If man is just another animal who happens to walk upright, anything goes

The good news is that the New York State Supreme Court declared, in a split 5-2 decision, that an elephant is not a person.

The bad news is that the New York State Supreme Court declared, in a split 5-2 decision, that an elephant is not a person.

To explain: It was with a sense of relief that we recently learned that there is a legal difference between man and beast. With our daily fare of mass killings and random murders; licentiousness and abominations as normal lifestyles; abortions on demand; runaway immorality; wholesale surrender to our animal instincts — with all these swirling around us, one begins to wonder: How are we different from the animals?

But now it is official: There is a difference. The court decided that “Happy,” the Bronx Zoo elephant, whose admirers had sued New York on behalf of her civil liberty, is not entitled to the rights of a human being. Therefore the court denied her the habeas corpus to be freed from “illegal confinement” in the zoo. In its majority opinion, the court determined that she is after all not a person.

Now that our humanity is in effect validated by the court, we can breathe a sigh of relief. A different decision might have led to unanticipated consequences, such as Elephant Pride parades, and clamors to end anti-elephant discrimination in public places in the name of diversity and inclusion. And it is not even inconceivable that ultimately the Elephant Rights supporters would run Happy the Elephant for Congress, since, having been in all the headlines, her name recognition alone would make her a shoo-in.

That we are spared such indignities is the good news, but only temporarily. Because the two dissenting justices hold that animals have legal rights like humans and are entitled to be freed from confinement because these rights are being violated. Such views have a life of their own, and will surely re-surface in the future. Man’s essential uniqueness will continue to be challenged.

Although the entire issue is absurd on its face, it exposes yet another assault on the sanctity and dignity of human life. For if human life is not sacred, then all the detritus of our daily headlines follows quite naturally. If man is just another animal who happens to walk upright, anything goes.

That man’s obvious uniqueness needs to be stressed is a gloomy commentary on our times. But it is this very uprightness, the ability to walk on two legs, not four, that defines man. His face is not focused on the ground beneath him, on grass and vegetation as sustenance for his body, but on what lies ahead — tomorrow and the future — and on what is above him — a life-giving Creator — as sustenance for his soul.

For it is this soul, his neshamah. that separates man from the beast. We are required to be solicitous of animals, even to the extent of feeding them before we feed ourselves; tzaar baalei chayim —causing pain to animals — is prohibited (Cf. Shabbos 128b). Animals are living creatures, but in all of Creation, only man is made b’tzalmo, in G-d’s image (Bereishis 1:26-7).

Yes, elephants are intelligent, but only man can study G-d’s word, and think, deduce, and conceptualize. Can even an intelligent beast write a sonnet like a Shakespeare, or paint like a Rembrandt, or walk on the moon, or find cures for diseases, or interpret a page of Talmud, or explicate a profound Kabbalistic text? Circus elephants can learn to dance, but can they write a symphony? Beyond all this — and this is the key difference — only man has the potential to change himself, to pray, to reach out to G-d. He is dynamic, not static like a beast, whose only growth is physical, but whose essence remains unchanged.

Of course, since man has free will, he can also descend to levels lower than a beast, as witness recent history. But one of Torah’s purposes is to help man overpower his beastly potential, and to become me’at mei’elokim, a little lower than the angels (Tehillim 8:5). The moral sickness of our times can be traced to the wholesale abandonment of the civilizing teachings of Torah. And the fact that the high court was not unanimous in affirming that an animal is not a man is very sad, and that columns have to be written affirming man’s higher nature — that is the bad news.

Note also that the court only affirmed that animals are not human. It said nothing about humans not being animals. All the precincts have not been heard from, and final results are not yet in.

Thank G-d that we Jews have a Higher Court of our own. That is truly the good news.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 918)