This week’s Torah commentary, written by Rabbi Jonah Rank, Rosh Yeshivah of Hebrew Seminary, has been sponsored anonymously.
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Katie Hawley had been studying hospitality at the University of Central Florida when a bear broke into her home in Vail, Colorado, and briefly played the piano in May of 2017. Had it not been for the dissonant chord that the bear banged out, this would have been another run-of-the-mill story of a bear breaking into a space we designate typically for humans. The bear who approached the check-in desk at the Lodge at Steamboat in Colorado in May of 2022 had entered through an inviting open doorway on a hot day. This bear did not pretend to be any craftier than the hundreds of bears who have clawed away at window screens or screen doors and squeezed their way into homes in California, Connecticut, or anywhere else really.
The horror of our homes being overtaken by animals has established an entire industry of keeping animals away. We hire exterminators, we build fences, and—when certain animals become good business partners or social pals—we might even build them separate homes (doghouses, chicken coops, horse sheds, or barns).
This Shabbat, Jews around the world will be reading of an ancient Israelite nightmare preserved in Parashat Ekev: what would happen if our ancestors had made it to the promised land but the whole place had been overrun by untamable animals? Moses quotes God’s plan to the Israelites:
וְנָשַׁל֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ אֶת־הַגּוֹיִ֥ם הָאֵ֛ל מִפָּנֶ֖יךָ מְעַ֣ט מְעָ֑ט לֹ֤א תוּכַל֙ כַּלֹּתָ֣ם מַהֵ֔ר פֶּן־תִּרְבֶּ֥ה עָלֶ֖יךָ חַיַּ֥ת הַשָּׂדֶֽה׃
Adonai your God will remove these nations from before your midst bit by bit. You will not be able to overcome them quickly—lest the animals of the field would grow too numerous, overwhelming you. (Deuteronomy 7:22.)
In other words, had God wiped out all of the nations in the Land of Israel before the arrival of the Israelites, the Land of Israel would have served as an animal playground, unwelcome to Israelites. The threat of wild beasts taking up residence all over the holy land was terrifying, but the author of Targum Yonatan—an Aramaic translation-and-commentary on the Hebrew Bible from the early middle ages in the Land of Israel—spiced up this verse. In retelling the biblical verse, Targum Yonatan added that these wild animals in the Land of Israel would all be cannibals—rendering the holy Land a far cry from both humanity and humaneness.
A pioneer of the Israeli religious Zionist education system, Rabbi Asher Wassertheil (1921–2008), in his Birkat Asher commentary on the Torah, quoted his grandson Yehonatan, who imagined what it was like for the first Israelites to make it into the Land of Israel. Were they involved in warfare against unfriendly neighbors (which is, at least partially, what the Book of Joshua describes)? If so, then it may be that these human clans spent far too much time focused on warzones and not enough time dedicating themselves to good governance—such that the animal kingdom could overtake whatever political aspirations the Israelites may have had in mind. (See Birkat Asher on Deuteronomy 7:22.) Yehonatan may have been right; the Book of Judges depicts the early years of Israelite life in the Land of Israel as a time when “every person did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25) but not necessarily what was in the interest of God or even a human collective.
The surprise antagonist in this whole what-if scenario might not have walked on four legs though. The French philosopher Rabbi Levi ben Gereshon (c. 1288–1344), commenting on Deuteronomy 7:22 in his work Be’’ur HaMillot, argued that nobody should have felt any actual anxiety about animals overtaking Israel. Rather, he believed that “אמר זה על צד המשל” (“[the text] said this metaphorically”), that “חַיַּ֥ת הַשָּׂדֶֽה” (chayyat hassadeh) was not figuratively “the animals of the field” but “the lively [enemies] in the field[s surrounding Israelite strongholds].” One enemy nation could be attacking the Israelites in one front of the war while another bestial bunch could go in for a sneak attack against the Israelites.
Reducing enemies to animals is a practice dating back millennia in the history of our species. Professor Ahmad Abo el Magd of Minia University in Minya, Egypt, has demonstrated that the Israelites’ neighbors in the New Kingdom of Egypt (c. 1570 – c. 1069 B.C.E.) had long been doing the same thing. In his article “Dehumanizing of the ‘Other,’” el Magd demonstrates that, when the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II went to war against Hittites at Kadesh on the Orontes River (now in Syria), the scribe of this text represented the Hittites with a crocodile hieroglyph. Moreover, Ramesses II described his sinking the Hittites into the river, just “like [how] crocodiles go down” (p. 332). At other times, leaders in the New Kingdom of Egypt would depict their enemies as locusts, mice, frogs, fish, dogs, jackals, and other animals (pp. 333–340). An enemy unworthy of human dignity naturally (or naturally) receives treatment as lesser-than-human.
