The rabbinic depiction of animals as extensions of humanity is further indicated in the rabbis’ belief that animals can manifest the values of their masters, both for good and for ill, and be punished along with them. For instance, in describing the debauchery that took place before the flood, the Sages ask why God, in destroying humanity, had to eradicate the animals as well. One answer given is that human misbehavior affected the animal world, so that “even cattle, beasts, and fowl consorted with dissimilar species.”⁴⁶ A second answer given stresses that animals have no existence independent of man: “To what may this be compared? To a man who made a wedding feast for his son, and prepared all manner of food. Days [before the feast], his son died. He then stood up and knocked down the canopy, saying, ‘I have done all this only for my son. Now, what do I need a canopy for? Similarly, God said, I have created the animals only for man; now that man sins, what do I need the animals for?’”⁴⁷

Indeed, no account of the rabbinic approach to the animal world can avoid mentioning the rabbinic tales of animals who adopted the ethics and piety of their masters. R. Hanina ben Dosa’s donkey, for example, refused to eat grain provided it by thieves:

It once occurred that the donkey of R. Hanina ben Dosa was stolen by robbers, who hid it in a courtyard, and left it straw and barley and wa­ter—but it would not eat or drink. They said: Why should we leave it, that it may die and stink up the courtyard? They stood up and opened the gate and sent it out; and it wandered until it reached the home of R. Hanina ben Dosa. When it reached him his son heard its voice. He said to [his father]: Father, that sounds like the voice of our animal. He said to him, My son, open the door, for it is dying of hunger. He stood and opened the door, and left it straw and barley and water and it ate and drank. They [the Sages] therefore said: Just as the righteous of generations past were pious, so were their animals as pious as they.⁴⁸

Similarly, in an amusing story, R. Pinhas ben Yair’s donkey is described as too religious for its own good:

R. Pinhas ben Yair was once traveling. He stayed at an inn, and they gave barley to his donkey—but it did not eat. They shelled it—but it did no teat.... Said he to them: Perhaps it is untithed. They tithed [the barley] and it ate. He said: This poor beast attempts to perform the will of its Crea­tor and you feed it untithed food! His students said to him: But did our master not teach us that animal feed is exempt from tithing? Said he to them: And what shall I do with this poor fool [i.e., the donkey], that it is stringent on itself! ⁴⁹

Building on this notion, the Sages argued that because animals are to some extent both extensions and mirrors of their masters, we can encounter animals that are worthy of emulation:

There once was a pious man who had a cow for plowing. After sometime the man became poor and sold the cow to a Gentile. The Gentile plowed with it for six weekdays; on the Sabbath he took it out to plow, and it chafed under the yoke and did not want to work. He hit it but it refused to budge. When he saw this, he went to the pious man and said: “Come take your cow, for six days I have worked with it, and on the seventh I have taken it out and it refused to do any work at all, and no matter how much I hit it, it refuses to budge.” When he said this, the pious man understood why it did not do work, for it had been trained not to work on the Sab­bath. Said the pious man: “Come, and I will make it plow.” When he reached it, he said in its ear, “Cow, cow! When you were in my keep you would rest on the Sabbath; now that my sins have caused [my poverty] I have sold you to a non-Jew, please stand and perform the will of your master.” It immediately stood and sought to work. The Gentile said to the pious man, “I will not let you go until you tell me what you did, and what you said in its ear; maybe you bewitched it!” Said the pious man, “Such and such is what I said to him.” When the Gentile heard this, he paled, and shook, and judged to himself: If this [animal] that has no speech, intellect, or understanding recognizes its Creator, I whom God created in his image and gave intellect and understanding, shall I not recognize my Creator? He immediately converted and merited to study Tora, and he was called R. Yohanan the Son of a Cow.⁵⁰

Having concluded that the concept of animals as extensions of human social values is a prominent one in rabbinic literature, let us now return to our central subject. What, for the Mishna and Talmud, is the primary purpose of the laws of kashrut? The rabbis, in answering this question, cited the very passage in Leviticus 20 with which our own answer began, and founded their explanation of kashrut upon it. The most famous version of this passage is cited by Rashi in his commentary on that verse:

R. Elazar ben Azarya said: How do we know that one should not say, “I am disgusted by the flesh of swine, and I do not desire to dress my self in kilayim [forbidden mixtures of fabrics]”; rather one should say, “I do desire, but what shall I do now that my Father in Heaven has so decreed upon me?” The verse thus teaches us, “and I have separated you from the nations to be unto me,” that your separation from them shall be for my sake, removing oneself from sin and accepting upon oneself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven.⁵¹

