4.2.12 WC: 191694 in the morning, such as the creation story, and what we were taught in the afternoon, such as evolution and genetics. No attempt was made to reconcile Torah (scripture) and Madah (secular knowledge). They were simply distinct and entirely separate world views (or as my late colleague Steven Jay Gould put it in his always elegant choice of words, "separate magisteria"). We lived by the rule of separation between church and state, and for most of the students it raised no issue of cognitive dissonance. In the morning, they thought like rabbis; in the afternoon like scientists; and there was no need to reconcile. It was like being immersed in a good science fiction novel or film: one simply accepted the premises and everything else followed quite logically. For a few of us, that wasn't good enough. I recall vividly our efforts to find--or contrive-- common ground. For some, this quest took them to wonder whether the God of Genesis could have created evolution. For them there was an abiding faith that both religion and science could both be right. For me, the common ground was an abiding conviction that both could be wrong-- or at least incomplete as an explanation of how we came to be. I was skeptical of both religion and science. Genesis, though elegant and poetic, seemed too simple. But so did evolution--at least the way we were taught it. The apparent conflict between religion and science did not move me to search for reconciliation. It moved me to search for doubts, for holes (not black ones, but grey ones), for inconsistencies not between religion and science--that was too easy--but rather within religious doctrine and within scientific "truth." I loved hard questions. I hated the easy answers often given, with a smirk of self-satisfaction by my religious and secular teachers. The mission of our modern Orthodox Yeshiva was to integrate us into the mainstream of American life while preserving our commitment to modern Orthodox Judaism. “Torah” and