Skip to content
Transcript

Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Deuteronomy 22, Cruelty to Animals and Other Laws!

Wednesday 28.08.2024

Jeremy Rosen | Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Deuteronomy 22

- So we are on Deuteronomy, and we are on Deuteronomy 22. And the headline this week, of course, is that we are dealing with animals and a whole lot of other laws. This is, in certain respects, the most significant legal part of the Torah in Deuteronomy, which mirrors and varies with the original collection of these laws in Exodus after the so-called 10 Commandments. So we’ve already had some of these laws, but not all of them. And even those laws that were the same and similar are slightly differently worded, which is not surprising given that there’s a gap of 40 years between the two versions that probably originally were just oral. And anyway, our memory changes over 40 years. Well, at least mine does. So here we are, chapter 22, which talks about If you see strange wording means, you will not see, you should not see, it shouldn’t happen to you, that you see your neighbor’s ox or your neighbor’s sheep. And this normally is a shorthand for saying any animal, whether it’s a quadruped or a biped any animal that belongs to somebody and is , obviously lost, then it says, , and you hide from them. You try to ignore it, it doesn’t matter to you, . You must return them to your brother. So here we are talking about an animal lost, lost property, except it’s movable and you have to return it. There’s an obligation, obligation partially out of concern for the animal. The animal is lost, doesn’t know where to find its food or its water or maybe wandered into a desert and can’t find its way back. Whatever it is, the implication is you should take care of this animal.

You might say, “No, this is talking about lost property, it’s a property thing.” But no, this is clearly talking about an animal in a sense who’s suffering. And the reason why we’re saying this is because if you look at verse one and it goes on to say, and it starts at part of the beginning, don’t see or look and see your brother’s ox or his sheep wandering, lost. It then goes on to say . Now literally, means you turn away. And clearly it is saying you should not turn away. So here’s an unusual linguistic point, because if you turn away, you are indirectly causing pain. Now, what happens if this animal is nowhere near you or not your brother and you don’t know who it belongs to? We go to verse two. And if this is not near to your neighbour, in other words, it’s a long way away from the home, , and you don’t know who it belongs to, then, you must take it into your house. It should be with you , until your friend comes to look for it, and you should return it to him. And there’s a lovely story told in the Talmud about somebody finding a whole lot of eggs left outside his door and he takes the eggs into his house and the eggs grow into chickens. They produce chickens and he has lots of chickens. So he sells the chickens, and with the chickens he buys sheep and he ends up having lots of sheep and he ends up selling the sheep and buying oxen. And then all of a sudden one day the owner comes and says, “Those were my eggs. Do you know what happened to them?” And he takes them into the backyard and says, “See all those oxen? Those are your eggs.”

So that shows certainly a humane element, a human element. Now, one of the issues about the laws we are going to learn and a series of laws concerning animals is, whether these are laws that are given to protect the animals out of sensibility towards animals, or whether they are there in a sense to focus on our obligation to be good people and saying by implication, if we have to take care of animals, how much more so should we take care of human beings? There is one law in the Bible that is quite specific about cruelty to animals. And it is one of the so-called 7 Noahide Commandments. That is to say the seven commandments that every human being has an obligation to keep. And if that person keeps these laws, they are considered a good, caring human being. The , the Seven Commandments of Noah, even though they are not enumerated until the Talmudic era, they are derived from a chapter concerning Noah after the flood, what he can do, what he can’t do, how he sacrifices, and how he should be wary about causing grief to other human beings. Included in these seven is a principle called, , a limb from a living animal. And although it’s not explicitly stated, there is a phrase that’s used, don’t eat meat on blood, which can mean take the blood out of the meat before you eat it, which would explain the laws of koshering meat salting it and preparing it, which is now usually done for us, not done in our own kitchen as it was once upon a time.

