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| Harambe the gorilla |
Today
is Day Seven of Week Six of the Omer. That is Forty-two Days of the
Omer. The Theme continues to be Happiness.
As we inaugurate
Shabbat – and complete the sixth of seven weeks of the Omer, I wish to add one
more thought concerning animals. Not necessarily
household pets, also including wild animals.
Dennis Prager, a prominent
American-Jewish social commentator whom I cite from time to time, likes to ask
a question of high school students. Would
you first save a drowning dog, or a drowning stranger? He has been asking the question over 40
years, and results have been quite consistent.
About a third would save the dog, a third would save the stranger, and a
third didn’t know what they’d do.
Prager reports (in a 2013 column) that
a Professor Richard Topolski and colleagues, took Prager’s superficial research
to a different level. They surveyed some
500 people, but the questions were far more nuanced than Prager’s. They found that the answers varied, depending
on the closeness of the relationship to the person drowning – it was not ‘automatically’
a stranger – and the respondent’s ‘relationship’ to the dog in question. Perhaps predictably, for immediate family the
person would be more inclined to save the drowning person first. As the relationship with the person grew more
tenuous, to where the person became a complete stranger, the preference for saving
the dog first increased steadily.
This result should not have surprised
me much. Like you, for many years I have
heard my dog-owning friends and relatives gush about how their pets are members
of the family and just like a human.
I’ve listened to ageing parents whose grown children have not
settled down to parenthood themselves, talk about their grand-dogs. I’ve listened to those childless grown
children, talk about my (four-legged) child.
As I mentioned the other night, I have
owned pets – dog and cats, often both simultaneously – for most of my life,
except whilst I’ve been married to Clara who simply has a preference not to have
animals in the house. And when I had
them – before I had children – I did very much think of them as members
of the family. And yes, I probably did
gush over them as many people do. But
not having a pet for 25 years, along with having children and being a
representative of a venerable religion that has quite a bit to say about the value
of human life and the difference between humans and animals, has given me a
somewhat different perspective. I was
not surprised by Professor Topolski’s findings.
But I was appalled by them.
Animals are not humans. We allowed to eat them. At least, certain species. I have nothing but respect for my friends who
choose to be vegetarians, or even vegans; the discipline they’ve taken on –
especially the latter group – is far more stringent than even the strictest interpretation
of kashrut. I have only respect for
those willing to take on a strict discipline for a good reason. Respect, but without even a shred of
agreement. G-d gave us licence to enjoy
meat, fish, cheese, yoghurt, and many other things – within certain
restraints. We try to limit our consumption
of meat to that which did not require undue suffering for the animal. We buy completely into the free range,
stall-free, hormone free mindset. We eat
only cheeses made with vegetable rennet.
The elevation of animals to a status equal
with humans, is rooted in the emotions. It
just feels so good to look upon cute animals, and ascribe a human-like soul to
them. And the fairytale depiction of
wild animals in children’s books and films, only feeds the moral
confusion. The truth is that predatory
species of animals, kill other species without any moral reasoning. Herbivorous species live their lives in
constant vigil and fear from predators.
Carnivorous or omnivorous species, when we’re not keeping them as pets
or otherwise in captivity, kill other animals for food – without any morals
entering into the equation. I can hear someone
reading this thinking, well, that’s just like some humans! Exactly!
And when those some humans kill other humans for their own
purposes, we call it murder. And ascribe
animal-like qualities to the offenders.
Because even though humans don’t always live up to the morals that we
consider necessary for the functioning of a social order, we understand that
when they don’t, social order disintegrates and comes to resemble the jungle or
the forest – the animal ‘kingdom.’
That’s why the incredible – to me –
outcry over the unfortunate death of Harambe, the ill-fated silverback gorilla
in the Cincinnati Zoo in the USA, struck me.
It has been pounding home in the media and ether since the incident last
weekend. In case you’ve been living
under a rock, a child climbed into the gorilla enclosure at the zoo in
question, and the 200 KG alpha male silverback rushed over and was dragging the
three-year-old boy around when zoo personnel shot it dead. They chose not to try to tranquilise the
gorilla out of fear that the medication would take several minutes to have its
effect, and in the meantime the gorilla might be enraged enough to do violent
harm to the child. So they quickly
dispatched the animal, understanding that the child was at risk should they not
act quickly.
We’re talking about a huge and powerful animal here. Many of us have seen and were moved by the
1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver as the
naturalist Dian Fossey who befriended a troop of mountain gorillas in Rwanda. But here we’re not talking about an educated
adult doing a serious study of the primates, but a child who inadvertently
finds himself in the hands of a huge and, presumably agitated, animal.
Yes, of course the gorilla’s death is
unfortunate. And yes, there should be an
inquest to determine whether the enclosure was not secure enough. The de facto answer is yes, it was
not, because the zoo has already begun beefing it up. That said, the gorilla exhibit and its
enclosure has kept people out of danger for 38 years. So it would have been reasonable to conclude
that it was safe.
And yes, it is reasonable to question
how close the child’s mother was supervising him. But I would not be too harsh in the
regard. When my daughter Ma’ayan was
very small, perhaps four, Clara and I briefly lost her whilst watching a busker
in Covent Garden, in London. We’d only
diverted our attention for an instant, and the crowd swallowed her up. I ran around for a frantic few minutes whilst
Clara held fast onto Eyal, until I found her wandering towards another show
that had caught her eye. I had feared
that she was halfway to Croatia, or Bosnia, by the time I found her. This was not a result of knee-jerk racism; at
that time, there were gangs of migrants from those countries at work in London,
abducting children for human trafficking. This was years before the Liam Neeson Taken
movies, and when I later saw them I thought of that stressful episode in my
own life. Anyway, when I heard the story
about how the child was safe and in reasonable shape after the ordeal, my heart
went out to Michelle Gregg, the boy’s mother.
Having briefly, and easily lost control of a young child in a crowd
once, I have a hard time faulting her. I think most parents have had such a scare at least once.
But not others. Since the incident, Ms. Gregg has apparently
been receiving death threats from ‘animal lovers’ who think she – along with
the zoo personnel – is guilty of murder, or something close to it. Animal rights groups, as well as a number of
Hollywood loonies, have been stirring of the ether all week. Even a number of naturalists – including the
zookeeper who cared for Harambe for the first 16 years of his life until he was
sold to Cincinnati Zo last year – are mourning and second-guessing the staff
who had to make a quick decision of the gorilla or the boy. The idea of leaving an agitated gorilla alone
to see if it would further harm the boy or not, is absurd.
But this is a symptom of the moral
confusion concerning humans, animals, and their comparative statuses. And this is a caveat which I wish to place
after any positive thoughts concerning animals and the way that we attach
ourselves to them. Animals are
wonderful. If Clara should ever agree to
it, I would adopt a dog without hesitation.
In the meantime, I certainly enjoy visiting friends who keep
animals. And I love visiting zoos where
the enclosures are deigned to allow the animals to live in a healthy and
pleasant environment. And I expect the
animals kept therein to be treated with as much respect as is practical. But, folks, let’s keep this in
perspective. As easy as it is to love an
animal, and as hard as it is at times to love a human, it is necessary to keep
the boundaries between one and the other as clear as possible. Wishing you a joyous and Happy Shabbat…
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