The Hidden Wisdom in Human Development and Nature: From Crawling Babies to Flies and Fossils

Crawling happens during the first year of life and is a major developmental milestone for infants. Moving freely through space allows a baby — who until then was limited in movement, to begin experiencing the world around them.

Crawling is a motorically complex action and requires significant physical effort. Try crawling for a few minutes and you’ll gain newfound respect for a crawling baby. Any adult who crawls on a hard floor will feel intense pain in their knees as they rub against the surface — a discomfort that leads to poor coordination and slow movement.

Why doesn’t crawling hurt a baby? Why, in fact, does the baby seem to enjoy it?

Contrary to what we may assume, a baby’s bones are not hard. They have not yet fully ossified, making them relatively soft and flexible — allowing babies to move easily and quickly. It’s important to remember that the bones of infants start out as cartilage, which gradually turns into bone over the years. This miraculous fact allows for growth during infancy, childhood, and adolescence.

Here we see the wonderful design of the baby’s skeletal structure. 
How do our bones avoid grinding against each other? Who “tells” the bones to grow for a certain period and then stop at a certain age? How do broken bones know how to perfectly heal themselves?
Who programmed them to do that?

It’s impossible not to marvel at the higher wisdom that created these conditions.

“Anti-Zionist”?

Why do some in the secular public see religious Jews — especially the ultra-Orthodox, as “anti-Zionist”?

Let’s look together at four central facts about those who keep Torah and mitzvot:

1. They deeply mourn and remember the Land of Israel by refraining from eating and drinking on four major fast days connected to the destruction of Jerusalem:

   • 10th of Tevet (beginning of the siege)

   • 17th of Tammuz (breach of the walls)

   • 9th of Av (destruction of the Temple)

   • 3rd of Tishrei (assassination of Gedaliah)

2. Three times a day, every day, the Jew turns to God and pleads emotionally for the good of Zion and its people, and for the ingathering of exiles (e.g., in the Amidah: “May our eyes behold Your return to Zion in mercy,” or in Birkat HaMazon: “Rebuilder of Jerusalem”).

3.  Many observant Jews recite Tikkun Chatzot nightly —an emotional lament centered entirely on remembering Zion and Jerusalem, concluding with the verses: “You will arise and have mercy on Zion… The Lord builds Jerusalem; He gathers in the dispersed of Israel.”

4. Any observant Jew living in Israel will not leave the country without first consulting a Torah scholar to determine whether their reason is halachically justified.

Can a community whose longing for Zion is expressed in daily prayer, emotional yearning, and practical sacrifice honestly be called “anti-Zionist”?

What is the Purpose of Flies?

All of us have experienced our sleep being interrupted by the annoying buzz of a fly. Why do flies even exist? What purpose do they serve? Is their goal simply to irritate us?

Actually, flies play a central role in biological pest control. They are used to reduce populations of plant pests that damage agriculture.

Some types of flies are so valuable that people are willing to pay serious money for them. Some years ago, Israel won a tender to export millions of flies to a certain region in Europe. Those areas have extensive orchards suffering from harmful insects and worms. These special flies eliminate specific pests, allowing fruit to grow undisturbed.

In addition, flies — like bees and butterflies, play a role in pollination, which is essential for fertilization and fruit production. Plants cannot reproduce without pollination. Pollen from a male flower must reach a female flower of the same species, creating a fruit containing seeds, from which a new cycle of growth begins.

As the Mishnah teaches in Pirkei Avot: “There is no person who does not have his moment, and no thing that does not have its place.” A fly may be bothersome in one context, but extremely beneficial in another. The Creator made a perfectly balanced world, and nothing in it is unnecessary. Everything exists exactly where it needs to be, according to its purpose.

The First Step

“Maybe you should pray for me. You have a connection with Him — I don’t,” said a secular friend of mine about a difficulty he was facing.

I told him: “You should pray! You can’t imagine how moved God would be to hear your voice. Believe me.”

He looked at me, confused.

I explained: It’s like in life — when is a father most emotional about his child walking toward him? During the baby’s first steps, not when the child is already grown. Those first steps are the most moving because the father realizes for the first time that his child recognizes him and wants to be near him.

So it is with God, our Father in Heaven. Pray to Him yourself — these are your first steps toward Him. Those steps will bring Him great joy.

As His beloved children, God deeply desires closeness with us. He wants to hear our prayers at any time, in any place. God loves the people of Israel and longs for their return — just as a father, even when angry, still loves his son and wants to fulfill his son’s wishes, even if the son has sinned against him. God wants to see His children return from harmful paths and do His will.

Where Are the Intermediate Creatures?

At the core of Darwin’s theory is the idea that evolution occurs through tiny changes accumulated over vast periods of time, gradually turning primitive species into more complex ones better suited to their environment.

Let’s assume Darwin was right, and not only did humans evolve from apes, but many animals evolved into other animals. If so, where are the fossils of the intermediate creatures — half-man/half-ape, or half-horse/half-donkey, etc.? The existence of intermediate forms is the main weak point in the geologist’s theory.

If evolution proceeds through gradual transitions, we should find fossil evidence of all the in-between stages. But none of these transitional fossils have ever been found, despite claims that these processes occurred over hundreds of millions of years.

Where are the countless transitional creatures supposedly present in every evolutionary chain? This alone is enough to argue that species did not evolve from one another, but were each created individually — just as the Torah states.

In The Origin of Species, Darwin himself wrote: “Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this is the most obvious and serious objection that can be urged against the theory.”

He later explained that he believed more evidence would eventually be found. But as we know, even today, no half-creature fossils have been discovered. If Darwin lived today, he would likely reject his own theory.