“The Fifth Animal”  Parashat Re’eh 5786

In the Portion of Re’eh, the Torah seems to offer two very different kinds of evidence for its own Divinity and they appear only a few verses apart. First [Devarim 14:7-9], the Torah discusses the signs of kosher mammals. A kosher mammal must possess two signs: it must chew its cud and it must have split hooves. The Torah then lists four exceptions: the camel, the hare, and the hyrax, which have one sign but not the other, and the pig, which has the other sign but not the first. The Talmud in Tractate Hullin [59a] accepts this list not as a few helpful examples but as an exhaustive claim: There is no animal that chews its cud and is impure except for these, and no animal that has split hooves and is impure except for the pig. The very boldness of the verse becomes its proof. Only the Creator of the World could speak with such confidence about the creatures He created.

At first glance, this is a powerful argument. A human author writing in the wilderness more than three thousand years ago would have been insane to stake his credibility on a global zoological claim. It would take only one expedition, one undiscovered continent, one strange mammal emerging from a jungle, to bring the whole thing crashing down. And indeed, for generations this argument was presented as one of the classic demonstrations of Torah from Heaven. The Torah knows what human beings could not have known. The Torah speaks not like a man making an educated guess but like the Manufacturer describing His own product. The Torah seems to be saying: I know the world because I made the world.

But the argument becomes more complicated as soon as the llama walks into the room. For most people, the Torah’s claim sounds straightforward until they discover how many unusual mammals exist beyond the borders of the ancient Near East. The llama, the alpaca, the vicuña, and the guanaco are New World camelids. They are related to camels, possess unusual feet that are neither classic hooves nor paws, and process vegetation through a digestive system that resembles that of the camel. Nor are they the only challenge. The hare and rabbit do not fit the modern biological definition of rumination. Instead, they practice cecotrophy, re-ingesting specially produced pellets to extract additional nutrients from food that has already passed through part of the digestive system. The hyrax presents an even stranger case. Despite its superficial resemblance to a rabbit or rodent, it is actually more closely related to elephants than to rabbits and possesses a digestive system that is neither that of a classic ruminant nor that of an ordinary herbivore. These animals occupy the blurry frontier where common observation and scientific classification do not perfectly overlap. They chew repeatedly. They appear to reprocess food. They share some characteristics with ruminants while lacking others. The more one studies them, the more one realizes that the Torah’s categories and modern zoological categories do not completely overlap[1]. The traditional response is that these animals do not refute the Torah’s claim. The llama and its relatives are included within the broader category of “camel”. The hare and hyrax are classified according to the Torah’s category of “bringing up the cud” rather than according to the modern scientific definition of rumination. This answer may be perfectly legitimate. But it also changes the nature of the argument. If “camel” means not only the camel known to the ancient Near East but also every camelid that would one day be discovered in South America, then the claim is no longer as cleanly falsifiable as it first appeared. A new animal does not necessarily refute the verse. It may simply be absorbed into an existing category. The question is far more zoologically and conceptually complex than the standard approach allows. One must define “chewing the cud,” one must identify the hare and hyrax, one must decide whether Torah categories correspond to modern biological taxonomy, and one must determine whether the Talmud’s claim is biological, halachic, phenomenological, or theological.

Then, only a few verses later, the Torah gives us a second “proof” of its Divinity. We are told [Devarim 14:22]: “You shall surely tithe (a’ser t’aser) all the produce of your seed that comes forth from the field year by year”. The Talmud in Tractate Ta’anit [9a] reads this as: “Tithe (a’ser) so that you will become wealthy (tit’asher).” The Talmud goes so far to say that a person is invited to test and to verify this promise, based on the words of the Prophet Malachi [3:10]: “Bring the tithe into the storehouse… and test Me now with this, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you blessing beyond measure.”. Give tithes. Run the experiment. See what happens.

But this proof, too, dissolves under pressure. How would one ever know that the promise worked? Suppose I give tithes and then I lose five thousand dollars. Has G-d failed His test? Not necessarily. Perhaps had I not given tithes I would have lost ten thousand dollars. Suppose I give tithes and then I earn five thousand dollars. Has G-d proved His promise? Not necessarily. Perhaps I would have earned it anyway. The difficulty is that we never observe the counterfactual. We never get parallel access to the life in which we gave and the life in which we did not. There is no control group, no repeatable laboratory condition, no way to isolate the variable. As soon as blessing is interpreted through Providence, every result can be made to fit. Prosperity proves the promise. Loss proves that the loss could have been worse. Delay proves that the reward is still coming. None of these answers is foolish. Some of them are profoundly true. But they mean that the test is not an ordinary test. It cannot compel the sceptic. It can only deepen the belief of one who already lives inside the covenant.

Now we can see that the two proofs are more similar than they first appeared. The kosher-animal proof relies on the interpretation of categories. The tithes proof relies on the interpretation of events. In the first case, the believer can always say that the new animal is really part of an existing “kind,” or that “chewing the cud” means something other than rumination. In the second case, the believer can always say that the financial outcome would have been worse or that the blessing came in a different form. Both arguments are vulnerable to confirmation bias. We notice the data that supports the worldview we already inhabit, and we reinterpret the data that threatens it. The zoological proof says, “No fifth animal exists,” but if one appears, perhaps it is not a fifth animal after all. The tithes proof says, “Give and you will be blessed,” but if blessing is not visible, perhaps it is hidden, delayed, or counterfactual. The problem is not that these claims are false. The problem is that they are not self-proving in the way we would have liked. They do not remove human freedom. They do not force faith upon the unwilling mind. And perhaps this is exactly the point: G-d does not build a world in which faith is unnecessary. He builds a world in which faith is reasonable, but never coerced. There is enough light for the person who wants to see, and enough shadow for the person who refuses. The Torah’s “proofs” are not mathematical demonstrations. They are invitations. The animal kingdom invites us to see creation as authored. Tithes invites us to see our income as entrusted. One looks outward at nature. The other looks inward at livelihood. One asks whether the world bears the signature of its Maker. The other asks whether my bank account does. But neither can be read without a prior decision about how to read reality. The Torah places these two passages side by side to teach that Divine authorship is not proven only by facts and not experienced only by feelings. It emerges in the meeting place between evidence and interpretation, between observation and trust, between the animal in the field and the check written quietly when no one is watching. G-d gives us reasons to believe, but does not take away our ability not to. The deepest proof of Torah from Heaven is not that it wins an argument. It is that it navigates the strange world in which we actually live, a world filled with clues, never stripped of ambiguity, always waiting for man to decide whether he will call those clues “coincidence” or “covenant”.

Shabbat Shalom,

Ari Sacher, Moreshet, 5786

Please daven for a Refu’a Shelema for Rachel bat Malka, Iris bat Chana, Sheindel Devora bat Rina, Esther Sharon bat Chana Raizel, Meir ben Drora, Golan ben Marcelle and Hodayah Emunah bat Shoshana Rachel.

[1] Rabbi Natan Slifkin devotes an entire book, “The Camel, the Hare, and the Hyrax”, to precisely these difficulties.