A Fur-ocious Debate

In case you missed one of the most important news stories of the past week, I will fill you in. A UN official has declared that the world has “failed miserably” at protecting tigers in the wild, bringing to “the verge of extinction” an animal that is a symbol for many cultures and religions. He called on countries to come up with strategies and to cooperate with international agencies such as Interpol to end poaching and illegal trade in tiger products.

Perhaps you also missed this story out of Lebanon: Lebanon must catch up with neighboring Arab states and enact animal-rights legislation, a local animal-welfare organization said this week. “Gandhi once said that a nation’s greatness is measured by the way it treats its animals,” said Lana Khalil, president of Animals Lebanon at a conference on Wednesday. “I call on all Lebanese and every humanitarian to implement international laws like CITES to protect and preserve animals,” said Khalil. Big cats are just some of the animals known to have been smuggled in and out of Lebanon. As recently as September 2009, a lion cub was discovered abandoned in a cage in a Beirut alleyway . . .

So the UN and activists in Lebanon are calling for greater protection for tigers and lions. I don’t mean to get catty, but I wonder what the UN and the Lebanese think of human rights. Maybe one example can clarify this. We all know, according to media reports, about how terribly the Israelis treat the Palestinians. They surely fare much better in Arab states. According to UNRWA, there are over 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon registered with the UN agency. Most have been there for decades. In line with UNRWA policy, there is no mandate to resettle these Palestinians. Rather, they are deliberately kept as “refugees,” unlike any other such population in the world.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese government has adopted resolutions and decrees over the years effectively aimed at restricting the Palestinians in their country. They are restricted from working in over 70 different professions in Lebanon, including medicine, dentistry, law, and accounting.

Moreover, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon cannot purchase property, and those who bought land before 2001 are barred from passing it on to their children. So now the cat is out of the bag: Animal rights—yes. Human rights—no. Are the people at the UN and the Lebanese simply catatonic? It seems that they are missing a crucial piece of logic, evident from the Sefer HaChinuch.

But before we get to that, a word from our daf. The Gemara in Sanhedrin (29a) states that two scholars who hate one another cannot sit together as judges on the same court. Among the first to raise serious questions about this halachah was Rav Sadya Gaon in his Sefer HaMitzvos. Why would anyone consider letting an individual who harbors hatred for another Jew sit on a court? The very fact that he feels this hatred disqualifies him as a judge. The Torah admonishes us, “Do not hate your fellow man in your heart.” The individual is violating the biblical injunction against feeling malice toward his fellow man, and that in and of itself should preclude him from serving as a judge.

One possible solution is that the person in question saw the other potential judge commit a sin serious enough to label him as a rasha, a wicked person. That being the case, it is indeed permitted to hate him, as one may feel animosity toward a rasha. However, that invites the question, if one judge knows that the other one is a rasha, why would he ever agree to serve with him? Why do we need the Gemara to specifically tell us that he may not serve with the other judge because he hates him? He can’t serve with the other judge simply because one may not serve together with a rasha on the same court!

Furthermore, the rulings of a court that contains wicked people would not be valid, as the Gemara states on 26a: “A confederacy of wicked men cannot be counted as part of the quorum.” Reish Lakish explained there that wicked men do not count towards the minimum requirement of people that must serve on a court.

For a possible answer, we may turn to the discussion in Sefer HaChinuch regarding the prohibition of plowing with an ox and donkey together (Mitzvah 550). The following is a loose translation: “From this prohibition we should all learn a lesson that we should never appoint two people to any matter who are vastly different in their nature and conduct . . . for if the Torah was particular about the suffering of animals caused by joining two disparate ones to work together, then how much more so is the Torah concerned about the suffering of humans, who are elevated to know their Creator.”

Perhaps the Gemara is not forbidding scholars who literally hate one another to serve on the same court; that particular halachah was already known. The novel halachah was that individual scholars who have vastly different personalities and temperaments and cannot sufficiently tolerate one another should not serve on the same court (this is an explanation offered in the Biurei HaDaf in V’Hagisa). The Rambam explains that although we value every judge’s opinion, we need the final ruling to be the result of careful deliberations. The final p’sak must be a team effort. If two scholars cannot achieve a level of communication sufficient to carefully understand and weigh the other’s opinion, then they are not a true court; it is just a confederacy of individuals.

Returning to our earlier point, the Chinuch writes that if the Torah was concerned about the suffering of animals it was certainly concerned about the welfare of humans. It seems pointless to state the obvious, but the welfare of humans therefore takes precedence over the safety of tigers and lions. Perhaps those in charge at the UN should take a little time off from studying the climate and bashing Israel and actually earn their stripes. But you know you can’t get a leopard to change its spots!