Chimp mauling vs. Human beheading (2/18/09)
Recently, a 200 pound chimpanzee in Stamford, Connecticut made tremendous news after viciously mauling a woman friend of its owner, leaving her critically injured, tearing off her hands leaving her with much of her face torn away. Within the same couple of days another shocking story was announced. The founder of the Bridge’s Muslim TV Network, Mr. Muzzammil Hassan was charged with beheading his estranged wife.
Interestingly enough, this story did not get reported as much as the first story, which in itself is shocking. Being that the chimpanzee has been living with its owner for quite a number of years and he acted in many ways like a human being, drinking wine out of a glass bottle, bathing himself, friendly with their neighbors, etc. no one expected him anymore to act like an animal. As soon as the chimpanzee begins acting like the animal - he was all along - it shocked the community. However, for a human being to act like an animal by beheading his wife, that – apparently – wasn’t so shocking.
Perhaps this itself needs examination. Can our expectations from animals be as much as we expect from humans? Is there any difference between a human being acting like an animal or an animal acting like an animal?
We can understand this in light of the story that took place some 900 years ago with the Rambam, also known as Maimonides. The philosophers maintain that there is basically no difference between man and animal. If an animal had the proper training he would act just like a human being. The Rambam obviously disagreed with them. To prove their point, they invited the Rambam to witness how they trained two cats to act like human beings. They invited the Rambam to a party. As all were seated and waiting, in walked two cats on their hind legs, dressed in suits, with trays of drinks in their hands (paws). No one was able to believe how disciplined and well trained these two cats were. In the meantime, the Rambam pulls out a small box and releases a mouse. The moment the cats saw the mouse, they threw down their trays and went running on all four legs after the mouse, acting impulsively like cats.
With this incident, the Rambam was able to prove to the philosophers that a cat, or any animal, for that matter, remains the animal that he was created to be. You can train it to act as a human being but that remains only an ‘act’, for you haven’t changed its nature. Just because you encouraged, enticed, or bribed it to behave in a certain way doesn’t change its natural instincts. An animal’s inclination and instincts remain animalistic. They don’t change.
In that respect, animals and human beings are different. A person has the ability to put ‘mind over matter’. From a simplistic point of view, we all have desires; what we want to eat, how we want to dress, and whom we want to associate with. As an example, let’s say your doctor tells you avoid salt in your diet in order to lower your blood pressure, but you happen to enjoy salty foods. A human being, despite his craving for salty foods, has the ability to think and reason that it might be dangerous for him to satisfy his desire.
Our nature, the way we are born, is to fulfill all our desires. Everything is instinct. Children see something, they want it, and they have to get it. If they don’t, they yell and scream. They don’t understand what “later” or “wait” means. They don’t understand you can’t have everything. Part of a parent’s responsibility is to instill in their children the opposite. You can’t have everything that you want. There is a time to sleep; there is a time to be awake. There’s a time to eat and do it nutritionally. You may desire to eat unhealthy foods all day, but you can’t and still be healthy. Then one day, you take your child into a store and they have stopped asking for all the wrong things and you realize that they are growing up, maturing. They have control over themselves. They can take care of themselves.
This is true on a physical level and also on a spiritual level. Within ourselves, we have a G-dly soul and an animalistic soul. The two souls are constantly battling over the body. Each one wants to have complete dominance. The animal soul has only animalistic desires. Its desire is to look for satisfaction, to enjoy life, while the spiritual soul is seeking spiritual ideas and ideals. A person has the power within himself to control his animal soul. He has that spiritual soul that Hashem imbued him with to overpower and control the animal soul within him. And the way he empowers his soul is through the study of Torah and performance of mitzvos. As the Talmud tells us, that if the evil inclination attempts to seduce you to sin, draw him into the study hall.
This ability, an animal does not have. You can control an animal by several means, whipping it or caging it, but the animal itself cannot change its nature. The human being can control the animal within him.
