Man’s Best Friend

Rabbi Stephen Weiss

Parshat Bo 2014

The Torah provides us with the fabulous story of How the Basenji Lost His Voice.

 

Many of you have met or heard about our dog, Barkley. Barkley is a Basenji, a breed of small hunting hounds that are native to north and central Africa. They are handsome dogs that walk with a horse’s gait and are distinguished by two unique characteristics: their tail curls upward in a loop, and they never bark. Their vocal chords are too short. They may let out a single “woof” every year or so (ours hasn’t now in years), and they yodel (sort of a low pleasant growl) but they are physically incapable of barking.

Basenjis are still used as hunting hounds in the central Congo, but they are most famous for being Pharaoh’s hounds, the dogs used by ancient Egypt’s royal hunters. They would tie a bell around their neck and take them to one end of a long stretch of wilderness. At the other end, they would set up a wall of nets. As the Basenji’s hunted down their prey, the animals would run toward the nets, becoming ensnared.

Remember Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories for Little Children? They wove fabulous tales about the origins of various animals’ unique features: How the Leopard Got His Spots. How the Camel Got His Hump. Well, the Torah provides us with the fabulous story of How the Basenji Lost His Voice. You see, when God tells Moses what will happen on the night of the last plague, He foretells the death of the first born, and says that there will be a great cry throughout the land of Egypt, “But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog whet his tongue, against man or beast; that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” (Exodus 11:7) That is, no dog will bark at an Israelite. And what breed were those dogs? Basenjis! Hence the “bark-less” breed becomes a living reminder of the night of the Exodus, and of God’s kindness in protecting us from harm in times of trouble.

There is a midrash with a different take on this story. It suggests that, rather than God silencing the dogs, the dogs chose to be silent. In the Talmud (Baba Kama 60b) we read that whenever the angel of death is near, dogs sense its presence and bark. Nonetheless, it goes on to say, on that night the dogs restrained themselves. According to the midrash (Shemot Rabbah 31:9), God rewards dogs for this act of kindness on their part with a special mitzvah in the Torah. Any meat of an animal that dies in any way other than being killed properly according to Jewish law is considered treifah. The Torah commands us that such meat should be thrown to the dogs (Exodus 22:30). In other words, the Torah commands us to reward our dogs with treats for good behavior!

In truth, the Biblical view of dogs is not always so positive. Dogs are described in the Bible as being noisy (Psalms 59:7-14), greedy [Isaiah 56:11], stupid (Isaiah 56:10), filthy (Proverbs 26:11)…. The term “dog” is applied as an insult to humans (I Kings 22:38), and “dog” is also used as a derogatory term for male prostitutes (Deuteronomy 23:19).

But the early rabbis had a more favorable image of our furry friends. The Midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 22:12) suggests that the “mark” Cain received to protect him after he was exiled for killing his brother was in fact a dog to be his protective companion. The Jerusalem Talmud records the story of a dog who observed a serpent poisoning the curdled milk of its master. The dog barked frantically, but to no avail, as its master failed to heed its warnings and set out to partake of the milk. The desperate dog hastened to consume the food itself, thereby dying an agonizing death while saving the lives of its master and his fellow shepherds. The grateful shepherds buried the faithful dog with funerary honors and erected a monument to its memory. This same positive image of dogs runs through many later commentaries as well as in Jewish mystical texts.

So pet your dog today! He truly is man’s best friend. The stories of the sages remind us that our dogs do show us kindness, kindness that we should return. And if we are to be kind to our animals, how much the more so should we be kind to each other.