Animals, Empathy, and Raẖamim in the Study of Religion

Abstract

Both classical and contemporary Jewish texts, surveyed here, articulate a religious opposition to hunting for sport. This essay interprets compassion-based rabbinic opposition to hunting as reflecting a pragmatic concern with cultivating a regard and even a reverence for the capacities of empathy and sympathy. In particular, this “redescription” will analyze the rabbinic opposition to hunting in terms of more basic “building blocks” of religion, specifically empathy and sympathy as defined by the life sciences. I conclude that the most complete way to understand compassion-based rabbinic opposition to hunting is as, simultaneously, a society-forming performance, a symbolic statement about human attitudes towards life, and—the focus of the present essay—a vehicle for responding to the “building block” capacities for empathy and sympathy. A concluding section considers the implications of this case study for religious studies, arguing for the value of considering animals as participants in religious ritual.