And in addition, it comes to teach us that we should not take a limb from a living animal. And this is clarified as law in the Talmud and its understanding is that in those days they didn’t have fridges. You have an ox, shall we say, or a sheep. You want to eat part of it, but you don’t want to heat a whole part of it. So you chop off a leg, eat the leg, and meanwhile the animal goes on living in some pain, discomfort. And so this is a law which is used as the basis for saying, don’t be cruel to animals in general. But why we shouldn’t be cruel to animals is another question. Because after all, we do kill animals for food. And unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned here often enough, the method of killing animals, even in modern eras is absolutely cruel and horrible and painful and anybody who goes near an abattoir is likely to be put off meat for a very long time. But again, in a sense, rabbinic interpretation tends to focus on the human rather than on the animal. And although there are philosophers, like Peter Singer, and others who claim that we have to ascribe exactly the same ethical rules to animals as we do to humans, this is not the opinion of the rabbis of the Talmudic era and the mediaeval era. And indeed such a concept is a very, very modern one. And in one sense I identify with that, and I feel that this question of cruelty to animals in providing food is something which offends me, and I look forward to the day when we won’t do that anymore because it’ll all be done in a lab. But anyway, that’s by the by. I want to get back to the text. So the Torah then goes on in verse three to say this, and don’t think I’m only talking about cows and sheep, and because they are sources of food, but you know, what about a donkey or a horse? And so these are general terms that include categories and are inclusive.

And similarly, if you see a lost donkey, or indeed if you see a suit lying, some clothes lying, this is what you have to do to anything that your brother has lost, any lost property , which he has lost, , and you find, , you cannot hide. Here it says expressively instead of the , you may, not here, it says very clearly, you cannot do this, you cannot hide from them. So lost property, concern for objects, concern for people is a very, very important ingredient of a society. And it’s something that in many respects in our society is neglected and I mean secular society. I remember very clearly when I was in Yeshiva, there was a box of matches left on the windowsill and it remained there for a very, very long time. And I asked somebody, “Why is the box of matches there on the windowsill?” He says, “Because it belongs to somebody. They’ve forgotten. It’s private property, you can’t take it.” And yet what’s interesting is the Talmud has an interesting qualification on this, and the Talmud raises the question of , despair, giving up. Are there certain things that you lose you don’t expect to find again?

And if it is a case like that, the circumstances are like that, there’s no sign, there’s no mark, there’s no indication, it’s in a public place and somebody has dropped a $1 bill somewhere, they’re unlikely to come back to look for it. You may take it, you may then say, “I want to give it to charity.” But that’s a different matter. But if there’s any sign like say a wallet or identity or anything like that, you have to hand it back. But the idea is there is certain things that are lost, that are lost. And if they’re lost, you may keep them. But you’ll have to learn the to know what the qualifications of , despair are. There’s when you consciously knowingly despair, or there’s where you don’t, but you can assume. Anyway, carrying on about donkeys. Verse four, , you must not see your neighbor’s ass or your neighbor’s ox fallen down on the road. You’ve overloaded them, they’re struggling, these poor animals are suffering. And again, you might want to ignore it, but you can’t. It then says , you should help him lift up the animal. It says, , or do it with him. If he’s just standing by saying, “I don’t give a care,” you go ahead and do it, you’re under no obligation to, although I do think you’d be under a moral obligation to, even if not a literal legal one, but you expect him to help and to work with him. And now you have a completely irrelevant insertion that doesn’t belong here at all because the law after it is talking about cruelty to birds or birds and why all of a sudden here do we have this thrown in? And verse five says this, . A man should not wear sorry, a woman should not wear, which is normally worn by a man and , and a man should not wear , the garments of a woman because God does not like this sort of behaviour. And the word is used in lots of contexts.

It’s used in relation to sexual misbehaviour, in relation to human misbehaviour, in relation to moral misbehaviour. So the fact that it says , which something called call an abomination is not saying this is worse than anything else. It comes under the sort of list of things that are unnatural. Now then the question is what constitutes male or female dress? For example, pants. Pants are worn both by men and by women. Does that count as women’s wearing men or men wearing women? This is the sort of halachic debate that we have. There is some argument to say that this is not to do just with clothes, but I’m going to come back to that in a minute. That really means things like wearing swords or wearing implements that are normally associated with another sex. But let’s assume that it means on the basis simply of clothes and in the context of lost property, this might have a bearing on what it might mean. In other words, if you are coming across some clothes that have been dropped or are, if you like, clearly lost property, and you want to carry them to take them either home or to give to your wife or to your husband or to lost property, you might be carrying, in which case you are carrying something, which somebody looks at you from the outside and may say, “Whoa, whoa, what’s this?

