Torah Ecology

My purpose in writing The Animals’ Story in the Torah is to discover a story the text tells that varies from the single one so many of us learned or heard about “what the Bible says.” The story I want to focus on in my writing is the one that reminds us that as humans, we are part of all creation, most closely related to nonhuman animals. We share our habitat and the spiritual round table with other beings, as Yuval Noah Harari says of hunter-gatherers in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanity. It is a state of being we too often forget today.

Acculturation

I grew up in a world in which a majority of people in the United States didn’t live on farms. Meat eating was taken for granted. In the consciousness of most of us, the meat on our plates wasn’t connected to the living, breathing fellow creature whose flesh it was. There was a growing disconnect between the food we eat, any kind of food, and its source. Increasingly a prayer before or after eating was perfunctory at best or non-existent.

This disconnect in the minds of many of us between what we eat and its source is more than a function of living in a secular world. It is also more than our alienation from the natural world, a place where, as Yuval Noah Harari suggests, humans and non-human animals once “communicated with one another directly and negotiated the rules governing <our> shared habitat.”

There is yet another backdrop to our casual approach to eating a fellow creature: centuries of acculturation to a worldview in which human beings are the crown of creation, living beings superior to all others. Many of us learned and insist that the Bible asserts that human superiority. Adam is created on the sixth day, just before God rests on the Sabbath. Alone among living beings, humans are created “in the image” of God and set to rule over the rest of creation.

If we only know this “single story,” we miss other possibilities. We miss that nonhuman animals are also created on the sixth day, just like their human fellow travelers in creation. And we miss numerous textual clues that serve as reminders to human beings that they, too, are animals, their position in creation is conditional, and non-human animals like their human counterparts, are moral beings.

Yes, there is a statement that human beings are set to “rule over” nonhuman animals. But there is also the story of the repeated failure of human beings in general, and the Israelites in particular, to become the rulers God appointed them to be. Swarming about the earth, they are as ungovernable as all other beings. As God, finally, cannot rule human beings who “swarm” about the earth, human beings cannot rule nonhuman animals, the wild beasts and those that swarm.

Human rule is conditional. Almost as soon as humans are appointed to rule, they are demoted, eating food assigned to nonhuman land animals and wearing skins, emblems of their animal nature. Parallel to the human demotion, the snake, once so similar to the humans in its hairlessness and strategic powers, is also demoted. In this way, the Torah tells us that both human and nonhuman animals are intelligent, moral beings, who are therefore morally responsible and accountable for their actions.

As for morality, God extends moral responsibility to nonhuman animals, even to the earth itself in the Garden of Eden story and the story of Cain and Abel. In this way, the Torah casts doubt on this idea that humans are unique because they are moral beings.

So perhaps the argument for human superiority in creation isn’t that humans are “in the image” of God and set to rule over creation — and isn’t that they are unique in creation as moral beings. And even if we were to agree that the Torah tells us humans are unique in their capacity for moral reasoning, uniqueness cannot be a claim to superiority since each species has its unique characteristics. God appreciates this when God assigns food to the different species according to their needs.

If each species is unique in creation, then instead of superiority in creation, we need rather to consider the responsibility associated with unique characteristics. Each species is responsible to use its unique characteristics to extend creation . . . פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ – p’ru u’r’vu u’milu et ha-Aretz, to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (or the seas),” as God commands all living creatures, in the waters, in the heavens and on land.

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens comments that the unique capability of humans is to create fictions and persuade others to believe them. This capability allows flexible cooperation in large groups. Perhaps, then, our unique human responsibility is to tell our stories, those stories that inspire the kind of cooperation that will extend and enrich creation. What better example have we than the Torah story that in one way or another has persuaded so many to create and nurture life.

