Pesach and pets
Apr. 12th, 2006 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioDuring Pesach we are not permitted to eat, own, or benefit from chametz (leaven, but it's more complicated than that now). Traditional interpretations of halacha raise this as a problem for pet owners, because keeping your pets alive benefits you. So you have to find compliant forms of pet food, or send the pets elsewhere for a week, or perhaps sell the pets along with your chametz (I'm not sure if that works -- that would make you the custodian of someone else's pets for the week).
I think this interpretation of "benefit from" makes sense in the case of livestock (that you're ultimately going to profit from in some way), but I don't see it for pets. Pets aren't profit centers; they're family members -- you can argue about pecking order within the family, but that's another matter.
Still, I am mindful of the traditional problem. I can't change the food (one is on a special diet), and I'm not going to send them away or sell them, but I can still do something, without even invoking compassion or arguing about whether pikuach nefesh (serious health issues) applies to non-humans.
So, I hereby transfer ownership of the cat food in the house to the cats.
I think this interpretation of "benefit from" makes sense in the case of livestock (that you're ultimately going to profit from in some way), but I don't see it for pets. Pets aren't profit centers; they're family members -- you can argue about pecking order within the family, but that's another matter.
Still, I am mindful of the traditional problem. I can't change the food (one is on a special diet), and I'm not going to send them away or sell them, but I can still do something, without even invoking compassion or arguing about whether pikuach nefesh (serious health issues) applies to non-humans.
So, I hereby transfer ownership of the cat food in the house to the cats.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 03:48 pm (UTC)Are non-humans ever bound by the halacha at all?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 04:18 pm (UTC)However, there is the following joke:
A Jewish hiker is lost in the woods, when, all of a sudden, he is confronted by an obviously hungry bear.
He realizes that he is in SERIOUS trouble, as the bear is evidently thinking of him as a snack, and he starts to say the Sh'ma, which you are supposed to attempt to say before death, if you can manage it.
Then he notices that the bear is ALSO praying in Hebrew!
"Amazing!" he thinks, "I'm saved! The bear is ALSO a member of the tribe!"
Then he hears WHAT the bear is saying:
". . . shehakol n'heyeah bidvaro. . . "
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 05:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 05:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 05:43 pm (UTC)Nope. It's not about what they can eat; it's about what I can own. So since I'm not going to dip into the kibble anyway, it's not like I actually need to own their food. Ok, I can't use their food to feed strays, but I wasn't going to do that anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 05:54 pm (UTC)Is Parrot Food Kosher?
Date: 2006-04-23 02:04 pm (UTC)("Are parrots religious?" is a disturbing question for another time. Short answer: No.)
Depending upon the diet the parrot is given, there may be grain products, where the question is "Is it chametz free?" Interesting question, and on looking into it, I've got a headache.
The problems of transfering ownership of items to a creature that can understand ownership, token economies, cause and effect and can talk about it is an exercise left to the reader.