Let us analyze this extraordinary statement. R. Elazar is remarking on two forbidden things: Pork, which it is forbidden to eat; and kilayim, a gar­ment made out of wool and linen that, according to Leviticus, it is forbid­den to wear. For the Talmud, both prohibitions are paradigmatic examples of the hok, the divine commandment the reasons for which are not readily accessible to man. Jews, R. Elazar insists, ought not to see these substances as inherently abhorrent; one should, he argues, express a desire to eat pork and to wear kilayim. Rather, the Jew is to refrain from these actions only out of a desire to dedicate himself to and obey God. But R. Elazar could have chosen any number of commandments that are similarly mysterious to make this point, and founded his statement on any number of biblical verses that demand a Jew’s dedication to God. Yet the mishnaic sage focuses on two prohibitions that obligate separation or distinction: Separating the forbidden and permitted animals and distinguishing between two materials in the creation of cloth. The commandments, he asserts, must be kept as a fulfillment o f God’s having demanded our separation from the nations and our cleaving unto him. The prohibitions of kashrut and kilayim, R. Elazar stresses, are to be understood not as the banning of the inherently abomi­nable, but rather as instructions to be obeyed out of a desire to express the unique Jewish dedication to God, which was effected by God separating one people from all others. The Tora, when it comes to commandments such as these, leaves the Jew in the dark as to why God prohibited the pig and not the deer, and why wool cannot be mixed with linen but cotton can. But our ignorance in this regard, R. Elazar insists, is essential, for only then can Jews observe these laws as expressions of Jewish chosenness. Contra Nahmanides and Maimonides, one is to see the flesh of forbidden fish or fowl not as disgusting, or deadly, but as delicious. Any other motivation in keeping these commandments would, R. Elazar argues, detract from their primary purpose: Expressing, and effecting, the separation of the Jewish people from the nations.

Interestingly, Maimonides himself takes note of this rabbinic statement not in his Guide of the Perplexed but in his earlier work: His commentary on the Mishna. Noting that the philosophers insist that the virtuous man must not only act ethically, but desire the right and the good, Maimonides asks how the rabbis can assert that one ought to desire to sin, and to refrain only because of God’s command. He answers that the rabbis are talking about command­ments that have no ethical basis at all, but are purely religious in nature:

But they are in fact both true, and there is no disagreement between them at all. And that is that the evils which are considered evil by the philoso­phers, regarding which they said that one who does not desire them is greater than one who desires them but overcomes his urge regarding them, these are the things which are well known by all men that they are evil, such as murder, theft and usury, and to harm one who did not harm him… and it is these commandments regarding which the Sages said that had they not been written they would have been worthy of being written, and they are called by some of the later [Jewish] Sages the “rational com­mandments,” and there is no question that the soul that desires any of these things, and is drawn to them, that it is lacking; and that the greater soul will not desire any of these things from the beginning, and not be distressed in refraining from them. But the things regarding which the Sages said that one who overcomes his urge is greater, and receives more reward, those are the non-rational laws, and it is true that had the Tora not commanded these they would not be evils at all, and therefore the Sages said that he should not refrain from desiring them.⁵²

Maimonides, in his commentary on the Mishna, thus draws an impor­tant distinction. It is only, he argues, when it comes to laws for which no obvious reason exists that one ought to desire to violate them. The rabbis, in arguing that one can desire to eat swine, are choosing a commandment that is in no way ethical, but rather spiritual or symbolic. His comments, however, clearly contradict his own interpretation of kashrut in his Guide, in which he insists that the laws of kashrut are perfectly rational, and therefore, it would seem, one ought to adhere to the Levitical diet whether or not it was commanded by God. If pork is prohibited because its inges­tion would inevitably turn one’s house into a toilet, how could one virtu­ously desire to partake in pig meat? The obvious conclusion, the younger Maimonides might have said, is that there is nothing medically dangerous about non-kosher food at all; rather, particular animals have been chosen for the Jewish diet in order to serve as an expression of Jewish chosenness. In fact, the implication is that the only motivation for abominating pork is the Almighty’s prohibiting it to the Jewish people, so that it may express its having been chosen by, and its dedication to, God.