A trans dresser or something of that kind?” So it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything wrong with trans dressing unless trans dressing is leading to something of a different kind. And because in the pagan world there is evidence that this was associated with pagan worship, that was the reason why it’s brought in here. Except it seems to me that it makes more sense to say in the context of lost property, we are dealing with lost property. Verse six, we come back to animals and one of the most, well-known, popular, lovely stories or laws of the Torah, verse six of chapter 22. When a bird’s nest suddenly appears in front of you, on the road you are walking along and some birds nest on the ground, whether it’s on a tree or , or on the road, there are either baby birds or eggs, and the mother is sitting on the eggs or on the babies. You may not take the mother and does this mean together with the children or separately from the children and the babies? Instead, send the mother bird away. So you can trap birds separately, but when a bird is on a less nest, you must send the bird, the mother bird away, , send away the mother bird and the children or the eggs, , you may take, in order that things will go well for you and you will have long days. And forgive me for repeating this, but I’ve mentioned before the fact that this term, , to be good, , have long life, is used of two other specific cases. Specific case number one is honour your father and your mother in order to have it should be good for you and you should have long life. The third one, which we’re going to come to is weights and measures, business, your business interactions, if you complete them, if you do them in the right way, you’ll have good long life.

And the question everybody asks of course is, “Hold on. The Torah keeps on talking about these guarantees of long life, but in fact it often doesn’t happen and people sometimes die very early and good people die and even people who send away the mother bird die and even people who honour their mothers and fathers die.” So what can it mean to the modern mind? The ancient mind has no problem with it. We make promises all the time. Rulers make promises, kings make promises, do the right thing and everything will be good and follow God and everything will be fine. And it could be that this is talking not about individuals, but talking about society. And therefore you can look at this. And I’m not saying this is what they intended, but this is how I make sense of it for me. That there are three crucial things for the welfare of society, for the welfare of humanity. Number one is the essence of family, of family looking after children, responsibility for children, raising children, having children. A highly controversial point at this world in which people are having fewer and fewer and want to have good reasons for not having children. But the home, the idea of family is crucial. Secondly, I would say, the relationship with nature is essential for whatever reason, whether it’s food or the health of the natural world, ecology, taking care of animals within the context of nature, it’s vital for the health and the continuity of the planet. And finally, I think that good business relations, honesty, being able to trade and deal honestly, fairly, without cheating is a crucial element in way humans live on this earth interacting with each other honestly. And those three guarantee or help towards ensuring a good life on earth. So having rationalised these examples of cruelty to animals or concern for animals, whether they are oxen, whether they’re sheep, whether they are birds, we are going to come back again to other examples.

But once again, we have an introduction of something that seems totally irrelevant and inexplicable. So I’d like to start off with nine Don’t plant your vineyards with . is a strange word, it’s a word that’s only used in this context and essentially means mixing, intermingling. Seeds and plants don’t intermingle. Now, one sense doesn’t make sense, this idea of , why not if it works? It so happens that last week I had the opportunity to watch a podcast given by remarkable young lady who’s doing research, a lot of research into plants and to how plants intercommunicate with each other. Doesn’t mean to say they have languages, but how certain plants don’t get on with other plants. Certain plants when come into contact with another plant shrink away from it that plants can convey to other plants certain ways of dealing with invading species, that plants have this amazing interaction and even shrink when the knife comes towards cutting them. Now, this doesn’t mean to say anymore like the question of animals that now we’re going to give equal rights to plants. But some people have actually gone to court in America to claim protection from plants, from invasive species being planted nearby. Maybe they knew something in those days about the interaction of plants and how one has to be sensitive to not putting inappropriate plants next to others. I don’t know, and this is a theory and it’s a recent one I only came across as I say in a matter of days ago. But it seems to me that this idea of keeping plants away from each other is part of a way of looking at the natural world, which is different to the ones we expect. So don’t plant different species together, in verse nine, unless you are, and the term can mean to sanctify, but it also could mean to desecrate.