The Torah’s story of a God who ordains that human beings, “in the image” of God, should “rule” creation, isn’t the only story — nor is the story of human moral consciousness. In exploring another story, an alternate story in the Torah, we discover our profound kinship with our fellow beings on the planet. While we as well as other species have unique characteristics, we share the fundamentals of our being. We are all body and soul, animated by the breath of God, and we are all engaged in the ongoing work of creation, each לְמִינֵ֔הוּ – l’minehu, “according to its kind.”

What science says . . .

Like the Torah, modern science casts doubt on the idea that human uniqueness centers on moral consciousness. In a series of experiments with primates and other mammals, Frans de Waal demonstrates that non-human animals share with us the foundation of morality like a sense of fairness, reciprocity, empathy, cooperation and caring about the well-being of others. Other researchers demonstrate that non-human animals may, like humans, be “scolded” or ostracized by their community if their actions are outside norms of communal behavior. What do these behaviors indicate other than systems of morality that sometimes extend beyond the boundaries of community?

We could say that these observable representations of moral judgment are motivated by an evolutionary drive, namely survival of a species, but we could as well say that of humans. There is no objective proof that human morality has a different source or motivation than nonhuman morality.

And so science, like the Torah, tells us that all living beings are body and soul, animated by the breath that makes us one. While our roles in creation may differ based on our unique characteristics, “each according to its kind,” we share not only our aggressive behaviors and a desire to live. In our time, science finally echoes ancient wisdom as it points to nonhuman animal intelligence, moral consciousness, empathy, a sense of fairness, and compassion.

There is a story of hierarchy in the Torah. But there is another story, and that is the story of what Charles Eisenstein, in The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, calls “Interbeing.” The presence of both these stories in the Torah and in life presents us with moral dilemmas, with the necessity and complexities of making choices. Insisting on a single story, a hierarchical story, relieves us of some of that complexity and responsibility — but it also deprives us of a profound and beautiful experience of connection and meaning.

I grew up with both the story of hierarchy and the story of Interbeing. Somewhere along the way, the story of Interbeing receded for me as it does in the modern world for most of us, I suspect. My priorities were defined for me, and choices were easier. If there is no question that human life is more valuable than other life, it is easier to first rationalize meat-eating, then altogether disconnect the food on one’s plate from its source as part of a living, breathing, fellow being. Modern “animal agriculture” and our food delivery system makes that even easier. No moral dilemmas when one sits to eat a meal.

Exploring veganism during these past few years reawakened me to the story of Interbeing and the moral complexities that accompany it in the “real” world, not just in the human – nonhuman animal relationship but in every area of life. At the same time, my journey also revives my sense of connection and meaningfulness.

February 1, 2017, I began a Torah study project. These words described my intention: “Today I begin a new project of looking at the weekly Torah portions, searching for insights on food, ‘animal rights,’ agriculture and ecology.”

The name of the section I created to hold my weekly notes suggested my starting assumption based on prior studies: “Ecology is the “study of interactions among organisms and their environment.” It is a study, therefore, of relationships, and one thing I’m pretty sure I’ll find again and again as I study these pages is that Torah is a study of relationships. There are three domains in Torah:  Transcendence/G-d, human, the rest of creation . . . I want to look at relationships between and within those categories, Torah ecology.”

Over time my focus narrowed to the relationship between human beings and other animals.  One of my key questions as I entered this stage of my study was, what rationale does the Torah provide for the superiority of human life over animal life? Because my assumption was that only a hierarchical notion of value could provide a moral basis for killing animals in sacrificial rites or for food. As so often happens in a course of study, I discovered I was asking the wrong question. What I should have asked (since I have some familiarity with Hebrew scripture) was, what compelling experience drove the constant assertion of the supreme value of human life to the extent that it became an overarching theme of scripture?

As a way of organizing my study, I used the framework of Torah portions, which initially I moved through on pace with the Jewish calendar of weekly readings. Somewhere in Numbers it became more difficult to keep up. I missed Deuteronomy during the first year — and again during the second year when I got stuck in Leviticus — but am returning to it now. Too bad! It might have brought me more quickly to the heart of the matter, but it makes no difference. It is the journey it has become, and that has been extraordinary in many ways.

