The treatment of animals & The treatment of humans
Gandhi taught that “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. Religious texts demand that we love our neighbour as ourselves. Rabbi Akivah went as far as to say that this is a great principle in Biblical thought. However, translating theory into practice is more difficult. We can all identify people who irritate and annoy us. It might well be easier to be kind to animals and then perhaps we can progress on to humans.
This week the Torah commands us not to kill a mother cow and her offspring on the same day. Maimonides explains that the reason why the torah forbids us to slaughter a cow or sheep and its child in the same day, is to prevent the suffering of the mother of seeing her child killed. To make sure this doesn’t happen the torah forbids it even if the mother cow doesn’t actually witness the slaughter. To have pity on one’s child is instinctive and affects animals as well.
There is a wonderful Talmudic story regarding the great sage Rabbi Judah HaNasi in which a calf breaks free whilst being led to slaughter. The calf tries to hide under the Rabbi’s robes, bellowing with terror, but he pushes the animal away, saying: “Go, — for this you were created.”
G-d didn’t approve and inflicted the Rabbi with kidney stones, saying, “Since he showed no pity, let us bring suffering upon him”.
The Rabbi prayed for relief, but his prayers were ignored, just as he had ignored the pleas of the calf. At a later date, he prevented his maid from violently expelling baby weasels from his house, For this, Heaven removed his problems saying, “Since he has shown compassion, let us be compassionate with him”.
A person who is cruel to a defenceless animal will undoubtedly be cruel to defenceless people, and a person who cares for the lowest of creatures will certainly care for his fellow man. Jacob, Moses and David were all shepherds, people who cared for animals. Moses was chosen for his mission because of his skill in caring for animals.
During the past week we commemorated the victims of the Holocaust and next week on we turn our attention to those who fell in battle defending the State of Israel. Humanity hasn’t yet learnt to live in harmony, perhaps we need to go back one stage, treat animals properly and we might just learn to treat each other properly.
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