I’ve mentioned this before, the term means holy, but the same term, means profane. A prostitute can be profane and she’s called a , or a man is called a . So it can mean the danger of degrading plants. But then it goes on to say, don’t plough, put in a plough, an ox and an ass together. Why not? Because they are different animals who pull at a different rate, at a different way. And this would be a form of cruelty, cruelty to the ass. And so once again, we’re talking about mixing animals, be sensitive not to mix animals. And then the biggest problem, the least explicable one, 11. Now, is a very, very strange word. It’s not used in any other context, it’s not a clearly Hebrew word. It seems to have come from somewhere else. The rabbis try to bend over backwards to find a linguistic origin that makes sense but none of them do. It obviously has some association that predates Jewish law and it’s an unusual term, an unusual word. And what it is is don’t mix , wool and flax. Now you may say, “Well no, what’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t you combine wool and flax?” Despite the fact that there are two substances that react very differently to liquids, to human perspiration and so forth. Don’t wear this combination. Now in fact I’m sure you’ll know that in many Jewish communities they have laboratories that will examine your suits to make sure there’s no flax inside. And you would say, “What flax is there?” Well actually until relatively recently, flax was very, very common for the lining of suits. And so many cases did have flax in and some people discovered that also certain material on couches, upholstery may contain flax as well as wool. Now that doesn’t mean to say that it’s common or it’s around all the time, but it is something that you might come across. But again, this seems to me to be part of this idea of not mixing, of trying to keep things pure in the sense of allowing them to exist in their own little world such as it is.

The world of animals, the world of humans, the world of male, the world of female, different kinds of garments. It’s being aware and all these things which you think are very, very unnecessary, all enhance our consciousness, our awareness of what’s going on around us, of where we are on what we sit on and who we interact with. So on the one hand you may say, “This is so petty, this is so unnecessary!” And yet I think this is a very, very important concept. And similarly linked to it is number 12. You should make fringes for you in the four corners of garment that you may be wearing. Now this call is what we call and when we mentioned it before they mentioned , you should make . This came in , it came just before the rebellion of Korah, who according to the rabbis thought this idea of was a bit of a joke and didn’t make sense, but nevertheless it is now called something else. Why the change? And again, it might be the change of usage in the same way that language changes usage in our time and words that once were bad are now good and vice versa. And so nice to Shakespeare was stupid and now it’s good or gay once meant happy and now it means something else. But nevertheless, the fact that we say that these , these tassels are on the four corners of your garment, obviously go back to . And the purpose of was to be recognisably different, to be reminded of good behaviour and to be aware that you are expected to live according to a different code of law and behaviour to what goes on around you. So these things, although they seem random and interconnected, are interconnected. And now we leave behind these questions and we turn to sexual impropriety or not necessarily impropriety, although we’re going to come to that in due course. Verse 13. If a man marries a woman and has sex with her and then hates her, or as the English says, takes aversion to her. So he changes his mind, “I don’t want this woman”

And therefore, “How am I going to get out of this?” So verse 14, one option is this, he makes up, he places upon her, false charges, and gives out a bad reputation. And this term , is a very important ethical principle in Judaism. Don’t spread bad, evil, negative reports of other people. We are going to come to gossip in due course that’s a different matter, but this is actually consciously spreading falsehood. This woman you gave to me, I cohabited with her, and she’s not a virgin! And this is , producing a bad name. So there’s a claim now in the court, how are we going to deal with it? And the father and the mother, both of them together take the produce, the proof of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gates to the courts. What is ? Well in those days, and this is quite common until relatively recent in western society, but is common still in other societies too. Proof of virginity means you have the first night’s sleep on a sheet and there is blood on that sheet. And now of course there are other ways of clarifying virginity. And there are of course the whole question of virginity is slightly different given the world in which we live in with other ways of losing one’s hymen without it being invasion by another man, by a male. But nevertheless, they have to prove this evidence and they bring the sheets forward. And the father says to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man in all good faith,” “and he doesn’t like her.” And verse 17, “and he spread terrible lies about her” “saying I didn’t find virginity” “and here I have proof.” And they spread the sheet before the elders, they take this man and they flog him. Or basically it could mean they put him under guard. It could mean either one of those two. And in addition to that, they impose upon him a fine of of a hundred silver pieces to give to the father of the young girl because he has spread evil report on a nice Jewish girl. And in addition to that, this is something I find very hard to take. , she has to stay as his wife, , he cannot send her away ever.

