Are you Jewish? Do you keep kosher? Are you hungry? How about a steaming bowl of giraffe and locust cholent? Or didn’t you know that giraffes and locusts are perfectly kosher?
It’s true, so says Rabbi Natan Slifkin, a British-born Israel-based Orthodox rabbi who shared his knowledge —- both Judaic and zoological —- during a weekend-long Shabbaton at Sacramento’s Kenneset Israel Torah Center from July 28-30.
Known as the Zoo Rabbi, Slifkin has traveled the world sharing his sometimes-controversial views about Torah and the animal kingdom. Invited to serve as summer scholar-in-residence at Kenneset Israel Torah Center, Slifkin delivered several lectures and drashes, as well as leading tour of the Sacramento Zoo.
“He loves Judaism and he loves animals,” said Andy Rubin, a member of the Modern Orthodox congregation and himself a biologist working for the State of California. “He spent a fair amount of time dealing with halachic approaches to animals, the mentioning of animals in the Torah and how Jews are mandated to treat animals.”
Slifkin has written six books, all of them delving into the natural world viewed through a traditional Torah lens. However, his embrace of current scientific thinking — including evolution — has landed him in hot water with many of his Orthodox rabbinic colleagues back in Israel. In 2004, a group of rabbis succeeded in forcing Slifkin’s publisher to discontinue distributing his works. But Slifkin has pressed on.
“He has no real problem with the physical evolution of living forms on Earth as having evolved from lower states,” said Rubin. “He doesn’t feel Genesis is to be taken literally as a scientific document. It’s an esoteric source meant to teach about the relationship between man and God. In Judaism we don’t renounce knowledge.”
Rubin said he learned a lot from Slifkin during the Shabbaton, including some animal-related Talmudic arcana. For one thing, according to the talmud, household and farm animals, just like people, should be kept from consuming chametz during Pesach. Moreover, Jews are forbidden to sterilize animals, including household pets. “Judaism has a problem with altering the order of creation,” explained Rubin.
And as for those kosher locusts, it’s not every species of the nasty flying bugs, just one particular variety favored by Yemenite Jews.
On Sunday, July 30, Slifkin led a group of 25 congregants on a tour of the Sacramento Zoo. Among the many facts that he laid on his Shabbaton students: The authors of the King James Bible mistakenly translated several Hebrew terms, confusing “nesher” (vulture) and “tenin” (jackal) for animals found only in Europe.
Shoshi Weiss, 19, toured the zoo with the Zoo Rabbi. “He’s really good at keeping everyone’s attention,” she said. “It was interesting to hear how he tied together evolution and Jewish tradition. It’s a lot easier to understand God’s greatness when you look at species.”
Rubin said Slifkin’s presentations made for “one of the best Shabbatons we ever had.” Part of the explanation lies in the way the rabbi demonstrated his points, sometimes with visual aids.
“He brought in fossilized bones, eggshells, and the broken tooth of some dinosaur,” added Rubin. “The rabbi told us, ‘The animal lived 100 million years ago, took 10 million years to fossilize, then one night a child steps on it: 100 million years of work broken in two’.”