KEY UNDERSTANDINGS

Other than discovering I was asking the wrong question, here are key points in my journey:

• According to the Torah, animals, like humans, are both body (basar/carcass) and “soul” (nefesh/breath of G-d/being).
• Only one statement is made describing humans that doesn’t describe other animals: in the image of G-d (b’tzelem/image). Brown, Driver, Briggs offers the following definition/s of b’tzelem, which as nearly as I can understand it suggests a shadowy version of the body of G-d (see The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel by Benjamin D. Sommer):
  • images (of tumours, mice, heathen gods)
  • image, likeness (of resemblance)
  • mere, empty, image, semblance (fig.)
• The Torah tells a story in which animals “begin” on an equal plane with humans — all are part of a whole system in which each has unique capabilities and all live in harmony. A serpent, like humans and unlike its fellow beasts of the field, is hairless, talks and has the ability to plan strategically. All animals, including humans, are vegan, and there is no death. The ideal vision that begins the Torah story is one in which all of creation is interdependent and creation itself is interdependent with G-d/transcendence.
• The ongoing Torah story following the third chapter of Genesis is of a real world in which humans are permitted to “use” animals even though they are required not to waste and to exercise compassion for these other beings who, like them, have souls in addition to physical bodies. Meat-eating is ringed with prohibitions, and the Israelites are chastised, sometimes sarcastically, for gluttony.
• In the vision of the Garden and in the ongoing Torah story, animals are morally accountable (evident in the Noah story).
• Periodically the underlying vision of creation surfaces as in the Ten Words/Commandments (where domestic animals also rest) or the story of Balak and Balaam (and the talking donkey, who sees what his human counterpart, a “seer,” cannot and who experiences moral indignation).

Still, I was left with nagging questions, how could a text that puts forward such an extraordinary vision of creation in its first words also put forward such a barrage of clinical detail about dissecting living beings at its center? For not only is Leviticus placed (structurally) at the center of the Torah narrative, but the Yom Kippur ritual of the two goats is at the center of the Leviticus narrative. Of course, there is the supreme value of human life, but how did a text that has a different worldview at its root (that all beings sit at the spiritual round table) arrive at that position? In addition, what was the source of the pervasive sense of sin that permeates the text of the Torah alongside the idea of the goodness and sanctity of human life?

I thought perhaps I could find some understanding if I became emotionally embedded in the text of Leviticus. Maybe I would come to understand how it could possibly be religiously or spiritually meaningful to experience the sights and aromas of terrified animals taken to and killed on an altar and dissected and burned. I read slowly and imagined deeply. I simply couldn’t get there, and on my second reading in this particular cycle of studying Torah, I had to stop. I was overwhelmed with the horror that stood behind the clinical details I read. It wasn’t a spiritual or religious experience for me, and I couldn’t grasp how it was for anyone.

DEUTERONOMY: RE’EH

After an extended hiatus, I returned to Deuteronomy to try to complete what I began, a reading of the Torah from a particular perspective. Something was missing for me in terms of understanding. I could feel it but couldn’t place my finger on it. It centered around the emotional and spiritual meaning of sacrifice, something deeper than an intellectual rationale. Why the clinical focus on sacrifice at the structural center of a text that began with the aspirational vision of Gen 1-3?

By the time of my re-entry, we were reading Re’eh (Deut. 11:26-16:17). As I read the rationale “for the harsh destruction the Israelites bring to the inhabitants of the Land and their altars: the Canaanites who preceded them performed “for their gods every abhorrent act that the Lord detests; they even offer up their sons and daughters in fire to their gods,” I realized something: “With Moloch worship (child sacrifice) in the background, animal sacrifice was a step forward in consciousness.” Reading about Moloch worship deepened my sense of shock with regard to this practice but also provided me a clue to unravel what puzzled me, what drove the intense biblical focus on the superiority of human life despite so much material that suggests another worldview.

