A few weeks ago we welcomed a new addition to the family: the grand-dog. When we walk through the door to see our grandchildren, a sandy-coloured furball scoots out to greet us, licking our outstretched fingers like a lollipop. Minnie the maltipoo has admitted us to the circle of her affections.
Today there is nothing remarkable about Jewish families owning a dog but historically we were not a doggy people. In Lennie Bruce’s famous Jewish/goyish shtick, dogs would have firmly belonged to the latter.
There is hardly a precedent for keeping them in the Bible, where they appear as creatures of menace, gobbling up corpses (wicked Queen Jezebel) or hounding heroes (David). Our ancestors may have been shepherds but you won’t find an episode of One Patriarch and His Dog (although sheepdogs get a mention in Job). At the time of the Exodus, the Israelites are promised that no dog will bare its tongue against them – not exactly a reference to a friendly family companion.
On the positive side, the name of the Torah hero Caleb seems derived from the word for dog; alternatively it could mean “whole-hearted” but either way it indicates his loyalty, in comparison with most of the other spies who went off the rails. The Mishnah prohibits the rearing of dogs in the land of Israel unless kept on a chain: clearly rabbis were thinking of the large, snarling kind, not snuggle-up boutique breeds. Our embrace of dogs today reflects conformity to the mores of modern suburbia, though ownership is not evenly distributed geographically. I can’t recall seeing a peyoted Chasid with a pooch on a lead in Golders Green, but a dog out for a walk with a kippah-wearing owner is not uncommon in Finchley.
When I was young, we had a dog after my mother, who had grown up with pets, prevailed on my father to get one. Forbidden to enter the dining room, on Friday nights as soon as the bensching started, we could hear him padding around the kitchen in anticipation of the imminent arrival of his Shabbat treat, a piece of challah dipped in gravy, plus the occasional bone (which he proceeded to bury between the cushions of the sofa). When we opened the door for Elijah at Pesach, we hoped to hear the bark that would herald the entry of our spiritual guest whose presence was beyond human detection.
But Pesach presents challenges. If you observe the ritual of bedikat chametz, the search for chametz, on the eve of the festival, you must be sure to reach the carefully placed crumbs of leaven before your pet. And I am sure somewhere in the Jewniverse there must be a story of a tail-wagging puppy arriving triumphantly at the Seder table with the afikoman in its mouth.
Our attraction to animals was illustrated earlier this year in the response to an appeal from the publisher of a forthcoming siddur for pets compiled by three senior Progressive and Masorti rabbis, one of whom has no fewer than six dogs in his household and another who is the author of a previous book, Things My Dog Has Taught Me.
Within days it met the £10,000 target required to underwrite the publication of Beloved Creatures, a collection of readings, poems and prayers to mark the life cycle of pets that is due out by Chanukah.
No doubt some would regard the very idea of such a volume as barking. But the traditional liturgy already contains a number of brachot to celebrate nature including for exotic beasts. So why not add something that recognises the boon that pets bring to the home?
As Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand notes in one contribution to the volume, a dog can be a tutor of “patience, responsibility and tenderness” for children. Who would not echo the hope “May she remind them that playfulness is to be treasured at any age”?
Pets can be redeemers of loneliness. You can rely on their attention without having to prise them off their screens. But while their benefits are manifold, when you tot up the vet’s fees, the grooming and other expenses, so can be the cost. I am not sure we will be joining the kosher kennel club any time soon.
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