Now this is a problem, because we are going to come in due course to the law which says you may divorce somebody, and divorce is something that he would be able to do if he doesn’t want to stay with her unless suddenly he’s changed his mind and she’s changed her mind because she too has the right if she’s been mistreated to go and seek a divorce. But then in verse 20 we have this. But if this is true, if the facts come out that , there was no virginity there, , she’s taken out to her father’s house , and she is stoned to death because she’s betraying the morality of Israel to prostitute her father’s house and you must get rid of this evil from you. Now, the whole idea of stoning somebody is a horrible thing. And I think most of this is intended as a deterrent, but we are talking about preserving, shall we say, honesty and preserving a moral code that was very important to them at that particular moment in time. They valued virginity so much. I was watching a documentary recently about how in the 18th century, women marrying into a royal household or from another royal household to a new royal household in alliance had to go through a virginity test before the marriage could be consummated or agreed. And so this is something that has gone on for thousands of years after the Torah. So you know, to turn this on round and say how primitive it was, well, bear in mind we are still relatively primitive and there are parts of the world that are even more primitive than this. But nevertheless also in this situation that because this case was brought before the judges, the judges in Jewish law always have the right to take other circumstances into consideration and to exonerate. And we’re going to come to that in a different context shortly of sexual misbehaviour. Verse 22. What happens when a man is found sleeping with a married woman? They are both guilty. And similarly, the woman, man and the woman, and again, you must get rid of this evil, you mustn’t allow people to commit adultery. Now, we move on to rape. Verse 23. If a young girl is already engaged to another man and a man finds her in the city and he sleeps with her, you take them both out to the gates of the city stone them with stones until later they die.

Why is the girl guilty? There’s no record that she objected. Remember, cities in those days, the houses lived on top of each other and they were very, very close together, usually enclosed within walls, not like ours, spread out with gardens and plenty of space. So living on top of each other, if somebody cries out they’re going to be heard, but there is no evidence that she objected. So it’s a a metaphor for saying, is there any evidence that she objected? In a city, it’s likely she could have cried out. So we want to clarify, , the man you punish, , he raped a woman. So rape is a death penalty law. Not like in Italy until recently when if somebody raped, it was fault of the woman. Here, the penalty for, you’re comparing rape, to, as we’re going to see in due course, to murder,. You must get rid of this evil. But in the but if it’s in a field where a man finds a girl and he grabs hold of her and lies with her, he alone, the man is guilty of , of rape. And for rape, the penalty is death. Verse 26. But you mustn’t punish the woman. She’s not guilty in any way. Why? Because she’s in the field, alone. A person can grab hold of her. But here is a line which is overlooked and I think is one of the most important lines in the whole of the Torah. Just as a man can attack another man and kill him, , this is what rape is. Rape is like murder. Verse 27, he found her alone in the field, this young girl, there was nobody there to protect her. This is absolutely, absolutely terrible and we have to consider it as the equivalent of murder. And again, bearing. We look at all these cases that are going on in India where women are raped, nothing is done, it’s not reported. If anything, they are then punished and they are cast out. What’s going on in many parts of the world today of people who are happy to criticise Israel are themselves guilty of the most heinous crimes, Verse 28.

But what happens if she’s not spoken for, she’s not engaged and always means that there is, it’s a prelude to marriage, it’s an engagement, it’s a prelude to marriage that families have met. This is what they both want. So this is a much higher level of than just meeting somebody. And what happens he grabs hold of her and he sleeps with her and they’re found. So the find that they’re found implies a certain degree, a certain degree of consensuality. So the man who sleeps with her has to give penalty, , to the father because what he has done is he has bypassed the whole question of a marriage dowry and dowries were very important. They were important to the family, they were a source of income, it mattered a great deal, and they are bypassing the formality of a dowry. So he has to pay a penalty to the father. But then he must take the wife who he has raped and he cannot send her away all her days. And so this too goes back to the earlier question, do you have to stick with her the whole of her life? And what happens if she doesn’t want to? If she wants to, if they preempted, then this is what you do. But if she doesn’t want to, then you cannot force somebody to carry out or to stick in a marriage which they don’t want to accept.

