Animal Rights

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, July 18, 2008

The Sunday New York Times this past week had an eye catching article in the Week in Review section, called “When Human Rights Extend to Non-Humans .” It reported on the recent vote of a committee of the Spanish Parliament to grant great apes protection from torture and other limited rights. The committee’s recommendation, which would preclude medical experimentation on great apes, has not yet come to the floor but it is expected to pass.

The article raised the interesting question of whether the extension of human rights over the last two centuries is destined to expand further. In this country rights were extended first from white male landowners to all white men, then after emancipation to all men, then to women and men, and more recently and still not universally to those who are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender. Will rights eventually also be extended to other species with whom we share much both in terms of DNA and in terms of qualities we associate with being human, like intelligence, communication and social structure?

The effort to extend rights to non-human species is part of the argument of Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, who you may remember from another sermon on tzedakah and our moral obligation to do more, a lot more than most of us commonly do. In this case Singer argues that since the great apes share over 95% of our DNA we should consider them kindred to humans.

The Jewish community is pretty divided on the animal rights issue.

On the one hand, PETA has made a number of mis-steps in the eyes of many Jews. Their use of pictures of Holocaust victims in anti-animal slaughter campaigns has been offensive to many in the Jewish community. Their plea to Yassir Arafat, during the second Intifada, that he reign in the suicide bombers because of the killing of an innocent donkey was without any reference to the suffering of the humans who were the target of these terrorist attacks. But leaving Peta aside, where does Judaism come down on the issue of animal rights?

Judaism speaks less of rights than of obligations, and so in this area too, speaks at length about the obligations of humans towards animals. These obligations come under the general heading of tzaar baalei chayim, preventing the suffering of living creatures. They include Biblical laws about allowing animals to rest on Shabbat, and about our obligation to relieve animal suffering even if the animal belongs to an enemy. The Bible uses language parallel to that used in reference to a human worker, in discussing the right of an animal to eat from the produce they are helping to harvest.

Talmudic law and later Responsa also deal with our obligations concerning animals. The Sabbath may be violated in certain cases if an animal is in pain or at risk of death. Responsa have ruled pretty consistently on not allowing even small amounts of additional suffering for animals being slaughtered for the convenience of the slaughterer. However, these and other decisions are made less on the grounds of commonalities between humans and animals, and more on the grounds of human responsibility to living beings who cannot protect themselves.

Jewish tradition often saw a link between the way a person treated animals and the way a person would treat other human beings, though there have exceptions to this, most notably Hitler, who was a great lover of animals. In general in Jewish culture, those who care for animals, like Moses and David, are heroes and those who hunt, like Nimrod and Esau are considered the villains. After Noah’s flood, humans were given the right to eat animal flesh, and to use skins for clothing. Parchment, from animal skin, is used for Torah and mezuzah scrolls and tefillin are made from leather. A hint that the use of animal products is less than ideal, is found in the banning of leather shoes on Yom Kippur, on the lack of a blessing for new shoes unlike other pieces of new clothing, and in the hope that in messianic times we will all be vegetarians. Still even the most animal rights oriented of the poskim, the deciders of Jewish law, will allow medical experiments on animals where there is a clear human benefit connected with the research.

The modern state of Israel has picked up traditional Jewish concern for animals and has an active animal rights movement. Noah, the Israeli Federation of Animal Protection Organizations, has been active in passing laws against the force feeding of geese, the court accepting their argument that foie gras is not a necessary food item. The Israeli animal rights group Tnoo Lechayot Lichyot, Let Animals Live was in the news this past April with an appeal to stop the Passover sacrifice organized by a group of Ultra-Orthodox Jews who viewed this as a training exercise for the rebuilt Temple. The government had banned the sacrifice taking place on the Temple mount because of its inflammatory nature on a Muslim holy site.

Jews in America have recently dealt with issues relating to kosher meat. Shackling and hoisting are two objectionable practices that remain common in Kosher slaughter houses. They were originally introduced in the United States when required by the US Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. At that time these practices were resisted by the kosher community as being inimical to kashrut and were only introduced under duress. However when shackling and hoisting became illegal in the United States in 1958, kosher slaughter houses were exempted because they argued that they could not keep the laws of kashrut without these practices. By 1963 alternative means were found but they have only been adopted by a few kosher firms. Frustrated with the resistance of the kosher slaughterers to changing this practice, in 2000 the Law Committee of the Conservative Movement in a rare unanimous decision took a stand against hoisting and shackling. This has gotten some coverage recently in the issues related to Agriproccessors a large kosher meat company long criticized for its worker safety issues, animal cruelty and health practices. A recent raid by ICE found other violations as well. Lead by some outspoken Orthodox rabbis, a boycott movement against Agriprocessors, sometimes sold under the name Aaron’s or Rubashkin, was in place this spring. But boycotting Aaron’s isn’t really dealing with the full ethical issue.

The New York Times’ article noted that Human Rights activists are not overjoyed at the step the Spanish Parliament is taking. They argue that there remain so many instances where human rights are not respected, that breaking down the distinction between animals and humans isn’t really the issue. I personally resonate with this argument. We still have so much to do for humans that it seems a bittul Torah, a misuse of our time and energy, to be overly involved in animal issues, yet I am not sure that morally, one can oppose extending rights to one group if it is deserving, even if the rights of others are not yet safeguarded. Would we be comfortable with the argument that we shouldn’t work for the rights of the GLBT community, since the rights of women or people of color are still not totally secured?

Humans are treated as a special case in Judaism. While the creation of human beings is on the same day as animals, it is a separate creation. Humans are the only one’s created betzelem elohim, in the image of God, which is often interpreted to mean, as moral actors, though the story of the Garden of Eden suggests that this was something the Adam had to grow into. Language and the ability to name are often treated in Judaism as a distinctly human gifts, though today we are gathering more and more evidence of sophisticated communication in other species such as whales. Still, I wonder if religion’s stress on the inter-relatedness and uniqueness of the human species, isn’t an attempt to prevent intra-species violence, rather than a denigrating of our responsibilities to other species. Certainly, even without changing our basic conception of humanity’s uniqueness, there is much we could do out of compassion for animals, which would not entail significant human sacrifice.

Zealots like Peta and to some extent Peter Singer, sometimes do more harm to their cause than those who approach the issue in a more moderate way. Still I feel challenged to think about whether my own personal approach is really consistent with my values.

When I was first ordained the synagogue I worked for had a long tradition of a very successful Sisterhood Fur Fashion Show Fund Raiser. In 1982 a new younger sisterhood president shook the boat by arguing that fake fur would be more consistent with Jewish values. Its true that Judaism allows the use of fur, she conceded, but that comes from a time when fur was truly needed to keep people warm in the cold. Her argument was like that of the Israeli court that decided, we don’t need foie gras. Perhaps we can think more about what we do truly need, and when we can live good lives, perhaps even better lives, more conscious of the responsibility we have to all species.