A consistent theme in Deuteronomy is that it centralizes sacrifice, removing it from the daily life of ordinary Israelites. At first, I thought the primary effect of this might be to routinize killing animals. Then I realized another possible intention of the text: “If the Torah represents a step forward in consciousness in its vehement assertion of the superiority of human life in a context where child sacrifice is the norm . . . “ Deuteronomy might represent “another step forward in consciousness as it attempts to wean the Israelites from a dependence on a sacrificial cult and the idea that human beings can transfer their sins to another living being who pays in their place.”

Anyone who reads the Torah understands that meat-eating was allowed as a concession to the violence in human nature. The idea was to channel that violent impulse and limit killing. The important understanding I missed until I grasped the reality of Moloch worship and child sacrifice is that the concession wasn’t based on an intellectual abstraction but on a real practice that horrified segments of the population that saw it. I can’t help but think of the projects of many animal rights activists, whose work I could not do, who seek to expose horrifying practices with animals on factory farms to the general public, making the crime visible and real.

SHOFETIM

I had a professor once who told me the way to write a paper is to write it, then take the conclusion and move it to the beginning, then be certain that every paragraph that follows builds an irrefutable case leading to a repeat of the conclusion at the end. With that in mind, I’ll share here that the next step in my understanding of the biblical project came with Shofetim when I began to understand the text as both polemic and compromise “constitution.”

Shofetim returns to the Moloch theme in two passages, one direct and one indirect through use of the word “abhorrent” (to’evah), a word that occurs more frequently in Deuteronomy than in any other book of the Torah much less the Bible. We might say that Deuteronomy, in comparison to the rest of the Torah text, is obsessed with ridding the nation of “abhorrent” practices, primary among them child sacrifice:

Deut. 16:21-17:7

This year I read one of those books that you keep returning to, a book that gave coherence to my own half-formed thoughts and startled me into a journey of self-recognition and definition. The book was Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. In a post at the time, I quoted him:

“In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari talks about the evolution of religions from animism to polytheism to monotheism. Of animism, he says, ‘When animism was the dominant belief system, human norms and values had to take into consideration the outlook and interests of a multitude of other beings, such as animals, plants, fairies and ghosts…Hunter-gatherers picked and pursued wild plants and animals, which could be seen as equal in status to Homo sapiens. The fact that man hunted sheep did not make sheep inferior to man, just as the fact that tigers hunted man did not make man inferior to tigers. Beings communicated with one another directly and negotiated the rules governing their shared habitat.’

”Conversely, ‘farmers owned and manipulated plants and animals, and could hardly degrade themselves by negotiating with their possessions. Hence the first religious effect of the Agricultural Revolution was to turn plants and animals from equal members of a spiritual round table into property.’”

“Plants and animals…equal members of a spiritual round table…” Those words and the spiritual space they created for me helped me sharpen my focus in the Torah study project I had undertaken and gain a slightly different perspective. The idea that life other than human  has an equal place at the spiritual round table resonates deeply with me. I like to imagine that the world in the first three chapters of Genesis was both memory and vision even though in general, the Torah asserts the sanctity and superiority of human life. The world of the Garden is a world in which humans negotiated with other animals  the rules governing their shared habitat.

That world receded for me as I progressed through the Torah story this time, although as I worked my way through it, I was alert to the animals’ story and surprised at how it paralleled the human story. Finally, I got stuck in the pages of Leviticus, a book I have always appreciated for its literary artistry and applied theology, a theology expressed through the body. This time, though, I was put off by the clinical descriptions of dissecting animal bodies, animals killed in substitution for human lives that in the Torah world should have been forfeit.

