{"id":38029,"date":"2021-12-17T01:53:14","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T09:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=38029"},"modified":"2021-12-16T18:41:57","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T02:41:57","slug":"wolf-lamb-find-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2021\/12\/17\/wolf-lamb-find-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolf & lamb find peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her new book, Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan explores lessons for humans from the animal world.<\/em><\/p>\n

Good things come in small packages. A thin volume by Vancouver rabbi, philosopher and academic Laura Duhan Kaplan packs ancient and modern wisdom into a delightful parcel.<\/p>\n

Duhan Kaplan is director of inter-religious studies and professor of Jewish studies at Vancouver School of Theology, professor emerita of philosophy at University of North Carolina at Charlotte and rabbi emerita of Vancouver\u2019s Or Shalom Synagogue. Her book Mouth of the Donkey: Re-imagining Biblical Animals<\/em> was released this year. To her resum\u00e9, you might add a sort of Dr. Doolittle role, as she returns frequently to her ability to \u201ctalk\u201d to the animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did a little research into communication,\u201d she writes. \u201cObserve a creature\u2019s form of life, discern its form of communication.\u2026 I didn\u2019t look specifically for sound, gesture or expressions of feeling. Instead, I just watched animals interact. And, bit by bit, I began to learn their languages. Since then, I\u2019ve conversed with cats by looking at things and then back at the cat. I\u2019ve given information to wasps and hornets by making gestures. Spoken to crows with vocal clicks and clacks arranged in sentences. (Since I have a limited crow vocabulary, it\u2019s a string of nonsense words, but they give me credit for trying.) And, oddest of all, I\u2019ve befriended flies through telepathy. After all, sight, sound, thought and movement are all wavelengths on which communication happens. Different creatures favour different wavelengths. A good neighbour pays attention and meets others halfway.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Disclosure: In the book\u2019s acknowledgements, Duhan Kaplan notes that I critiqued some of the earliest iterations of a couple of chapters.)<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>In the book, Duhan Kaplan explains that she uses four kabbalistic levels of analysis: peshat<\/em>, plain literal meaning; derash<\/em>, exposition of recurring ethical themes; remez<\/em>, hints to allegorical meanings; and sod<\/em>, secret allusions to God\u2019s true nature.<\/p>\n

She considers both the depictions of humans as sheep in God\u2019s \u201cflock,\u201d and the intertwining of the lives of the ancient Israelites with their own flocks \u2013 \u201cTake your sheep and cattle and go!\u201d God tells the Israelites in Exodus.<\/p>\n

She contemplates the multiple times where the ancient literature depicts a donkey as a spiritual guide. She weaves in personal stories, such as visit to a donkey refuge here in British Columbia.<\/p>\n

\u201cEquines communicate well through touch. So, with my hand scratching his neck, we had a wordless conversation.\u201d This segues into the Bible\u2019s \u201cmost famous donkey,\u201d that of Balaam, whose interaction with an angel sends Balaam on, so to speak, a different path.<\/p>\n

Biblical writers, both Jewish and Christian, she writes, associate donkeys with \u201chope, divine guidance and messianic time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The blurry line between humans and other animals is a recurring theme, as is the transfiguration of one sort of creature into another. In the Book of Numbers, when Moses sends 12 scouts to tour the land of Canaan, they come back with stories of wonder and terror. Vineyards produce clusters of grapes so large that\u00a0 two people are needed to carry them but the farmers are gigantic \u2013 \u201cNext to them, we feel like grasshoppers.\u201d But, as the story unfolds, a short 40 years later, the Canaanites come to see the Israelites not as grasshoppers but as a powerful plague of locusts: \u201cThey will lick up everything around us!\u201d declares the king.<\/p>\n

Isaiah\u2019s oracle about the wolf and the lamb living in peace is seen by many as a fable of human coexistence. Lambs, on the other hand, can represent defeated nations. But Duhan Kaplan flips power dynamics, noting that, in Isaiah\u2019s oracle, the lambs control the land and exhibit a model for coexistence: \u201cThe lambs are peaceful; they govern without a policy of revenge. Graciously and with mercy, they allow the wolves to sojourn as guests.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book takes a surprising turn to the immediate present with a discussion of Indigenous-settler peace and friendship treaties and how they may apply to the reconciliation process our country is currently undergoing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe treaties are an expression, I might say, of people committed to an ethic like the one Isaiah describes,\u201d writes Duhan Kaplan. \u201cLike the wolf and the lamb, they resist conquest and revenge. They welcome one another as fellow residents. Like the lion and the ox, who share a food source, they rise to the opportunity for peace. And, like the bear and the cow, they understand that the relationship must be renewed in every generation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her new book, Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan explores lessons for humans from the animal world. Good things come in small packages. A thin volume by Vancouver rabbi, philosopher and academic Laura Duhan Kaplan packs ancient and modern wisdom into a delightful parcel. Duhan Kaplan is director of inter-religious studies and professor of Jewish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[2723,9159,3076,218,23,21111,2172],"class_list":["post-38029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-animals","tag-bible","tag-education","tag-judaism","tag-laura-duhan-kaplan","tag-mouth-of-the-donkey","tag-torah"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}