Natan Slifkin
British rabbi
Natan Slifkin (also Nosson Slifkin) (Hebrew: נתן סליפקין; born 25 June 1975 in Manchester, England), popularly known as the "Zoo Rabbi", is a British born Israeli Orthodox Judaism rabbi, and the director of the Biblical Museum of Natural History in Beit Shemesh, Israel. Slifkin is best known for his interests in zoology, Judaism's relationship to evolution, Jewish and biblical history, and his writing on these topics.
Biography
Slifkin was born and raised in Manchester, United Kingdom, where he studied at a local yeshiva called Yeshivas Shaarei Torah. He left in 1995 to continue his studies in the Medrash Shmuel yeshiva and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel. He was ordained at Ohr Somayach Institutions, where he taught Talmud and contemporary Judaism. He lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh, where he runs the Biblical Museum of Natural History. Slifkin has a master's degree in Judaic studies from the Lander Institute in Jerusalem, and a doctorate in Jewish history from Bar-Ilan University, completed in 2016. His dissertation was entitled: Rabbinic and Maskilic Encounters with Zoology in the Nineteenth Century.
Controversy
Slifkin's books, which had "cautious references to evolutionary theory", led to a denunciation of his work by ultra-Orthodox authorities. One Rabbi who signed the ban, Elya Ber Wachtfogel, added that "even what is not heretical is expressed in a way only a heretic would speak".
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