The Italian Jewish mystic Rabbi Mosheh David Valle (c. 1697–1776), writing in his native Padua, warned “כי חיה רעה דרכה לדור במקום שממה” (“that it is the way of an evil beast to inhabit a desolate place”). (See Rabbi Valle’s Mishneh Torah, p. 92.) In his own lifetime, the Land of Israel was only modestly settled by Jews surrounded by neighbors who did not always understand them. Rabbi Valle realized that a Jew could emphasize that Deuteronomy 7:22 states that God planned to vanquish our enemies (for us!) “מעט מעט” (me’at me’at, “bit by bit”). The implication of this might be that humans ought to be patient in the face of enmity, that humanity’s role is not to enter into battles but to befriend neighbors and to pursue terms of peace. Despite his hometown having hosted what was for approximately half of the 2nd millennium C.E. the only European medical school that would admit Jewish students, Rabbi Valle grew accustomed to distrusting Padua’s non-Jewish residents. After all, it was by a Christian decree that the Jews of Padua were mostly restricted to life in a ghetto, and, during Valle’s childhood, a separate law required Padua’s Jews to go to church on Sundays and listen to anti-Jewish sermons.
Was it really worth it to get close to these neighbors? Rabbi Valle thought not. In a subtle battle cry, Rabbi Valle considered “the animals of the field” and declared
כי לא יקיים האדם נחשים ועקרבים בתוך ביתו… ואין תקנה אלא להמיתם.
that a human may not establish [any coexistence with] snakes and scorpions in one’s home… There is no fix other than to kill them. (P. 92.)
Readers of Rabbi Valle’s words should recognize that his polemic here falls very short of Judaism’s ethical standards. There are, and there may always be, miserable people who gravitate towards making others’ worst dreams come true, and societies must determine ethical ways to minimize violence conducted by both troublemakers and keepers of the peace. The Torah’s greatest contributions to society lie not in a call to arms but in a call to sacred service and to viewing the ills of the world with high hopes for teshuvah—“turning away” from one’s past errors and committing to higher spiritual and ethical standards. A blessing that some Jews recite only in a whisper in the weekday Amidah asks God to rid our world of the wicked, but several early versions of this prayer include an important caveat for those who betray Judaism’s foundational values: “אל תהי תקווה אם לא ישובו לתורתיך” (“Let them not have hope if they cannot return to Your Torah”). (See, for example, Dr. Rivkah Nir’s Early Christianity [in Hebrew], p. 413.)
As humans, we are animals—no matter how often we forget this simple fact. We have what psychologists sometimes call lizard brains, some evolutionary residue that means that, when we feel threatened, we must decide between fight (war), flight (escape), or freezing (doing nothing while hoping for the best). It takes a tremendous amount of self-control for a scared human to jump immediately to a place of higher moral clarity than those three options—yet this is exactly what the best of Jewish wisdom urges us to do. Proverbs 25:21–22 teaches:
אִם־רָעֵ֣ב שֹׂ֭נַאֲךָ הַאֲכִלֵ֣הוּ לָ֑חֶם וְאִם־צָ֝מֵ֗א הַשְׁקֵ֥הוּ מָֽיִם: כִּ֤י גֶחָלִ֗ים אַ֭תָּה חֹתֶ֣ה עַל־רֹאשׁ֑וֹ וַ֝יהֹוָ֗ה יְשַׁלֶּם־לָֽךְ׃
If the one who hates you is hungry, feed them bread. If they are thirsty, give them water to drink. For you [thusly] pile coals upon their head; Adonai will keep you whole.
Acts of kindness to those who are short on compassion resets the table—and may even disarm those with belligerent words. Our spiritual forebears believed that there were completely non-violent ways to rewire whatever neurons had misguided a human towards belligerence. Composed circa 800 C.E., the rabbinic commentary Midrash Mishley, rereads “יְשַׁלֶּם־לָֽךְ׃” (yeshallem lakh, “will keep you whole”) in Proverbs 25:22, offering instead “ישלימנו לך” (yashlimennu lakh), that God “will create peace between that [enemy] and you” (25:5).
When bears enter structures built by humans, the bears are on the hunt for food and for better air, and—though humans should not test the limits of this—the bears, if unprovoked, do not care to bother humans. Likewise, most humans—unless brainwashed to act otherwise—ultimately have little reason to go out of their way to disturb strangers, neighbors, and loved ones. Denying anyone their sense of humanity through name-calling (especially the names of animals) has made it into our Torah and into the words of our sages from time to time; all of these are words penned by humans striving the most divine of outcomes. They have fallen short from time to time—and history knows too many times when peoples, including our own, have denied the human dignity of others. We know that fear of an enemy can erase from us (usually temporarily) the best traits of what it means to live as a holy and compassionate human being. But we also know better.
Psalm 115:16 tells us that God gave us this land; our planet is for us to share. If we can stay focused on extending to others the holiness and lovingkindness we seek in our own lives, we will witness a more peaceful future. It does not take a student of hospitality to know that we are mere guests who must get along on this world where God graciously hosts us. That the law of the land should be a law of love is basic Judaism.
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