So this is another example of where laws that are taken at face value in the Torah seem to us to be both unfair and problematic. And remember I mentioned before we are going to come in due course to the question of divorce. Divorce is okay. So if you don’t like it, you can get out of it. But nevertheless, the question of what is acceptable, what do we have to avoid is laid out in black and white. But throughout the period of the Talmud, the oral law, which coexisted with the written law, there was a lot more to this than meets the eye. And you cannot take it at face value. What you can’t take as face value are certain values that come out of this. The horror about the idea of forced rape, of rape, and on the other hand the lack of morality of people who don’t pay any attention to the morays of that particular moment of time. So let’s turn now to the questions that we have and let me stop sharing and go back to where we are and deal with questions and answers. So let’s get rid of this and that.

Q&A and Comments:

And Romain says, “Begs the question as to whether Torah recognises human is not necessarily humane.” Oh indeed, you are absolutely true.

Q: Arlene, “Is kosher animals humane?

A: Is , the term is to and to slaughter. I have seen all kinds of killings that go on, studied it. Part of my training and went to see. In my view of all the methods that I’ve seen , when it’s done properly is by far the most humane. And I’ll explain to you why I say this. You’ll know that when you cut yourself initially with a razor blade or something like that, the initial cut isn’t painful. It’s only after when the sides of the cut rub against each other that you get the sense of pain. A very sharp knife, a very sharp knife if it’s very sharp and very big and not serrated or faulty in some way when it cuts, it cuts very clean. Now, you also know that you can faint and fainting is not a painful process. The Jewish way of slaughtering is that you take a very sharp knife and you sever the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. And what this does is it makes the animal faint in the same way that we faint with a sudden drop of pressure of blood. That in itself is not the completion of the process. But what is is the animal’s blood is then drained and draining the animal’s blood is what finalises the process of .

So the actual process , when carried properly, leads to an initial fainting. It’s the fainting what happens and that is the maximum of the pain. Now, I have seen lots of say, different forms I’ve seen using electric shock, placing the animal’s head under electric shock, which very often doesn’t work right away and takes time. Similarly shooting sometimes does, but both electric and shooting damage the organs of the brain. Whereas, and that causes pain, whereas does not in any way damage the organs of the pain. It’s just reducing the blood. And therefore I think that in terms of humanity, it is humane. But the trouble is what happens before you get to the animal. The animals are driven in, they’re very often packed in inhumane cases, travel a long distance without water, without being able to go anywhere come and they see and they smell the horror of the abattoir that’s going on and they are prodded electronically to go forward and pushed and very often injured in the process. This is a scandal that still goes on in our society. And because this is so widespread and hardly anything is done, those people who accuse our form of killing, of as inhumane are the biggest hypocrites you could come across and may they all suffer from what they think is a horrible fate. Sorry for that.

Q: Okay, Shelly, "Does it matter if it’s a $20 bill that you find in the street instead of a $1 bill?”

A: Well, I don’t think so. Not in New York. Maybe in a very, very poor country it would, but not here. But you know, this is a judgement you make and if there’s any evidence, if it’s an unusual, an unusual 20 dollar bill, you might, but who knows, maybe there’s some, some writing on it which could be a sign, in which case you, if you can identify it, you should hand it in. Janice, “Orthodox women never wear trousers.” If you’ve ever been skiing in St. Moritz or any of the other popular ski resorts in Europe, I haven’t been skiing in the United States of America, you’ll know that women do wear leggings, stockings, they put a skirt over the top of it, but they still wear them when it’s suits them. So in general that’s true. Orthodox women don’t wear trousers. But a lot of modern Orthodox people do wear jeans and the usual explanation is they are tailored differently for women than they are for men. Dunno how true it is, but nevertheless.

Q: Barry, “If you find a lost dog but you live in a facility that prohibits pets, is it acceptable to bring the dog to a shelter for adoption? Or do you have to put up posters in the neighbourhood saying what you found and where you brought the dog?”

