Learning to Be Human, from the Animals

Sermon for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, 2022 / 5783

The Lord endowed Solomon with wisdom and discernment in great measure, with understanding as vast as the sands on the seashore. … He discoursed about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; and he discoursed about beasts, birds, creeping things [insects and reptiles], and fishes.

I Kings 5:9, 13

Behind my mother-in-law Judy’s building there is a field, with only a couple of apple trees arresting the grassy plain, bordering a magical space. From the field and the building, all that is visible are varied forms of dense bushes and some low trees, obscuring what lies behind it. Even if you approach this leafy, twiggy border, you will labor in vain to make out the terrain in back. The wild brambles, sumacs and branched growth interlace to shield the obscure passage from human gaze.

Only a dark, rickety covered wooden bridge provides a portal, offering tenuous access to the hidden scene: a life-giving stream of water, often containing fish, an occasional frog, surrounded by plants clinging to steep moist soil walls. When our children were young, they loved to escape to this secluded paradise looking for creatures, hopping on stones across the water, pioneers escaping the doldrums of living room and tarmac.

Earlier this year, Adele and I ventured out on the bridge, climbing over police tape, stretched there perhaps to protect pedestrians from a brief plunge through a rotten board or prevent them from trespassing in the often empty, massive parking lot adjacent. We looked downward, squinting fruitlessly for minnows; but when we raised our necks, we held our breaths at an awesome, unexpected sight. A great blue heron stood still, dominating the landscape. On lakes, these stilt-walking giants can remain immobile for hours, observing with vast reserves of patience, awaiting their opportunity to strike or their time to find a more advantageous perch. Here in the shady stream, however, the heron altered its behavior. Tilting its gigantic head methodically from side to side, it strode forth slowly, majestically, peering in the stream for prey, dipping at times to test the waters. We stared, quietly, riveted, until the heron moved past the bend and out of sight.

The heron’s noble qualities, its serene dominance, its remarkable patience, its slow, graceful movements, make it appear exemplary, as a creature with something to teach us—even possessing qualities worthy of human emulation. The heron seemed to us as two birds in one, a physical, remarkably proportioned lone long-boned explorer and hunter, and simultaneously an apparition, a spiritual messenger sent from above to inhabit Adele and my dreamscape for a brief but pregnant span.

In his analysis of the essence of religion, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, the French Jewish sociologist Emile Durkheim regarded the human encounter with a wild animal as pivotal to our religious consciousness. Durkheim posited that religion first arose precisely in this passing vision of animals—their otherness, their fantastic, mysterious being, the sense of wonderment they arouse, as well as the connection that we humans make with animals, the desire that people have often felt to identify with them, with the qualities that we attribute to them and that we hope to possess in ourselves. In his study of totemism among Australian aborigines, Durkheim learned of people who identify both personally and as a clan with an animal such as the kangaroo, to the point where they saw themselves as identical with their totem, as a kangaroo themselves as well as a human. If we open our eyes and hearts, animals can exercise a power over us, conveying a profound sense of awe, excitement, affection and fear; they are like us and utterly different at the same time.

As Jews, we don’t often think about animals in this way. Many of us have minimal contact with the animal world, except for pets, trips to the zoo, occasional deer or racoon eating our backyard plants. But of course, we haven’t always been so urban, so cut off from nature. In Jewish tradition, the person who exemplified an intimate relationship with animals was King Solomon. The Bible portrays King Solomon as the wisest person, and his wisdom derives primarily from having studied, lived with, learned from, and spoken to animals. Even moreso in Jewish legend, Solomon is depicted as the original St. Francis or Dr. Doolittle—perhaps a surprising association given Solomon’s many other qualities in the Bible, as a judge, empire builder, founder of the Temple, and husband to 1,000 wives. To me, Solomon embodies the truth that some people manage to have an innate connection to, an uncanny understanding of, nature, possessing a much closer knowledge of animals than the rest of us. Not just veterinarians or forest rangers, there are people who are at home in wild spaces, who can spot a coyote a mile away, or recognize and perform bird whistles. Solomon was the Jewish archetype for such people.

Stories abound about Solomon’s conversations with animals. One haunting tale concerns his encounter with eagles. Solomon came upon a large abandoned building and could not find its door. Three eagles sat upon the building. He asked the first one, who was 700 years old, then the next, age 900; finally the third, 1300, recalled his father mentioning an entrance on the west side. Solomon followed his advice and found a rusted door covered in cobwebs, with an inscription that said the inhabitants died of hunger and donated the place to the eagles. Perhaps the story suggests that human habitation lies on ground that animals originally lived on, and will again take over one day when we are gone.

