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Abraham's Animals

11/04/2022 02:41:30 PM

Nov4

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Lech Lecha, in which God calls out to our ancestors Avram and Sarai and tells them to leave the land they have known and travel a great distance to the Promised Land. They bring with them some family and all their wealth, including cattle. Shortly after their arrival in the Promised Land there, there is a famine and Avram and Sarai go to Egypt (sound familiar?). They not only satiate their hunger and seem to wait out the famine there, they return to the Promised Land with even more wealth and cattle! 

I'm leaving out a lot of details here, but the point I want to get to this Shabbat is the importance of animals in the early stages of Avram's journey to become Avraham, the father of a great nation. Fur babies can provide great comfort as one leaves one's home and journeys far from most of their families, and they also can provide great practice for caretaking. I know herding cattle is nothing like raising a child in actuality, but the essence of caring for another living being, being responsible for its food and shelter, bringing it safely from place to place each time you move, is not so far off. And as much as people say caring for their dogs prepared them to have a baby, even more so the Midrash tells us again and again how shepherding and cattle-rearing prepares the men of the Bible to be leaders of the people of Israel: Jacob, Moses, and King David all have significant moments with animals that foretell their success as leaders of our nation. Abraham’s relationship with his animals is less pronounced in the narrative as some of these other men, but still we see how his flock grows as he travels from Ur, to Haran, to Canaan, to Egypt, and back to Canaan. 

One famous midrash compares Abraham to a man walking on his way and noticing a "birah doleket," translated either as a palace or tower aglow, or as one on fire. In surprise, he asks whether no one is in charge of this birah. The owner pokes his head out of the window, and says “I am in charge of this birah.” Similarly, says the midrash, Abraham looks around the world and wonders, “is no one in charge?” God peeks out at him and says, “I am.” One reading of this text sees the flame as a positive glow — Abraham intuits that there must be a greater power behind the wonders of the world. But another reading has Abraham noticing the world is actually on fire, and not in a good way. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel takes up this reading in a meditation on evil in his masterwork, God in Search of Man. He asks, “The world is in flames, consumed by evil. Is it possible that there is no one who cares?” The Book of Proverbs tells us, “A righteous man knows the needs of his beast, But the compassion of the wicked is cruelty.” Surely there is much in the world to be fixed, so many aspects of life that need human care, but one marker of a person engaged in tikkun olam, a person fit to lead, is their treatment of animals. Do they understand how to truly care for animals? Do animals seem to trust them? Do they seem comfortable with creatures that do not speak their language? If not, they are no Abraham, Jacob, Moses, or David. If so, well, there are still other considerations to take into account. After all, all the aforementioned men did some pretty terrible things as well, and were especially bad fathers to their human children. 

This Shabbat, may our relationships with animals be a source of comfort to us when we are in new places, and may we always care diligently for them. May our love for our pets, the beasts of the fields, and the birds of the sky, guide us toward being the people God wants us to be, the people our dogs think we are, and the descendants of Avram worthy of being compared to stars. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

 

Fri, March 29 2024 19 Adar II 5784