Humans, Not Animals (Noah)

The generation into which Noah was born was a generation of corruption. Throughout rabbinic literature and Biblical commentary, one can find discussions of what it means that the people had become corrupted. They stole from each other. They took each others’ spouses. They were violent in their dealings. But one of the most interesting Midrashim is one that explains that God decided to wipe out ALL flesh (kol basar, not just all of humankind) because man’s behavior had begun to corrupt the behavior of other species. I am not going to explore the details of what behavior this midrash is inferring, but it goes along the lines of interspecies cohabitation and such.

So how could humankind have such an influence over animal-kind. How did man corrupt beast? The fact is that we do not (and perhaps cannot) understand humankind’s relationship with animals before the flood. In one particularly interesting set of verses in parshat Bereishis, Hashem determines that “it is not good for Adam to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him” (2:18). Hashem then brings all of the animals to man “to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name...but for Adam no fitting helper was found” (Bereishis 2:19).

According to one Midrash, Adam lived closely with the animals, which is why he was able to name them. Only when it was obvious that Adam was different from all the rest did Hashem create the division of Adam and Chava, so that now they were a pair. And while God gave them dominion over the land and the animals (“Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth” - 1:28), perhaps they were still closer in nature to the other creations. Indeed, perhaps this is why they could communicate with the snake.

There are lots of current discussions about what separates humankind from animal-kind, and the list of abilities often include speech and reason and discourse. Speech and reasoning and discourse...is it possible that these distinctions were the result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad?

Perhaps the generations just before the flood could have such influence over the animal kingdom because they did not distinguish themselves from them. After the flood, however, Hashem gives Noah and his family a new understanding of their relationship with the animals they had just preserved: “The fear and the dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky – everything with which the earth is astir– and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand. Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these” (9:2-3).

It is very hard for us, today, to understand both how Adam could have named the animals and how the animals could have been corrupted by a generation (and, one could add, how Noah and his family dwelt in a boat with all of the animals). Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsh points out that herein: “the attachment between man and animal is broken. Animals fear man, he is no longer their guiding master. Man has unlearnt [sic] to understand animals and they keep fearfully away from him.” He later adds, “the bond between humankind and the animal world is torn, and humankind is primarily directed to work on itself and for itself.”

These ideas are particularly fascinating in the 21^st century, in a world where people might have …an emotional support squirrel? PETA? Equivocating animal rights to the Holocaust and perceiving animals to be no different than humans? If world history is an arc, with the end being the coming of Moshiach, and we are in the final centuries before the messianic era, than perhaps there is a reason that people are once again blurring their understanding of the difference of humankind (made in the image of God) and animal-kind.