An AFII Exhibit

The Bashefer and Rosh Hashana

הַיּוֹם הֲרַת עוֹלָם

Irreducible complexity, the birthday of the world, and the round loaf on the table — three witnesses to the same claim: that behind the machinery of a living cell, and behind the turning of the year, stands a Designer Who remembers what He has made.

§Three Threads

Rosh Hashana is not only the head of the Jewish year; the Machzor calls it Yom Harat Olam — the day the world was conceived, the anniversary of Creation itself. Its liturgy is built around Malchuyot, Zichronot, and Shofarot — Kingship, Remembrance, and the Shofar — three ways of declaring that the universe has an Author Who still attends to His work. This exhibit sets that declaration beside a modern biochemist's argument that certain machines inside the living cell are too interlocking to have arisen by small unaided steps, and beside the humble round chalah that appears on almost every Rosh Hashana table.

Creation Remembered
Zichronot — the theme of Divine remembrance of all that He has made, recited on Rosh Hashana.
Molecular Machines
Michael Behe's claim that some biochemical systems cannot be built by removing one part at a time.
The Round Loaf
The chalah shaped into a circle or a crown — the year, and the world, pictured as one complete wheel.

I.Rosh Hashana as the Birthday of Creation

הַיּוֹם הֲרַת עוֹלָם, הַיּוֹם יַעֲמִיד בַּמִּשְׁפָּט כָּל יְצוּרֵי עוֹלָמִים

Unlike a birthday that merely marks the passage of time, Rosh Hashana's liturgy frames the day as a re-enactment of the sixth day of Creation — the day mankind first stood before its Maker. The Zichronot section of the Musaf Amidah does not ask G-d to remember the way a person jogs a forgetful friend's memory; it declares that nothing in the created order, from the smallest creature to the largest empire, has ever slipped from His attention. Melech al kol ha'aretz — King over all the earth — is proclaimed on the very day tradition says the earth itself began.

This is the theological soil the rest of this exhibit stands in: a universe that is not self-explaining, watched over from its first moment by a Designer Who is still, today, said to number and remember every part of what He made.

II.The Round Chalah

On most Shabbatot the chalah is braided long. On Rosh Hashana it is customarily shaped into a circle or a crown, sometimes with a spiral tail. The round loaf is read as an image of the unbroken cycle of the year now beginning again, and of a world that is complete — whole, with no loose end, the way Creation itself is described as finished: vayechulu hashamayim veha'aretz, "the heavens and the earth were completed" (Bereshit 2:1). The crown-shape doubles as a coronation image, echoing the day's Malchuyot theme — the loaf on the table crowning the same King the Shofar proclaims.

The loaf is also dipped in honey rather than salt, asking for a sweet year to come. Together the shape and the dip make the chalah a small edible sermon: the world is a finished, orderly whole, set in motion by a King Who is asked, again, to renew it kindly.

Reading Key
A wholeness that cannot be taken apart without ceasing to be itself is exactly the kind of claim Section III turns to next — not about a loaf now, but about the machinery inside a single living cell.

III.Michael Behe and Irreducible Complexity

MB
Michael J. Behe
Biochemist · Professor, Lehigh University

Behe is best known for his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box, in which he coined the term irreducible complexity to describe biochemical systems he argues could not have been built up gradually, because removing any one of their parts destroys the system's function entirely.

Behe's signature illustration is the bacterial flagellum, the whip-like motor some bacteria use to swim, which depends on dozens of interlocking protein parts — a rotor, a stator, a drive shaft, a hook, a filament. His argument, and the one he applies elsewhere to the blood-clotting cascade, is that a system with several parts, all necessary for function, resists explanation by the small step-by-step improvements natural selection is said to favor: a half-built motor, on this view, does the cell no good and so gives selection nothing to preserve.