Naturally, as we shall see, Jews have sought to derive moral lessons from animal behavior. Scientists though are impervious, even skeptical, of any attempt to draw such lessons. The eminent biologist and ant scientist Edward O. Wilson opined, “There is nothing I can even imagine in the lives of ants that we can or should emulate for our own moral betterment.” He cites three characteristics of ant society and behavior that disqualify them from model citizenship:

• They eliminate males, whose sole, brief function is to impregnate the queen
• They eat their own wounded and dead
• They are fierce warriors who seek to exterminate other colonies of the same species

Nevertheless, people have rarely been satisfied with a purely scientific approach to understanding animals. We have always cloaked them in garments from the wardrobe of our imagination. In the Jewish worldview, God created everything in this world, animate and inanimate, for a purpose:

“Our Rabbis said: Even those things which you may regard as completely superfluous to the creation of the world, such as fleas, gnats, and flies, even they too are included in the creation of the world, and the Holy One, blessed be He, carries out His purpose through everything, even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat, or a frog.”

Genesis Rabbah 10:7

Regarding the ant, the book of Proverbs calls it among “the wisest of the wise,” possessed of the foresight to store food in the summer for the cold months. A midrash in Devarim Rabba tells of Shimon ben Halafta’s admiration for the honesty of ants, who ensure that a dropped grain be returned to its owner. A different midrash finds Solomon speaking to a queen ant. In a mood of unusual hubris, Solomon asks the queen if anyone is greater than he is. The queen refuses to answer until Solomon takes her up in his hand so they can speak face to face. Then in response to Solomon’s question, she answers, Me! How so? Asks Solomon. “Were I not greater than you, you would not have complied with my command.” Enraged, Solomon throws her back down; she reminds him that ants were created long before people. While Solomon excels in human wisdom, the ant queen upstages him.

Now, let’s wing back to the heron. The region of Israel, both in biblical times and today, is extraordinarily rich in wildlife, and especially birds, with nearly 600 attested, many of which pass through Israel on their way from Africa to Asia or Europe, and back. The list of forbidden animals in Leviticus and Deuteronomy includes various kinds of birds excluded from human consumption, mostly because they are predator species. Exact identification of many of them is uncertain and contested; translations are often best taken as informed guesses. Even birds familiar to us, such as the eagle, hawk and owl, comprise different species in Israel than the ones we’re familiar with here. Many Israeli bird genera sport colorful names like thick-knees, bustards, nightjars, gallinules and sunbirds. For its 60^th birthday, Israel chose as its national bird the hoopoe, duchifat, a bird with a striking appearance, black and white striped wing feathers and an impressive orange headdress with black polka dots.

To my pleasant surprise, the heron IS found in ancient Israel; it makes an appearance among the non-kosher species in Leviticus 11:19. Furthermore, that verse recognizes that there are several varieties of heron that reside in the region: forbidden are “the heron according to its kinds.” For sure, Israeli herons differ from their North American cousins, and while there is some overlap, the great blue and little blue are absent in the region. Instead, among the ten resident species, we find midget varieties like the squacco and striated heron, the ominous black heron whose wings form a canopy while fishing, and the aptly named Goliath heron. Close relatives of the heron include egrets and bitterns, several species of which also haunt Israeli waterlands. The heron did not possess a positive reputation in pre-modern times. Its Hebrew name, anafah, means “the wrathful one”; it was thought to neglect its young. It was also considered cowardly, a contradictory trait, because herons fly high to escape other predators like the hawk. Nonetheless, the heron’s reputation improved in recent years: it lent its name to a pioneering Israeli military drone, capable of flying up to 52 hours straight, that has been much used, sold and copied in other countries.

So now that we’ve spent so much time with animals and birds, fauna and flyers, what do they have to do with Rosh Hashanah and the High Holidays?

If we look at the special readings for these days, one striking find not usually mentioned is the critical role of animals. In the Akeidah, which we read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah: the ram; Yom Kippur morning reading: goats (sacrificial and scapegoat); at Minchah on Yom Kippur: Jonah’s whale. In all three, the story or ritual would not happen without the animal: Abraham would not have had a substitute for Isaac and… would have had to slaughter him? Without the goats, the Jewish people would have held on to their sins and not been forgiven? Without the whale, Jonah would likely have escaped without performing his mission or drowned in the sea, while the people of Nineveh would not have repented and would have been wiped out like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Far from mere colorful backdrop on the human stage or metaphors for human qualities, these animals play essential roles as characters in the unfolding drama. These stories cannot happen without them. They show that we need animals, just as they need us, the alpha species, to pay attention to them and ensure that they can survive and thrive.

