Parashas Ki Teitzei: Ramban - On Cruelty to Animals

Originally posted in August 2013, but fixed in response to Rabbi Maroof's critique.

Artwork: Reveillark, by Jim Murray

Parashas Ki Teitzei: Ramban - On Cruelty to Animals

This week’s parashah features one of the most beloved mitzvos among animal enthusiasts: shiluach ha’ken (sending away the mother bird before taking her eggs). The Torah states:

If a bird’s nest happens to be before you on the road, on any tree, or on the ground – young birds or eggs – and the mother is roosting on the young birds or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall swiftly send away the mother and take the young for yourself, so that it will be good for you and will prolong your days. [1]

Contrary to popular belief, the mitzvah is not to go out of your way to find a mother bird just so that you can shoo her away and take her eggs. Rather, the mitzvah is that if you happen to find a mother bird and if you want the eggs, you are commanded to send the mother bird away before you take her eggs. [2]

All of the mitzvos have reasons. One might think that the reason Hashem commanded this mitzvah is in order to show mercy on the mother bird by sparing her the pain of seeing her young be taken away against her will. Sounds reasonable, right?

Wrong! This notion is so wrong, in fact, that Chazal instituted a halacha which is tailor-made to uproot it. The halacha states that if we ever come across a person leading the congregation in prayer who exclaims, “Have compassion on us, since You are the Compassionate One, for Your mercies reach [even] to a bird’s nest!” – we are instructed to silence him, thereby preventing his false view from spreading. [3]

The question is: Doesn’t this halacha seem a bit extreme? I mean, is it really so bad to view shiluach ha'ken as an expression of Hashem's mercy on the mother bird? After all, there are a number of mitzvos in addition to shiluach ha’ken which seem to have been commanded in order to show mercy towards animals. For example, this week’s parashah mentions the prohibition to muzzle an ox and a donkey together. [4] It is also prohibited to slaughter an animal and its offspring on the same day. [5] There are numerous prohibitions which Chazal instituted to prevent tzaar l’baalei chayim (causing animals to suffer). Moreover, there are numerous pesukim which speak of Hashem's mercy on animals, such as: “Hashem is good to all; His mercies are on all of His works,” [6] which Chazal interpret to mean that Hashem has mercy even on the lowliest of animals. [7] Considering all of this, what’s so bad about viewing shiluach ha’ken as an expression of Hashem’s mercy towards animals?

To answer this question, let us turn to the Ramban's explanation of shiluach ha'ken. The Ramban [8] explains the purpose of this mitzvah in no uncertain terms:

The reason for the prohibition [against animal cruelty] is to teach us the trait of mercy and that we should not become cruel, for cruelty spreads through the soul of man [expanding from cruelty towards animals to cruelty towards humans]. It is well-known that butchers who slaughter large oxen and deer are bloody men, "murderers of people (so to speak)" and are very cruel. And it is because of this that the Sages said: "The best of butchers is a partner of Amalek." [9] To sum it up: these commandments that deal with animals and birds are not expressions of compassion for the animals; rather, they are decrees for us, to guide us and to teach us good character traits.

The Ramban cites the Rambam [10] who extends this explanation to the other mitzvos which govern our treatment of animals. He expounds in detail upon the two mitzvos in our parashah: 

It is also prohibited to kill an animal with its young on the same day, in order that people should be restrained and prevented from killing the two together in such a manner that the young is slain in the sight of the mother; for the pain of the animals under such circumstances is very great. There is no difference in this case between the pain of a human being and the pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for her young ones is not produced by rationality, but by imagination, and this faculty exists not only in man but in most living beings. This law applies only to an ox and a lamb because out of all the domestic animals used as food, these alone are permitted to us, and in these cases the mother recognizes her young. 

The same reason applies to the law which commands us to shoo away the mother bird when we take the young. The eggs over which the bird sits and the young that are in need of their mother are generally unfit for food, and when the mother is sent away she does not see the taking of her young ones, and does not feel any pain. In most cases, however, this mitzvah will cause man to leave the whole nest untouched, because the young or the eggs which he is allowed to take are, generally speaking, unfit for food. If the Torah takes measures to prevent us from causing such grief to cattle or birds, how much more careful must we be that we should not cause grief to our fellow men! 

