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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Good Morning,

Today marks a fresh festival in the Jewish calendar: the New Year for Animals.

Actually, that’s not quite the truth. This was once the date when cattle were tithed and every tenth animal born that year sent to the temple treasury, an agricultural version of capital gains tax. But the practice ceased when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem after a prolonged siege in 70 CE.

Recently, though, rabbis passionate about nature, me included, have seen this as a date to mark our relationship with animals in very different terms. Judaism has a new year for trees, so why not a new year for the fishes, mammals and birds?

The Hebrew Bible celebrates the whole of creation; its authors knew their flora and fauna, the secretive deer leaping away when seen, the storks nesting in the cedars.

The Bible is often blamed for putting man at the centre. But it doesn’t ascribe unlimited power to humanity, let alone the right to exploit the rest of creation, driving countless species to extinction. On the contrary, our role is to protect and safeguard the full diversity of life placed tragically within our power to hurt and destroy.

The rabbis forbade causing animals needless suffering. They told of Rabbi Judah, who said to a frightened calf which ran to him to escape the butcher’s knife, ‘Go, because for this you were created,’ and was punished by God with terrible toothache for showing no mercy.

I love animals, but it’s not just this which motivates me. Science is helping us understand once again what the Bible knew intuitively: our interdependence with the whole of nature. In its depletion lies our own; its destruction heralds ours.

Therefore I pray that we open our hearts to cherish all life.

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