Animals can still play a critical role in our narrative, today. In fact, the High Holidays can help us consider our relationship with the larger world of animals and other creatures and envision the role that they play in our story. These Holidays offer us a time to concentrate on certain essential activities:

• Time to reflect and learn about ourselves, about our relations to others
• Time to repair broken relationships, and mend what’s broken within ourselves
• Time to commemorate God’s creation, the founding of the universe and the wonder of a world that allows for a planet teeming with life

Other creatures can serve as necessary teachers for all three of these assignments. As we’ve seen, some animals such as the ant and stork have been esteemed as model caregivers. For many people, the natural world provides a source of healing, comfort, and strength, including our relationships with pets, horses, and birds. And spending time in nature, espying chipmunks or hawks, elk or salamanders, can fill us with wonder and appreciation, a sense of the mystery and majesty of life on Earth. We may apprise the fullness of life as a gift from God entrusted to the care of homo sapiens, who as the highest creature bears responsibility for tending and sustaining the Earth.

We especially need to be reminded of these lessons now, because in recent times we humans have not fulfilled our responsibility as Earth’s caretakers. In fact, during this era of climate change, much of life is threatened with extinction. Often we hear about only a few glaring examples: polar bears stranded on melting ice floes, rhinoceroses cruelly hunted for their tusks as aphrodisiacs. It’s impossible not to notice the drought, heat and fires in the US West, but the news often leaves out the tragic impact on other creatures: in separate events of record heat, an estimated billion aquatic creatures were boiled alive off the shores California and Florida; the massive Australian fires in 2020 killed or injured an estimated 3 billion land animals.

But the phenomenon is much more pervasive, at a scale that is hard for our minds to grasp. 60% of all species, somewhere between 3 and 20 million, are threatened with extinction by century’s end. The amount of insects on Earth declines by 2.5 percent annually, and 40% of insect species are at risk of extinction by mid-century. Ocean life faces several enormous threats, including rising temperatures, acidification, strong storms and changing currents; coral reefs, home to a quarter of all marine life, are dying off at record rates. The Amazon, which absorbs 25% of the Earth’s carbon dioxide, is rapidly disappearing due to deforestation, rising temperatures and sea levels. Birds are equally affected: aside from perils such as cats, pesticides and habitat loss, climate change is impacting migration patterns, removing food and water sources, and spreading diseases, with half of native American species thought at risk this century.

Concern for the larger world of Creation did not originate with modern Jewish climate activists like myself. The Jewish imagination embodied a cosmic protection for birds in the form of a titanic avian, the Ziz, which dominates the air just as the Leviathan masters the ocean. This apparition emerges only in one biblical verse, Psalm 50:11: “I know the mountain fowl, and the Ziz of the fields are with me.” This description of the Ziz suggested to the Rabbis a phantasmic bird whose feet are on the ground while its head stretches to the heavens, “with Me.” Every year, specifically on this calendar date, the first of Tishri, the Ziz emits a shriek heard round the world; in the retelling of Louis Ginsberg in his Legends of the Jews, “The great bird ziz flaps his wings and utters his cry, so that the birds of prey, the eagles and the vultures, blench, and they fear to swoop down upon the others and annihilate them in their greed.” This year, let us orient our ears to hear this majestic warning.

But for a celebration of all creatures in nature, there is no finer expression than the medieval collection Perek Shira, the Chapter of Song. To me, this song gives voice to the concluding, repeated verse of the book of Psalms that we sing daily: Kol-haneshamah tehallel Yah, Halleluyah, Let all that breathes praise the Lord, Hallelujah. (Perek Shira puts this verse in the mouth of the rat.) The poem presents the prayers, most taken from biblical verses, uttered by a very wide range of natural forces and living things: Heavens, earth, waters; Eden and Gehinom, Heaven and Hell; wilderness and fields; day and night, sun and moon, stars, clouds, wind and rain; trees, crops, grasses; various birds, with the rooster featured at greatest length; reptiles and insects including grasshopper, locust, spider, fly; fish and frog; livestock, with even the pig given its due, beasts of burden, and wild animals, real and legendary.

Just as the whole Jewish species of the human community comes together in prayer during the High Holidays, so too, according to Perek Shira, does all of life join into a global chorus to sing God’s praises. I conclude with some of their prayers, and my own prayer that we attune ourselves to hear their squawks, calls and songs, whether in forest or field, at sea or on our own patio, both today and every day of the year—that we learn to love and respect all of our fellow earthlings, from the microscopic to the gigantic, and strive to give them a habitable planet, as is their due.

And to add one more, of my own invention: