In HaTzofe (Friday the fifth of Shevat 5759, January 22, 1999) I published a first response to the pamphlets written by an anonymous writer and distributed in Charedi neighborhoods and yeshivot, trying to shake their faith in the words of Chazal and in a roundabout way also their faith in the words appearing in the Torah. The anonymous writer did not rest, and he has recently published his third pamphlet. In it he takes another step in his attempt to shake the faith in the Written Torah, too.
In the third pamphlet the anonymous writer pretends to clarify for us "what Moses [and he doesn't mean Moses the plumber, he means Moses our teacher, chief of all the prophets] was and was not; what Moses knew and what Chazal knew," all the while mocking the veracity of their words. The author expanded upon the statement "The Torah forbade four animals: the camel, the pig, the hare, and the hyrax, each of which has only one sign of kashrut." He said "This is amazing and wonderful, for the hare and the hyrax aren't ruminants at all! This is what Moses our teacher wrote, dictated by the Glory?" For obvious reasons I cannot quote more of his mockery, none of which does he spare. But we must set matters aright, especially today, the eve of the Sabbath on which we read the portion of Shemini, the portion which deals with pure and impure animals.
The author of the pamphlet cites the explanation by the Siridei Aish (part II, section four) that "the hare moves her jaw similar to the manner of ruminants and therefore it looks as though she chews her cud. The Torah wanted to prevent mistakes, because one could be mistaken and think the animal kosher; it is the same with the hyrax." The anonymous writer grossly mocks the explanation of the Siridei Aish. That anonymous person did not find it proper to ask himself why these two animals do, indeed, move their jaws as do ruminants, a fact known to all. Later we shall return to this.
The author of the pamphlet also cited Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's suggestion that the shafan and arnevet mentioned in the Torah are not the hare and the hyrax. The author of the pamphlet tries to refute the mistaken identity, and to prove that these are the same animals, he cites the story of the Torah translation ordered by King Ptolemy, in which the name arnevet was changed to "young of legs" to keep from injuring the dignity of Ptolemy, for his wife (one version says his mother) had the Greek name for arnevet, an impure animal according to the Torah (Megillah 9b). Indeed, his father was named Lagos, as that animal was called in Greek.
There is a rule in scientific study that if the hypothesis has been proven beyond a doubt, any secondary question which arises is examined with an eye to suiting the answer to the existing proven hypothesis. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and Rabbi Yechiel Weinberg, author of the Siridei Aish, believed that our Torah is a teaching of truth, and when the problem of the arnevet's cud-chewing looked irreconcilable with this fundamental truth, they sought explanations as best they could, given the scientific knowledge of their times. They are not the only ones who reacted this way. Incidentally, Rabbi Dr. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg adopted, in his explanation, the ideas of Rabbi Dr. David Tzvi Hoffman (1777-1851, in his commentary on Leviticus). It should be recalled that many introduced ideas and explanations of the questions raised in the pamphlets. If their explanations are seen to be incorrect, this does not reflect on the veracity of the torah. One must continue to search for the true explanation, and we will find that there is, indeed, a true explanation. Below I will explain the issue at length, due to its importance.
The anonymous author makes a mockery (as we have said) of the Torah's arnevet being a ruminant, and he mocks the words of Rabbi Dr. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch about the identity of the arnevet. But he does not know that Rabbi Weinberg was not the first to raise this idea; many wise people thought as he did.
M.D. Cassuto (1883-1951), considered one of the modern commentators, also adopted Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's words. In his commentary on the Torah he wrote: "The shafan and arnevet mentioned here are not the impure animals now called by these names, for they are not ruminants. There are those who suppose that the animals were included here amongst the ruminants because in ancient times they were thought to be ruminants, due to the motion of their jaws, which resembles that of ruminants, and that the Torah's purpose is not to teach science but to give external signs by which one can distinguish between pure and impure animals."
Many others supposed that the arnevet mentioned in the Torah is not the small animal we now call arnevet. Barth and others were unsure of the identity of the arnevet (see the Ben Yehuda dictionary, entry arnevet, note 3). But now there is no need for these explanations, for even if the small scared animal we call arnevet is that mentioned in the Torah, it presents no difficulty, for this animal is mentioned in the Torah as a ruminant, and it is now clear that the hare is a ruminant, in its own special way.
Much has been written about the problem of the hare, which according to all scholars is not a ruminant. It is thus listed in all textbooks and encyclopedias. It is written in the Torah that the arnevet is a ruminant, for the hare moves its jaws as do all ruminants and there -- in their opinion -- arises the problem. Other suppose that the Torah gave only an external description, and so the hare looks like a ruminant. But those who believe the Torah is Divine cannot attribute an error to the Torah. It is more correct and simple to seek the error amongst people, including the scholars. The question is whether the words can be reconciled with reality as we now know it.
Tzvi Yannai invited me to participate in a symposium on the topic of evolution (December 1988). Also participating was Yosef Neuman, a professor of philosophy and biolgy at Tel Aviv University, known for his anti-religious viewpoint. He raised, amongst other issues, the problem of the hare's lack of rumination. His question: why does the hare make a chewing motion with its jaw as though it really were chewing what it had brought up? Why does it also move its lower jaw, during eating, from right to left, as do all ruminants and in contrast to all non-ruminant animals? Incidentally, the skull of the hare is also built like that of the ruminants.
Professor Neuman answered: "It imitates the cows which are ruminants." It is interesting that this claim is often made by evolutionists. I asked him whether the hare "learned" its method of chewing in a "ruminant school." I further questioned him. The hare does not live in a cowshed, and in nature is not found near ruminants. It has not studied in acting school, so why would it imitate these motions? Why hasn't the dog, which for millennia has accompanied man in general and the farmer with his barn and field animals in particular, learned this "imitation"? How is it possible that it is specifically the hare, which has no connection to ruminants and is not in ruminants' areas, which has learned to imitate their jaw movements? I never did get a germane answer to my questions.
Professor Israel Aharoni (1882-1946), a pioneer in the study of Israeli flora and fauna un the works of Chazal, once asked the famous Professor Delman a question. "How can you explain the amazing fact that the Torah considered the hare and the hyrax to be ruminants?" Professor Delman answered that the skulls of the hare and the hyrax are built in a way that the lower jaw will move from side to side, in contrast to the build of the joint in cats, dogs, etc., where the lower jaw moves towards the upper. In addition, "since the folds in the grinding crowns are widthwise, as in sheep or goats, it means that the hare and the hyrax chew their food as do ruminants; in eating they move their lower jaw from right to left." (I. Aharoni, "Memoirs of a Hebrew Zoologist," book II, 5750, pp. 206-207.)
Professor Aharoni went on to ask why the hare and hyrax skulls are built in a manner similar to those of ruminants and why they chew their food as do ruminants and not as do other animals. Professor Delman did not answer him. It should be clarified that no one has thoroughly examined whether the hare is a ruminant or not. They only determined (see Professor Aharoni's words, below) that it is not because it has only a single stomach and not the special rumen of the ruminants.
In truth, there are two reasons why the hare should be classified as a ruminant. One reason is factual as explained below, while the second reason needs additional scientific clarification. The build of the hare's skull and its digestive organs clearly point to its being a ruminant, even though it has no rumen.
The hare excretes two forms of droppings, hard and soft. The hard droppings are digested and the soft droppings are only partially digested. While the first form of excrement is fully ejected from the body, the second is not. The hare re-ingests the soft droppings directly from the anus, sending it for further digestion. This fact is known to every serious scientist and is mentioned in scientific works. For our issue: what does it matter if the rumination is directly, from a rumen through the esophagus or if the animal collects it from the anus? It is clear that the process of re-digestion is the same. It seems that since the hare is not a perfect ruminant it also does not have split hooves, and therefore was not included amongst the animals permitted for eating.
I will quote a number of lines from "The Psychology [sic] of Animals" by Knut Schmidt Nielsen, a professor of physiology in the Duke University of Copenhagen [sic], published as part of the Foundations of Modern Biology series in the United States, which clearly show that the hare is a ruminant.
"The rabbits (Oryctolagus) and hares (lepus) also (like other cellulose eaters) have a 'blind gut' in which the fermentation of cellulose occurs. They have solved this problem (of cellulose digestion) in an unusual way. They produce two forms of excrement: small, hard, dark pellets which are well-known, and a form of large, soft, and light pellets which the rabbit does not drop; he eats them straight from the anus. The latter sort of excrement is formed in the blind gut and the second ingestion allows digestion and more full use of its bacteria" (Hebrew translation published by Yachdav in its "Science Texts" series, pg. 20).
The author was not bothered at all by the question of ruminants and whether rabbits are ruminants or not. He only tried to explain the digestive processes of the rabbits, as he did that of other animals. The fact is that the rabbit re-ingests the same food which had already been ingested and sent to the stomach, as do all ruminants, so rabbits are ruminants.
It should be noted that the blind gut (the cecum) of the rabbit is different from the blind gut of other animals. In regular animals it is a small protrusion at the end of the intestines. In rabbits, the cecum is unusually large and long in relation to the rest of the intestines. (This is also the case for the horse, but it does not reach the rabbit's proportions, and its location is different.) It is longer and larger than any of the rabbit's other internal organs. In addition, in contrast with other animals in whom the blind gut (the cecum) is at the end of the intestines, the rabbit's blind gut acts to connect the esophagus to the stomach and serves as a passageway for all food; there is no other passageway. The rabbit's cecum is very active in the digestion of food, and it houses millions of microorganisms which help with the digestion. The anatomic build of a "spiral tube" shows that it is quite possible that with a small twist it can push and return some of the undigested food to the rabbit's mouth, so that the rabbit really is chewing cud, not just pretending to. The blind gut of the rabbit takes the place of the rumen in the other ruminants.
The researchers who have categorized the hare amongst the animals which are not ruminants, including Professor Aharoni, never (as we said before) actually undertook scientific examinations. They were satisfied with the fact that the hare has no "additional stomach" which is responsible for returning partially digested food, via the esophagus, for additional chewing by grass eaters. On this basis they ruled that the hare is not a ruminant (Aharoni, "Animal Theory," Tel Aviv, 5683, pg. 67).
But what do we care if the food returns for re-chewing from a special stomach or from the cecum?
Incidentally, the camel lacks the reticulum, found in all ruminants and responsible for returning food for additional digestion, yet no one debates whether camels belong to the ruminant family.
Moreover, the camel ruminates more than do other pure animals. The camel eats thorns and digests them while pure animals are not capable of eating thorns. The camel is able to eat them thanks to the millions of microorganisms in its stomach which assist in breaking the thorns down into their components. The camel does all this without having the stomach structure of other ruminants.
Even if it becomes clear that the hare's cecum does not serve as a tube to return food to the esophagus, the hare re-ingests the insufficiently digested food in its own special way, a characteristic unique to ruminants. It is interesting that the same objective reasons why herbivorous impure animals are forbidden for eating apply to the hare, camel, and hyrax as well, though they are ruminants. This will require a separate article.
From HaTzofe 23 Nisan 5759, April 9, 1999