On the basis of the Ramban's explanation (and in the spirit of the Rambam cited above), we can now understand why it is such a severe mistake to characterize these mitzvos as expressions of Hashem’s mercy towards animals. It is true that Hashem acts with mercy towards all of His creatures. However, mitzvos were given as a means of perfecting human beings, morally and intellectually. If a person were to think that these mitzvos were designed for the benefit of animals, he is likely to miss out on the perfection that the mitzvos have to offer us. Thus, by halachically silencing the individual who publicly expresses this distorted notion of these mitzvos, Chazal are protecting the real reason for these mitzvos, which is to instill within us the qualities of mercy and compassion, and to remove cruelty from our midst. 

[1] Sefer Devarim 22:6-7
[2] According to the Rambam, the Torah only prohibits taking the mother together with the eggs or the young. According to Rashi, the only prohibition is to take the mother away from the eggs or the young – not vice versa. 
[3] Rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam / Maimonides), Mishneh Torah, Sefer Ahava: Hilchos Tefilah 9:7
[4] Sefer Devarim 22:10
[5] Sefer Vayikra 22:28
[6] Sefer Tehilim 145:9
[7] Talmud Bavli: Bava Betzia 85a 

[8] Rabbeinu Moshe ben Nachman (Ramban / Nachmanides), Commentary on Sefer Devarim 22:6
[9] Maseches Kiddushin 82a 

[10] Rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam / Maimonides), Guide for the Perplexed 3:48

Adler: On Animal Speech and Animal Intelligence

In my recent post, Do Babies Have Souls? (Ibn Ezra), I presented the Ibn Ezra's idea that man's soul (i.e. his ability to think rationally) and his ability to speak are correlated; as one develops, so does the other. A friend of mine asked me whether the Ibn Ezra was referring specifically to the ability to speak, or to the ability to communicate? When I answered that it was the latter, he asked me about animals that can communicate (e.g. monkeys who have been taught sign language). 

I thought that this might be a good time to (re)post three excerpts from the writings of Mortimer J. Adler, in which he addresses the differences between animal speech and human speech, as well as animal thought and human thought. These excerpts were originally published as two separate blog posts in June and August of 2007.

Artwork: Connection, by Yuumei

The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes (1967, 1993)

Chapter 9: The Pivotal Issue: Language and Thought, p.136-138

The second critical point made by these contemporary philosophers, and by such scientists as Crichtley and White, turns on their making a sharp distinction between perceptual and conceptual thought. This distinction is implicit in the observation that animal thinking is confined to the perceptual present, whereas human thinking transcends the immediate environment and extends not only to objects in the remote past and the remote future but also to objects that have no temporal locus whatsoever. Precisely because they are incapable of conceptual thought, animals, these writers contend, are not only (1) incapable of sentence-making that includes statements about the past and future, (2) unable to fabricate tools for remote future use, (3) devoid of a cumulative cultural inheritance that constitutes a long historical tradition, but they are also (4) incapable of any behavior that is not rooted in the perceptually apprehended present situation.

Animals can certainly think, in the sense of learning from experience, generalizing, discriminating, and abstracting, solving problems by trial and error or by insight, and even, as Price, following Hume, points out, making inductive inferences from empirically learned cues or signals. The evidence is both plain and ample that they can think in all these ways. But it is equally plain from the observations of their behavior, in the laboratory or in the field, that they cannot think in any of the following ways: they cannot think about objects that are not perceptually present as well as about those that are; and with regard to objects of thought, present or absent, they cannot make judgments or engage in reasoning (i.e., think that such and such is or is not the case, or think that if such and such is the case, then so and so is not) ...

Bennett argues that animal learning and problem-solving, whether by trial and error or by insight, does not involve any of the steps that constitute human reasoning from experience - the process whereby human beings either establish an empirical conclusion or refute one. Since that always involves the separate acknowledgment of a timeless universal, on the one hand, and of particular instances of past occurrence, on the other, animals, whose apprehensions are limited to the immediate perceptual present, cannot possibly engage in the kind of thinking that consists in giving reasons pro and con. And, Bennet further contends, behavior that involves giving or receiving reasons cannot be causally explained by reference to empirical sequences. In his view, there can be no behavioristic account of human rational behavior, as there can be of animal learning and problem-solving, in terms of causal connections between stimuli and responses or by reference to the causes at work in the formation of the conditioned responses or the imprintings that represent the modifications of animal behavior through repeated experience ...

Ten Philosophical Mistakes (1985)

Chapter 2: The Intellect and the Senses, p.50-53

Since Darwin’s day, experimentation with animals in psychological laboratories has turned up much additional evidence that has been regarded as reinforcing this conclusion [namely, that man differs from animal only in degree, not in kind]. It has been interpreted as showing that other animals have concepts as well as percepts, even if they do not have intellects in the traditional sense of that term. Accompanying this attribution of conceptual intelligence to other animals has been the attribution to them of linguistic performances that are said to differ only in degree from the human use of language.

