Greetings folks! Welcome to A Song of Zion, our weekly check-in and virtual minyan for Jews on Daily Kos. This is an open thread, and we treat it as a safe space for Jewish folks here. Non-Jews are welcome but we ask that they listen more than speak. No squabbling, please: if you want to fight, please step outside. (H/T wasplover)
This week’s Parsha follows up the ten commandments with some more rules. Notably included are laws regarding slavery, forbidden foods, and theft. Some punishments are meted out, and a lot of what’s written here lays the groundwork for Kashrut and other important Jewish customs.
There’s also some interesting stuff about animals here:
And if a bull gores a man or a woman and [that one] dies, the bull shall surely be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, and the owner of the bull is clear.
But if it is a [habitually] goring bull since yesterday and the day before yesterday, and its owner had been warned, but he did not guard it, and it puts to death a man or a woman, the bull shall be stoned, and also its owner shall be put to death
I found this really interesting, because it ties in the owner’s previous knowledge of the bull’s temperament to responsibility. That is, the punishment is much greater if a bull kills someone, if the owner had witnessed previous bad behavior. It made me think of laws regarding dogs, and how, while they differ from state to state, generally hold a guardian fully culpable for damages caused by the dog.
Here’s an example from Florida:
767.04 Dog owner’s liability for damages to persons bitten.—The owner of any dog that bites any person while such person is on or in a public place, or lawfully on or in a private place, including the property of the owner of the dog, is liable for damages suffered by persons bitten, regardless of the former viciousness of the dog or the owners’ knowledge of such viciousness.
I tried to find laws about similar liability in Judaism specific to dogs, and the best I found was this. But it was more about whether or not have a dog as a pet is allowed at all. Owning a “bad dog” is strictly forbidden, but I found nothing about specific repercussions for bites. I want to guess the rules would follow what Mishpatim lays out for bulls. If anyone here can chime in with more information on this issue, I’d love to hear it.
I’m not sure what I think about the lack of liability for a previously well behaved animal causing damage. This is why we have leash laws folks! What do you all think?
I saw Billy Joel in concert last summer along with Stevie Nicks. One of the great Jewish musicians if you ask me.