Pourquoi a Wolf? – in Jacob’s blessing to Benjamin

What kind of a blessing is it for Jacob to confer from his deathbed on his beloved youngest child: ‘’Benjamin is predatory wolf; in the morning he will devour prey, and in the evening, he will distribute spoils”, as we read in this weekly and last Genesis Torah portion (49:27).

Sometime in the 1950s, a Lebanese diplomat at the UN “explained’’ to his Israeli counterpart, David Ha-Kohen, that Lebanon exhibited profound antipathy against Israel out of jealousy. We see ourselves as a dog who has a collar around his neck and meekly hastens to carry out every Syrian whim, said the Lebanese. And we see you, the Israelis, like the independent wolf who has no masters.

Another possible reason for Jacob’s resemblance of Benjamin with the wolf may be deduced from the history of the Yellowstone National Park when gray wolf packs were re-introduced to the Wyoming famed national park some 30 years ago, many decades after their entire elimination from the national park.  About a century ago, the wolf, an integral member of the natural habitat at Yellowstone had been rendered undesirable for the park and was killed off without a thought of any adverse ramifications on the park as such. Dispatching the wolf spawned off a devolutionary comeuppance on the whole ecosystem of the park, as one adversity led to another; it attested to the propriety of the Rabbinic teaching: ‘’Avera gorreret avera’’, one wrong thing breeds soon another. Indeed, Decades later park authorities did a mea culpa, a T’shuvah, and returned to God’s order of creation, where species interconnect, and populations manage themselves.

So, what happened? Well, the return of the wolf impacted immediately the conduct of the heretofore unnaturally-over-populated elk. That in turn resulted in the return of winged and four-legged scavengers (e.g., eagles and bears). The erstwhile devastated willow returned to the terrain, with a dramatic effect on both songbirds and the beaver population. And as the beavers began to spread and build new dams and ponds, they have affected the ecology of streams by gaining shade, and thus colder water for fish. One single action – restoring the wolf to Yellowstone — has become a bona fide watershed for nature’s re-growth and weal. EVERYTHING changed.

If a century ago those park authorities who hastily adopted the bias of ranchers and hunters against the Yellowstone wolf, had heeded a Rabbinic teaching to judge others favorably, and to avoid condemning another without compelling reasons, they would have left the wolf alone as before.  On the other hand, many of us know how easy it is to thoughtlessly fault and condemn others, not unlike those park authorities who decimated the wolf.  Jewish heritage teaches that before one hastens to smear another’s reputation s/he must take a few steps like inquiring whether the damning information about to be spread is thoroughly factual or beneficial for anyone becoming privy to it, and what adverse ramifications such action might entail. It is not easy to avoid being judgmental of others, but Jewish heritage teaches that before we point our accusatory finger at another, it is incumbent on us to take note of the other three (folded) fingers we effectively direct at ourselves; self-judgment must precede judging others.

Consider how quickly Desmond Doss’ fellow Marines chose to demonstrate their disdain for him due to his religious beliefs that banned him from bearing arms, as the 2016 movie Hacksaw Ridge (directed by Mel Gibson) powerfully depicts.  Desmond Doss should be a role model for those politicians and rabbis today who are opposed to the drafting by the IDF of Haredi young men. Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist was not less committed to his faith than anyone else claiming such fidelity to his religious values. Indeed, Doss became the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 when he earned the utmost respect and highest adulation of his fellow Marines for his incredible bravery, selflessness and compassion under withering enemy fire, yet, without carrying a gun.

Unlike the Yellowstone rangers a century ago who rushed to condemn the wolf for being itself, so were the parents of Oliver Sacks, the late renowned neurologist.  In his last writing for the New York Times, he described how his parents, both physicians and Orthodox, hurt him grievously, because of his homosexual orientation, thus bringing about his hatred for “religion’s capacity for bigotry and cruelty” with the end result that Oliver disconnected himself from his family, his faith including the Sabbath that he had admired, and even to “near-suicidal addiction to amphetamines.”

Only very late in life did Oliver Sacks re-encounter the utter beauty in Sabbath observance, compelling him to wonder “What if: What if A and B and C had been different? What sort of person might I have been? What sort of a life might I have lived?” Indeed, a terribly high price he had to pay for his parents’ bigotry and premature judgmentalism, not unlike the Yellowstone National Park did a century ago when its rangers ended the presence of the wolf therein. The wolf sustains the order of creation, and such a thought might have crossed Jacob’s mind when he resembled Benjamin with a wolf.  (More about the biblical wolf in my forthcoming book “Taming the Beast: Human-Animal Encounters in the Bible”.)