Is this why your pet hates your friend?

Many cat- and dog-owners have wondered why it is that their domestic pet sometimes takes an apparently irrational dislike to of your friends or family members. You find yourself wondering what was the problem: was the human in question using the wrong deodorant, or did that person give your animal a surreptitious swipe when you weren’t looking? Or is there more to it?

One person who clearly has no doubt as to the cause is Rabbi Yisrael of Kozhnitz.

At Avot 4:5 R’ Yochanan ben Beroka teaches this:

כָּל הַמְחַלֵּל שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם בַּסֵּֽתֶר, נִפְרָעִין מִמֶּֽנּוּ בְּגָלוּי, אֶחָד שׁוֹגֵג וְאֶחָד מֵזִיד בְּחִלּוּל הַשֵּׁם

Everyone who desecrates the Divine Name in secret is punished in public. When it comes to desecration of the Name, it’s the same thing whether one does it negligently or deliberately.

Why are wrongful acts a desecration of God’ name if they are done in secret? No-one else knows about them. Or do they? In his Ahavat Yisrael, R’ Yisrael suggests that a Heavenly Voice proclaims that a desecration of God’s name has been committed.

There’s an obvious problem with this suggestion. If this Heavenly proclamation does take place, how come we never hear it. R’ Yisrael has an answer. The Heavenly Voice is actually silent, which is why we don’t hear it. It’s a heart-to-heart communication which we intuit through our feelings. Since it’s not a verbalized statement it can be both perceived and comprehended not just by us humans—if we are sufficiently receptive and sensitive—but by animals too.

Is this why your dog becomes aggressive or frightened when certain visitors turn up, and why your cat warmly welcomes some friends but keeps a frosty distance from others? There is no hard proof to demonstrate that this is so, and anecdotal evidence of instances where this has apparently happened can generally be explained by other means. Though, while stories of sapient animals discerning the good from the bad are the stuff of which much good fiction has been made, Jewish tradition is broad enough to embrace them: thus we learn how the donkeys of R’ Chanina ben Dosa and R’ Pinchas ben Yair refuse to eat food that had not been tithed or which had been stolen by their new owners (Avot deRabbi Natan 8:8; Bereshit Rabbah 60:8).

Perhaps the real message of R’ Yisrael’s understanding has nothing to do with Heavenly Voices at all. The point he seeks to make is that we should be more sensitive to the activities of our fellow humans and not ignore any warning signs and misgivings we may have about their honesty and probity. If this is so, we face the challenge of synthesizing it with Avot 1:6, which demands of us that we should judge others on the basis of their merits and give them the benefit of the doubt.

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook, click here.

Balaam's ass and a boozy bovine

Our regular correspondent Claude Tusk has just asked us the following question:

We learned today in Daf Yomi (Bava Kamma 35a) of Rav Papa's intelligent ox. Unlike the mouth of Balaam's ass in Avot 5:8, this ox did not require a special act of creation. What does that say about the place of speech in the hierarchy of cognition?

By way of background, the mouth of Balaam’s ass is listed in Avot 5:8 as one of 10 (or possibly as many as 13) objects created on Friday evening just before the onset of Shabbat. The reference to Rav Papa’s ox runs like this, according to a slightly edited version of the Soncino translation:

The case considered here is one of an intelligent animal which, owing to an itching in the back, was anxious to burn a barn so that it might roll in the [hot] ashes [and thereby gain relief]. But how could we know [that the animal possessed such an intention]? [By seeing that] after the barn had been burnt, the animal actually rolled in the ashes. But could such a thing ever happen? — Yes, as in the case of the ox which had been in the house of R. Papa and which, having a severe toothache, went into the brewery, where it removed the lid [that covered the beer] and drank beer until it became relieved [of the pain].

So why, then, does the mishnah include the mouth of the ass but exclude the potential of members of the animal kingdom to develop their intellect?

Before I give my own answer, which I propose to do on Sunday, I’d like to hear from readers. What do you think?

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook, click here.