I appreciate that Leviticus represents a deep consciousness of the preciousness of all life and of human moral responsibility in relation to it, something we often lack in today’s world where life and death and brutality happen far away from us in hidden spaces. Yet as hard as I tried to understand what animal sacrifice meant to those who practiced it, what deep wellsprings of meaning it tapped, how it felt to those who experienced it, I couldn’t get there.  And I had to take a break for a while.

But now comes Balak, a portion in which G-d uncovers human eyes, and animals and humans once again, if only for a moment, have equal seats at the spiritual round table as in the Garden. That idea of uncovering human eyes while the eyes of a she-ass need no uncovering is key to understanding the significance of the famous talking donkey story in Balak.

Jacob Milgrom, in the JPS Torah Commentary to Numbers, points out that the story of Balaam’s ass is an interpolated folk tale (Num. 22:22-35). This explains why it presents inconsistencies and contradictions in relation to the story into which it is inserted, including a very different image of Balaam, a negative image which gains dominance in both Jewish and Christian traditions. The surrounding story, and older tradition, presents Balaam as a faithful servant of G-d, which led to some favorable rabbinic comparisons with both Moses and Abraham.

But what interests me is the way in which this story of the talking she-ass comments on the relationship between human beings, other animals and the environment, and G-d. Once again, as in the Garden, other animals are as capable of vision and understanding as human beings, perhaps even more so. Yes, as Rabbi Sacks points out, there is humor, even sarcasm, in the story. Even Balaam’s she-ass can see and understand what he, a so-called “seer” cannot. But I like to understand the story as something more.

Here is the story of Balaam and the she-ass (from Sefaria.org):

…when the ass caught sight of the angel of the LORD…

The she-ass in the natural course of things catches sight of the obvious, a dangerous angel of the Lord in the path wielding a fiery sword, and does the obvious, refuses to go further, saving her own life and the life of her master. G-d doesn’t “uncover” her eyes; she doesn’t claim special status as a “seer;” and she receives no praise as a heroine. She just “sees” the angel of the Lord.

This fact enhances the irony of Balaam’s self-promoting words in his third blessing, the first that he composes himself since G-d placed words in his mouth in the other two:

Last year when I worked with this portion, I was struck with the ongoing “love story” these portions in Exodus tell, a love story between G-d and the Israelites. In Ki Tissa, I felt the deep wound in the relationship that resulted from the Israelite betrayal in the Golden Calf episode. In this week’s portion, I felt the deep love and devotion, sincere contrition and poignant vulnerability of the people as they brought their gifts for building the Tabernacle in such abundance that the leadership had to call a halt to their giving.

In this portion, I noticed Aaron’s fall from grace. This year, I see that the fall from grace was accompanied by a relationship — for a brief time — without sacrifice. In Ex. 33:7-11, Moses takes the Tent of Meeting outside Tabernacle, even outside the camp, and meets with G-d in that space without a sacrifice as the people watch from a distance. In Ex. 34:28, Moses “was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights,” and parallel to offering no sacrifice, no “food” for G-d, “ate no bread and drank no water.” This brief time without sacrifice and without killing for food reflects the vision of Gen. 1-3, a world without bloodshed, without sacrifice and without killing for food — a world of continuity between the divine realm, the human realm and the rest of creation.

In terms of allusion to that vision of Gen. 1-3, there is one more point of interest in this week’s portion, and that is, the Sabbath requirement in Ex. 35:2-3: “On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the sabbath day.”

The words repeat salient points from Ex. 31:12-17: “You shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy for you. He who profanes it shall be put to death: whoever does work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his kin. Six days may work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death. The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time: it shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and was refreshed.”

The version “later” in the narrative adds the fire prohibition; the “earlier” version adds the specific creation reference. Both decree death for those who work on the Sabbath. Neither references the vision of Gen. 1-3, a world without bloodshed, sacrifice or killing for food. For that, we have to return to a still “earlier” segment of the narrative, Ex. 20:8-11: “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do any work — you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.”