Interestingly, the stories occurred during the week we read in the synagogues the Torah portion of Mishpatim. Parshas Mishpatim deals specifically with the laws of a goring ox. The Torah rules, the first three times it gores another ox, the owner is responsible only to pay half payments, because it was unexpected. Only thereafter is the owner expected to know that the animal has this tendency to gore and this makes him libel to pay full payment. However, the Talmud says, and this applies specifically to an ox, being that it doesn’t have the tendency from birth to gore. When it comes to other non-domesticated animals, the owner will be responsible to pay full damages even the first time it gores.
A chimpanzee would fall into that category. Despite the fact that it had not harmed anyone during the years it spent with its owner, is not proof that it has changed. It was an act. It still remained an animal.
However, in addition to this Torah portion, we had a special Torah reading that we read in the synagogues known as Parshas Shekolim, which deals with an obligation that people would contribute on a yearly basis, a half a shekel coin to the Holy Temple. The reason that this was read the past Shabbos was because the month of Adar is coming up. The month that we celebrate the holiday of Purim; a time in which Haman attempted to annihilate all the Jewish people. As we are going to read from the Megillah on Purim, Haman approached King Achashveirosh with thousands of shekolim, lots of coins to buy the right to annihilate the Jewish people. To this the Talmud tells us that G-d preempted Haman and gave us the commandment of contributing shekolim to the Holy Tempe. By so doing, we counteracted the shekolim that Haman gave to Achashveirosh to destroy us. This was a merit on our behalf to protect us.
The theme of Parshas Shekolim really relates to one of the themes within the Torah portion of Mishpatim; dealing with the ox and also relating to the two above mentioned events that occurred this past week.
The Torah portion, Mishpatim, states an interesting law. If animal which is known to have the tendency to be violent killed someone, (whether an ox after it gored three times, or any non-domesticated animal which is always expected to harm, as mentioned above), the owner has to pay kofer, ransom money. He has to redeem himself by paying the value of the victim or the value of himself (as disputed in the Talmud). Even though he didn’t personally kill anyone, rather it was his property, his ox, that killed the person, he is responsible and much achieve atonement. What was his sin? He neglected to watch the animal.
Spiritually speaking, we have the same obligation. A person is responsible for his animalistic behavior that he was enticed to behave because he neglected to watch it. He neglected to put mind over matter. He neglected to engage his mind with Torah knowledge. By so doing, one brings about spirituality and holiness into his body and assists him in subduing his animalistic instincts.
One of the arguments Haman had to Achashveirosh was that “Yeshno am echad…”, which literally means, there is a nation which is scattered throughout the world…”. The Talmud explains that the Hebrew word “yeshno”, also comes from the word of “yashan”, which means to sleep. Thus, Haman saying, that the reason he thinks he could be successful in his plot is because the Jewish people are sleeping in their observance of mitzvahs. They are not actively engaged in the study of Torah and the performance of mitzvahs.
In the light of the above, essentially he was saying, being that their minds aren’t occupied in Torah and Mitzvos, there is a greater chance of their animal instinct to take control over them, and thereby sinning, weakening their connection with Hashem. The moment they’re sinning we have a greater chance to annihilate them.
Therefore, to preempt that, what did G-d command us? To give the machatzis hashekel, to give the coin we read in Parshas Shekolim, to serve as an atonement in advance in order for us to be protected from Haman’s plots.
The lesson from above is a very simple and obvious one. As a chimpanzee, we could also lose ourselves. There are things throughout the day, as we interact with other people that can cause us frustration. There is a lot that could happen that we can get upset over. However, we as human beings, have the ability and the responsibility to put mind over matter, to take control over our emotions and not let them get out of hand.
The same applies to our observance of mitzvos. If one finds it difficult to observe a mitzvah, one is to put his mind over the matter, by engaging his mind in the study of Torah. When one does so, he would fill his head with the knowledge of Torah and that would counteract his temptations, add light of holiness to his body, and ease his way to doing the mitzvah.
