“Az a yid hot a hunt, iz oder der hunt keyn hunt nit, oder der yid iz keyn yid nit
If a Jew has a dog, either the dog is no dog, or the Jew is no Jew”
On today's page of Talmud, Rabbi Natan offered the following advice:
תלמוד בבלי כתובות דף מא עמוד ב
ר' נתן אומר: מנין שלא יגדל אדם כלב רע בתוך ביתו, ולא יעמיד סולם רעוע בתוך ביתו? שנאמר: ולא תשים דמים בביתך
Rabbi Natan said: From where do we learn that a person should not raise a bad dog in his house, and should not place a rickety ladder in his house? [From the Torah, where] it states "You shall not place blood in your house" (Deut 22:8).
[First, a disclaimer. I've owned dogs all of my married life. Still, I'll try to be as objective as possible.]
Jews and dogs don't traditionally get along. In Bava Kamma 93a, Rabbi Eliezer does not mince his words:
רבי אליעזר הגדול אומר: המגדל כלבים כמגדל חזירים .למאי נפקא מינה?
למיקם עליה בארור
“Rabbi Eliezer the Great said: Someone who breeds dogs is like someone who breeds pigs. What is the practical outcome of this comparison? To teach that those who breed dogs are cursed...”
The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that in the US there are about 43 million households that own almost 84 million dogs; that means 45% of the households in the US own a dog. In the UK, an estimated 34% of all households own a dog.
Bad Dogs
There are some really bad dogs. In a 10 year period from 2000-2009, one paper identified 256 dog-bite related fatalities in the US. Of course that's a tiny number compared to the overall number of dogs owned, but that's still 256 too many; the tragedy is compounded when you read that over half the victims were less than ten years old.
Partaken, GJ. et al. Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite–related fatalities in the United States (2000–2009). Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 2013. 243:12: 1726-1736.
Fatalities from dog bites are rare. Dog bites are not. Over my career as an emergency physician I must have treated hundreds of patients with dog bites. And my experience is pretty typical. One recent study estimated that more than half the population in the US will be bitten by an animal at some time, and that dogs are responsible for 80-90% of these injuries.
Good Dogs
Although Jews are thought not to have a historical affinity for dogs, one theologian has reassessed the evidence. In his 2008 paper Attitudes toward Dogs in Ancient Israel: A Reassessment, Geoffrey Miller suggests that in fact dogs were not shunned in Israelite society. He notes that the remains of over a thousand dogs were discovered in a dog cemetery near Ashkelon dating from about the 5th century BCE. It was described as "by far the largest animal cemetery known in the ancient world" by Lawrence Stager who also pointed out that during this period, Ashkelon was a Phoenician city - not a Jewish one. Miller surveys several mentions of dogs in the Bible and the Book of Tobit, and concludes that at least some Israelites "valued dogs and did not view them as vile, contemptible creatures." Joshua Schwartz from Bar-Ilan University surveyed Dogs in Jewish Society in the Second Temple Period and in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud (a study that marked "...the culmination of several years of study of the subject of dogs..."). He found that while "most of the Jewish sources from the Second Temple period and the time of the Mishnah and Talmud continue to maintain the negative attitude toward dogs expressed in the Biblical tradition" there were some important exceptions. There were sheep dogs (Gen. Rabbah 73:11) and hunting dogs (Josephus, Antiquities 4.206) and guard dogs (Pesahim 113a), and yes, even pet dogs (Tobit, 6:2), though Schwartz concedes that "it is improbable that dogs in Jewish society were the objects of the same degree of affection as they received in the Graeco-Roman world or the Persian world."
“תלמוד ירושלמי (ונציה) מסכת תרומות פרק ח דף מו טור א /ה”ג
זמין חד רבן ואייתיב כלבא גביה אמר ליה ביזיון אנא חייב לך אמר ליה רבי טיבו אנא משלם ליה שביין עלון לקרתא עאל חד מינהון בעא מינסב איתתי ואכל ביציו
A certain person invited a sage to his home, and [the householder] sat his dog next to him. [The sage] asked him, ‘How did I merit this insult?’ [The house-holder] responded, ‘My master, I am repaying him for his goodness. Kidnappers came to the town, one of them came and wanted to take my wife, and the dog ate his testicles.’”
Whatever your feeling about dogs, let’s be sure to remember that they serve alongside soldiers in the IDF, where they save lives. In 1969, Motta Gur (yes, the same Mordechai "Motta" Gur who commanded the unit that liberated the Temple Mount in the Six Day War, and who uttered those amazing words "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" הר הבית בידינו,) wrote what was to become a series of children's books called Azit, the Canine Paratrooper (later turned into a popular feature film with the same title. It was once available on Netflix.
But IDF dogs don't just feature in fiction. They are a fact, and an amazing addition to the IDF, where they make up the Oketz unit. Here's a news report (in Hebrew) about the amazing work these dogs - and their handlers - perform. Keep them in your prayers.