This last set of verses not only alludes to the vision of Gen. 1-3 but certifies the significance of it as it recreates a space in time when there is a seamless continuity between the worlds of divine and human and the rest of creation, when all live harmoniously in freedom. Not coincidentally, I believe, these verses don’t mention death for a failure to observe the work prohibition.

THE ANIMALS’ STORY

These animal verses in Vayakhel-Pekudei continue to develop the overall narrative theme that moves toward the priestly preoccupation of Vayikra/Leviticus. Instead of recreating the vision of Gen. 1-3 as Ex. 20 does, Ex. 31 and 33 allude to and reinterpret that vision through an exchange expressed in the sacrifice, a blood exchange that connects human sin, death, sacrifice and human sustenance, including killing other creatures for food, in an intricate weave:

Ex. 35:6 – [gifts for the Lord] …blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, and goats’ hair; tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood…

Ex. 35:23 – And everyone who had in his possession blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned ram skins, and dolphin skins, brought them…

Ex. 35:26 – And all the women who excelled in that skill spun the goats’ hair.

Ex. 36:14 – They made cloths of goats’ hair for a tent over the Tabernacle; they made the cloths eleven in number.

Ex. 36:19 – And they made a covering of tanned ram skins for the Tent, and a covering of dolphin skins above.

Ex. 38:3 – He made all the utensils of the altar — the pails, The scrapers, the basins, the flesh hooks, and the fire pans…

Ex. 39:34 – [Then they brought the Tabernacle to Moses…] …the covering of tanned ram skins, the covering of dolphin skins, and the curtain for the screen…

Ex. 40:29 – At the entrance of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting he placed the altar of burnt offering. On it he offered up the burnt offering and the meal offering — as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Viewing the same story through different lenses deepens my appreciation for the text. I once looked through the lens of meals in Genesis. Now I’m looking through the lens of animals in the Torah. It’s a different project from “seeing what the Torah says about animals.” It’s more about establishing an idea of the overall story, its themes and the strategies it uses to express them, then viewing the same overall story from a different angle. In this project, I have seen how the animals’ story is a subtext of the Israelites’ story, reflecting and echoing the Israelite experience while at the same time traveling its own path, as the animals lose status in relation to the vision of Gen. 1-3.

By now as we cross into the priestly narrative, it occurs to me that the story is fully anthropocentric: all of creation is here to serve human needs even as the Israelites, indeed all humans, are required to demonstrate compassion to animals. Still, animals are not only food but substitute for Israelite lives in the sacrifice. They are the centerpoint between divine and human worlds, feeding both at the sacrificial table, transforming the Israelites as they themselves are transformed into smoke.

The love story in which the Israelites bring all their finest items so generously and lavishly to donate for G-d’s home among them, the desert Tabernacle, looks different viewed through the lens of the animals whose lives and blood were the anonymous medium of exchange in that holy space.

I wonder if the Israelites in the meta-narrative experienced and felt the enormity of this sacrifice on their behalf? The seven Noahide laws require of all people that they not subject animals to unnecessary suffering, and there are other passages in the Torah that demonstrate and require compassion for animals, recognizing that they have a soul. Finally, though, the animals’ story is secondary to the Israelites’ story, and their sacrifice, their skins and hair and blood and bodies, though so much greater than the human sacrifice, doesn’t generate specific recognition like the Israelite’s gifts of jewels and gold. Their silent suffering is unremarked.

The subtext, though, repeats the allusion to the creation story as Moses reflects the original vision, a world without bloodshed, as he meets with G-d on the mountain and in the Tent of Meeting. The vision of the sabbath that recreates Gen. 1-3 also reflects that vision, a space and time in which all creatures are free and there is no sacrifice and no killing for food (Ex. 20:8-11). I like to think this glance back to a primordial status for all creatures, indeed all of creation, is also a look forward, a hope for future fulfillment.