"By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning." Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box (1996)
Indepth
Biochemist Michael Behe introduced the concept of **irreducible complexity (IC)** in his 1996 book, *Darwin's Black Box*, framing it as a direct challenge to Darwinian gradualism at the molecular level. --- **The Definition** Behe defines an irreducibly complex system as: > *"A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."* **The Logical Core of the Argument** Behe anchors his argument in Charles Darwin's own falsification criterion from *On the Origin of Species*: > *"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."* Behe's syllogism runs as follows: 1. **Gradualism requirement:** Natural selection acts only by preserving small, successive, functional advantages. An evolving precursor system must be advantageous (or at least functional) at every intermediate stage to be preserved. 2. **All-or-none threshold:** In an irreducibly complex molecular machine, function only appears once *all* coordinated components are present and correctly assembled. 3. **No selective advantage for incomplete precursors:** A precursor missing even one part is completely non-functional for that specific role. Natural selection cannot select for or preserve a non-working, incomplete precursor based on a future function it does not yet possess. 4. **Conclusion:** Such systems cannot arise through step-by-step, unguided Darwinian pathways and instead point to purposeful design. **Key Examples Proposed by Behe with additional critique by Dr Christopher Cagan** * **The Mousetrap Analogy:** A mechanical trap requires a platform, spring, hammer, catch, and hold-down bar. Remove any single component, and it does not simply catch mice less efficiently—it catches no mice at all. * **The Bacterial Flagellum:** A rotary propulsion motor in bacteria containing dozens of distinct protein parts (stator, rotor, drive shaft, universal joint/hook, and propeller filament). Behe argued that minus the motor or hook, propulsion is impossible. * **The Blood Clotting Cascade:** A precise multi-step cascade of enzymes and factors. If the clot does not form quickly enough, an animal bleeds to death; if it forms incorrectly, systemic thrombosis occurs. Behe argued all core feedback loops had to exist simultaneously. * **Mathematical Improbability: **"From Darwin to Design: The Journey of a Mathematics Professor from Atheism to Faith" by C. L. Cagan with Robert Hymers (foreword by D. James Kennedy), published by Whitaker House, 2006 (176 pages). It covers his personal conversion from atheism, answers to creation/evolution debate points, and how he sees mathematical/scientific precision as evidence for a Designer. Christopher L. Cagan is a mathematician (B.A., M.A., Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA) who also holds a theology degree from Talbot School of Theology and a second Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School, with his dissertation on apologetics. His argument against evolution centers on mathematical probability: he contends that the precision and improbability of the mathematical/physical laws governing the universe and living systems point to intelligent design rather than unguided evolutionary processes. This is a variant of the broader "fine-tuning" and "probabilistic improbability" critique of evolution common in intelligent-design apologetics. --- **The Evolutionary Critique** The irreducible complexity argument and what it means for your eternal nefesh is here.

IV.Synthesis: A Whole That Cannot Be Broken

Set beside one another, the three threads share a single shape. The chalah is shaped round because a completed world should look whole. Behe's flagellum is offered as a system that must arrive whole, or not at all, because a half-built motor confers no advantage on the way to full function. And the Zichronot of Rosh Hashana insist that nothing in that wholeness, from a single protein to a single soul, has ever been forgotten by the One Who assembled it.

  1. Bereshit 2:1 — Heaven and earth are described as completed, a finished whole, the same word-picture behind the round Rosh Hashana loaf.
  2. Tehillim 139:14 — "I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully, wonderfully made" — a worshiper's response to being built, not assembled by accident.
  3. Design Typology Whether the subject is a bacterial motor, a loaf of bread, or the turning year, the exhibit's throughline is a single claim: an interlocking whole points back to a Maker Who remembers every part of it — the very Zichronot proclaimed on the day the world itself is said to have begun.
  4. Rosh Hashana Machzor, Also see "The Holy One, blessed be He, created the world by the 'Ma'amar'" (Mek., Beshallah, 10, cf Psalm 33:6) and Chayei Olam has appeared in the מתגשם ממרא MOSHIACH. DOWNLOAD FREE THE MACHZOR ROSH HASHANAH V'YOM KIPPURIM K'MINHAG SEFARAD (NEW YORK: HEBREW PUBLISHING COMPANY) WITH YESHUA SAR HAPANIM THE MJ 6:20 METATRON (SEE OJB)! Zichronot — "There is no forgetting before the Throne of Your Glory" — the liturgical counterpart to Behe's claim that no part of an irreducibly complex system is dispensable.

What the Rosh Hashana table offers is an older habit of mind: to look at a whole that works, and to answer, before anything else, with thanks.