... I will concentrate here on the misinterpretation of the evidence that is supposed to show that other animals have concepts that enable them to deal with generalities as well as particulars.

To put the matter briefly, the experimental evidence does show that other animals, under laboratory conditions, can learn to discriminate between different kinds of perceived objects. They learn to react in one way to squares and in another to circles, for example; or to eat what is placed on a green surface and to avoid what is placed on a red surface. Such discriminations indicate that they are able to generalize, and this is made the basis for attributing concepts as well as percepts to them.

The error here consists in thinking that to be able to discriminate between different kinds of objects is tantamount to being able to understand distinct kinds and their differences. To regard an animal’s ability to discriminate between perceived similarities and dissimilarities as evidence of conceptual thought on the animal’s part involves an equivocal use of the word “concept.”

Strictly used, concepts are (a) acquired dispositions to recognize perceived objects as being of this kind or of that kind, and at the same time (b) to understand what this kind or that kind of object is like, and consequently (c) to perceive a number of perceived particulars as being the same in kind and to discriminate between them and other sensible particulars that are different in kind.

In addition, concepts are acquired dispositions to understand what certain kinds of objects are like both (a) when the objects, though perceptible, are not actually perceived, and (b) also when they are not perceptible at all, as is the case with all the conceptual constructs we employ in physics, mathematics, and metaphysics.

There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that concepts, thus precisely defined, are present in animal behavior. Their intelligence is entirely sensory. Its operations are limited to the world of perceptual objects and imaginable ones. What lies beyond perception and imagination is totally beyond the powers of the animal mind or intelligence. Only animals with intellects, only members of the human species, have the conceptual powers that enable them to deal with the unperceived, the imperceptible, and the unimaginable ...

Chapter 3: Words and Meanings (Section 6)

In their study of the evidence of animal communication, [animal psychologists and behavioral scientists] seldom if ever note the difference between signs that function merely as signals and signs that function as designators – as names that refer to objects. Almost all of the cries, sounds, gestures, that animals in the wild, and domesticated animals as well, use to express their emotions and desires, serve as signals, not as designators. It is only in the laboratory and under experimental conditions, often with very ingeniously contrived special apparatus, that such higher mammals as chimpanzees and bottle-nosed dolphins appear to be communicating by using words as if they were names, and even to be making sentences by putting them together with some vestige of syntax.

The appearance is then misinterpreted by the scientists as a basis for asserting that the only difference between animal and human language is one of degree, not of kind – a difference in the number of name words in an animal’s vocabulary and difference in the complexity of the utterances that are taken to be sentences.

This misinterpretation arises from the neglect or ignorance, on the part of the scientists, of the difference between perceptual and conceptual thought. That, in turn, stems from their failure to acknowledge the difference between the senses and the intellect or their denial that the difference exists ... 

While there is evidence that chimpanzees under experimental conditions do use artificially contrived signs to designate or name things, the things they name are all perceptual objects. There is not a single piece of evidence showing their ability to use signs to designate what is not perceived through their senses or what lies totally beyond the sensible realm and is intrinsically imperceptible ...

The animal’s behavior manifests different reactions to objects that are different in kind. But the kinds of things that animals appear to differentiate are all kinds of which there are perceptual instances in the animal’s experience. Humans differentiate kinds or classes of which there either are no perceptual instances in their experience or of which there cannot be any. This is the distinguishing characteristic of conceptual thought and the irrefutable evidence of the presence of intellect in man and of its absence in brutes.

One further observation, if it were made by the animal psychologists, might open their eyes to the difference in kind, not degree, between human language and the acquirement by animals of signs that appear to function as designative names. It involves the distinction, already made, between a word acquiring its designative meaning through direct perceptual acquaintance with the object named and the acquirement of meaning by means of a verbal description, as when a child learns the meaning of the word “kindergarten” by being told that it is a place where children get together to play and learn.

In all the experimental work done on animals, there is no instance where a sign that an animal uses gets is meaning from a collocation of other signs that purport to express its meaning. In every case, a new sign that is introduced into the animal’s vocabulary becomes meaningful through being attached to a perceptual object with which the animal has direct acquaintance.

If the students of animal behavior had engaged in their observations and experiments with a recognition of the difference between perceptual and conceptual thought, and with an acknowledgment that humans have intellect as well as senses, whereas animals lack intellects, they would not be so prone to ignore or deny the difference in kind between the human and animal use of signs as names or designators.