Animals do not have rights, but they do have feelings, and we have duties towards them, beginning with not causing them unnecessary pain.
Ki Teitzei is about relationships: between men and women, parents and children, employers and employees, lenders and borrowers. Strikingly, though, it is also about relationships between humans and animals.
Descartes thought that animals lacked souls. Therefore you could do with them as you pleased.[1] Judaism does not believe that animals lack souls – “The righteous person cares about the nefesh of their animal,” says the book of Proverbs (12:10). To be sure, nefesh here probably means “life” rather than “soul” (neshama in Hebrew). But Tanach does regard animals as sentient beings. They may not think or speak, but they do feel. They are capable of distress. Therefore there is such a thing as animal distress, tza’ar baalei chayim, and as far as possible it should be avoided.
From Rabbi Sacks
(4) You shall not muzzle an ox while it is threshing.
(25) When you enter a fellow [Israelite]’s vineyard, you may eat as many grapes as you want, until you are full, but you must not put any in your vessel. (26) When you enter a fellow [Israelite]’s field of standing grain, you may pluck ears with your hand; but you must not put a sickle to your neighbor’s grain.
From R. Sacks: The principle is the same in both cases: it is cruel to prevent those working with food from eating some of it. The parallel is instructive. Animals, not just humans, have feelings and they must be respected.
(6) If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. (7) Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life.
Maimonides thus seems to embrace three sharply conflicting views:
- The law of the mother bird is a divine decree with no reason.
- This law is intended to spare the mother bird emotional pain.
- This law is intended to have an effect on us, not the animal, by training us not to be cruel.
In fact all three are true, because they answer different questions.
The first view explains why we have the laws we have. The Torah forbids certain acts that are cruel to animals but not others. Why these and not those? Because that is the law. Laws will always seem arbitrary. But we observe the law because it is the law, even though, under certain circumstances, we may reason that we know better, or that it does not apply. The second view explains the immediate logic of the law. It exists to prevent needless suffering to animals, because they too feel physical pain and sometimes emotional distress as well. The third view sets the law in a larger perspective. Cruelty to animals is wrong, not because animals have rights but because we have duties. The duty not to be cruel is intended to promote virtue, and the primary context of virtue is the relationship between human beings. But virtues are indivisible. Those who are cruel to animals often become cruel to people. Hence we have a duty not to cause needless pain to animals, because of its effect on us. Hence the third proposition. Interestingly, Maimonides’ analysis was repeated almost exactly, six centuries later, by the greatest philosopher of modern times, Immanuel Kant.[7]