 |
 |
||||||||||
 |
Back to Question of the Week Q: What is the Jewish view regarding animals? Should we protect them like we do the widow, orphan, and stranger? - anonymous |
||||||||||
|
 |
A: Dear Unidentified: Why, as a matter of fact, Judaism does have something to say about the fair and humane treatment of animals. The ancient rabbis called this tza'ar baalei chaim- literally "the pain of living creatures"- and they derived from the Torah a general prohibition against causing animals unnecessary pain or suffering. For example, Exodus 20:11 and Deut. 5:14, include animals in the rest of the weekly Shabbat; one commentary says that a person should feed their animals before feeding themselves! Another example is Deut. 22: 10, which forbids plowing with an ox and an ass yoked together- the rabbis of the Talmud assumed that the smaller animal would struggle and suffer in keeping up with the larger. Other Biblical sources for this ethical ideal include the stories of Noah, where in the end God makes a covenant with Noah and with "every living creature among all flesh. . . .between Me and the earth." (Gen 9:8-17) In the Psalms, God is portrayed as lovingly sustaining everything in nature: "[God sends] rain for the earth, makes mountains put forth grass, who gives the beasts their food, to the raven's brood what they cry for." (Ps. 147:8-9; cf. also Ps. 145:16). Compare this with Psalm 148, in which God takes delight in all the different creatures on earth; the rabbis thought that if God loves animals and provides for them, so should we. Now, let's be clear; the ancient rabbis were not radical animal rights protesters. They thought it was OK to eat meat, to use leather (some commandments even require it), and to put animals to work for humans. You just had to do these things as humanely as possible; for example, Jews were forbidden to hunt animals for sport, because this caused them suffering with no real benefit to humans. I think people can have reasonable disagreements about the precise definition of which uses of animals are "necessary" and which are not; the idea that ethical concerns would apply to animals seems commonplace to us now, but certainly wasn't always true in the premodern world. Maimonides, the great philosopher of the 11th century, was quite clear that the reason we must not cause animals to suffer was that they can feel pain just like we do, and are therefore worthy of moral consideration. He looked at passages like Deut. 22: 6, in which we are instructed to shoo away a mother bird if we're going to take the eggs from her nest, and saw in them a clear imperative to spare the feelings and emotions of the animals we interact with. Another example would be Leviticus 22:28, which prohibits killing a baby animal and its mother at the same time (presumably to spare the mother the sight of its offspring being killed). Compare the perspective of Maimonides to early Enlightenment thinkers like Francis Bacon or Rene Descarte, who thought that animals were mere lumps of animated flesh, automatons with no capacity to suffer and utterly unworthy of moral or ethical consideration. It's taken a long time for society to catch up with what Judaism has taught all along! NJL
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||||
 |
[Home] [Lobby] [Library] [Classroom] [Office] [Lounge] [Gift Shop] Kolel: The Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning
|
 |
|
|
|||
