the land, was a fundamental belief that the Bible should be interpreted literally.
Known as the Scopes trial, it was a test of the right to teach evolution in schools. Journalist H.L. Mencken coined it the Scopes Monkey Trial, and the nickname stuck. Although it was a trial about Tennessee law, the soundness of Darwin’s theory of evolution was also put on the stand.
Just as in the rest of the country, the Jewish community in San Francisco took a deep interest in the trial. The editors of this paper published a particularly Jewish take on the debate.
Rabbis and leaders opined on the subject, writing with measured passion about both their love for Torah and their commitment to science. S.F. Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Louis Newman summed it up well in a piece published on June 26 as the country prepared for the trial.
“It is our confidence in the validity and permanence of Judaism which has enabled us to incorporate into the content of our theology the best of new knowledge as science places it before us,” he stated. “We Jews have nothing to lose and everything to gain for Judaism by accepting the teachings of science.”
The trial of high school teacher John Scopes began on July 10, 1925. But even before then, it was a cause célèbre. Tennessee banned the teaching of evolution in schools, and Scopes, who was only 24 at the time, volunteered to challenge the ban. The trial was broadcast live on radio, transfixing the nation.
“It is with pride that the modern Jew can state that Judaism and science are in complete harmony, and that Jews have always been staunch defenders of evolution,” Newman wrote, commenting on the upcoming trial. (He also spoke before the state’s education board to defend science-based textbooks.)
“Jewish teachers should not hesitate to go on record as being champions both of the Bible and of evolution,” Newman wrote. “We Jews can render an historic service to the cause of truth by proclaiming our allegiance to both the Bible of our Fathers and the Bible of Nature.”
He did admit that maybe some Jews (not Reform like him, of course) might be a little less enthusiastic. But on the whole, he said, Jews supported “the progress of free thought and investigation.” Newman suggested that even the Jewish thinkers of the past would have accepted evolution if they’d had access to the science of 1925.
Rabbi Rudolph Coffee of Oakland’s Temple Sinai was also a supporter of teaching evolution in schools. He wrote about it on June 19, 1925, in what was introduced by our editors as “a convincing argument.”
“It is very sad that the Bible, the most wonderful book ever written, should be used to hold back the hands of progress,” he wrote. “Is it not high time that we turn from the Bible as a textbook in every scientific domain and permit the latest advances by university professors to be our real guide?”
“Why shall we not use the Bible for what it is, the most glorious source of spiritual solace and inspiration which this world has ever known?”
The trial lasted just over a week. Defended by Clarence Darrow, Scopes lost, although the verdict was later reversed on a technicality. But the issues it raised remained very much in the public discourse.
On Sept, 18, we published an article by S.F.-born Rabbi Edgar Magnin reflecting on the conflict between religion and science through a particularly Jewish lens.
“Jews went through this struggle a hundred years ago and more, when Reform Judaism was born,” he wrote. “Even then, the case is not quite parallel. For Orthodox Judaism, which is theoretically opposed to critical science as applied to the Bible, rarely fought about beliefs or stressed them to any degree.”
The Tennessee case was a fight between freedom and tyranny, he said.
“They believe that if you can control the schools, you can control the men and women of the future,” he wrote. “Of course, they cannot see that such tactics are ridiculous, un-American and dangerous, that the young people are too wise and independent these days to be bamboozled by old fogy notions.”
The famous trial happened 100 years ago this month. Though Scopes lost in court, he won in the court of public opinion, including among Reform Jews on the West Coast. Would the rabbis, and the Jews who read their words, be surprised that Biblical literalism in the classroom would still be a topic a century later? In November 2024, Texas decided it would allow Bible-based curriculum in public schools.
“It is time for men and women who believe in freedom of teaching, freedom of press, freedom of speech and belief, to rally around the forces defending science,” Newman wrote in 1925. “If we fail now, America will become the victim of an oligarchy of bigots, raiding every State Legislature in the land, and eventually capturing Congress for a union of Church and State.”