A: Very good question, Barry. I would say you do both. If there is a shelter nearby, take it to the shelter. Hopefully you would do that. The trouble of course is very often, we know shelters often put the dogs down. I would also put up a sign. I think that would be the right thing to do. Now, what happens if you can’t do either of those, then you have a moral problem. It’s interesting that the Torah really specifically mentioned domesticated animals and there are people who have argued that a dog doesn’t count as a domesticated animal. I don’t agree with that. I don’t think that’s true. But I think then you would have to make a moral decision and a humane decision.

Rita “Humane doesn’t apply to animals, but rather human practise of justifying animal slaughter. Visit a slaughterhouse, see how meat ends up in the grocery.” Well yes, Rita, and I think I’ve dealt with that as I dealt with before and I quite agree. Rita, thank you.

Q: Israel. “How can sending a mother bird away, take the eggs not be seen as cruel? Doesn’t the act itself demonstrate lack of feeling for the relationship between mother bird and her offspring? It seems to me that when the mother bird returns and sees the eggs missing, she will have a sense of loss. If there was an interest in being cruel to animals, the law should not take the eggs at all. Except in a situation where the mother bird lays the eggs and never sits on the eggs.”

A: There are two answers to that. One of them is if you look at nature, more than half, sometimes even more eggs are stolen from the mother bird’s nest by predators, whether they are other birds or whether they are squirrels or whether they are weasels or whatever it is. So the fact is that birds are usually used to the fact that a large number of their offspring are going to disappear. The question is sending a mother bird away is in a sense a away of allowing her, which is what happens to come back to the nest and maybe lay some more eggs, or maybe there will still be other eggs there. And very often, if you like nature videos as much as I do, you will see that this is the case that very often a mother bird loses both eggs and babies and yet still will come back. So the question then is, is this so that we are sensitive to the mother and her loss and how much should we be sensitive to it? Or is it simply us recognising that mothers animals do feel pain and loss and therefore we should recognise the loss of the pain and apply it to human situations?

Susan, “Two plants could cross pollinate, the hybrid plant could have a lower yield.” Yes, that’s one of the possibilities. And we’re going to come to the question of can you cross pollinate plants and animals “Or higher!” Yes. Thank you Marsha.

Q: “Do you think that the prohibition against wearing clothing of other gender would be about not fooling others about who you are? Think of Shakespeare in comedies where women dressed as men deliberately pretending to be men. Of course that would work better if it was placed with proper height weights and measures.”

A: Yes, but the things don’t always go together in the Torah. They’re often randomly put within a context of a chapter and a subject matter. But that’s a good point and I think that there was a time when this was used nefariously and it’s against the nefarious use rather than the other use. Shelly, “Why don’t women have to wear fringes when they wore the same four cornered roses men did in biblical times?” That’s a very good question. I believe it’s true that they did not wear exactly the same form. The four cornered garments was more of a that working men wore, whereas women tend to be much more covered with long flowing dresses.

Q: Surely Marsha, “So vegan is better than vegetarian?”

A: Well, yes, I would say so. But then even vegan can be a problem if you are going to claim that plants have feelings and we shouldn’t have. So where do you draw the line? As they say in Hebrew, there’s no end to it. So I do think humans are in a separate category, but that doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t be sensitive to other categories too.

“Kindness to animals, yet the idea of stoning someone to death whenever seems contradictory. Kindness is kindness.” Yes, of course you are right, Marsha, absolutely. But on the other hand, remember, you also have to have deterrence for society to function, given human nature and given the criminality in human nature, which over it is much more cruel than a lot of animal cruelty. But because you need deterrents, this is what these punishments are intended as, a deterrent, like a nuclear deterrent.

Rose, “My mother came from Rhodes Island and the society community there has a party for the first night of newlyweds walking in the sheet in the street.” Really? I didn’t know that. That is so interesting. Wow. I, I’m amazed, but thank you for it. Karla, thank you for explanation. Thank you, Karla. It’s always good to hear from you and thanks for, I hope everything’s going all right in Holland for you. ‘cause I know it’s not easy. “Mixed breeds of dogs. Your thoughts?” Yes, there is a law coming up about mixing animals and the difference between you not doing it or whether you can benefit from doing it. But we’re going to come to that. Thank you, Clara. Thank you Sarah. Thank you everybody. And please God, I will see you next week.