Parshat Noach - Sensitive Souls
The Ramban writes in Bereishit (1:29) on the verse “Behold I have given to you all herbage of yielding seed that is on the surface of the entire earth” that originally man was only allowed to eat from the vegetation of the earth, but from the flesh of the animals, man was not permitted. Only until Noach was such permission granted (9:3, Sanhedrin 59b).
The Ramban explains that this was granted to Noach specifically, for since he saved their species, he would be permitted to slaughter them for their meat.
At first glance the connection between the saving of the animals and their slaughter seems perplexing. How is it logical to say that since he saved them from their death and extinctions, their death would come from his hand? Wouldn't it follow and be more fitting to say that since he saved them from death he couldn't be the one to cause their death?
In fact, we find a similar parallel for such a concept later in the Torah. The first plague that G-d decreed upon Egypt was the turning the Nile River into blood. The plague of blood came through the hands of Aharon and not Moshe; as Rashi explains, “since he was saved through the Nile it would have been wrong for him [Moshe] to be the instrument to inflict a plague upon it”. So too, one could argue that since the saving of the animals came through the hands of Noach, that hand could not be the instrument in their death. For if Moshe was barred from causing pain to the Nile since he was saved through it, Noach; who saved the animals all the more so could not be the the once to slaughter the animals.
In truth the only person through whom the permission to slaughter the animals could be granted was Noach and his children. The most fitting of conduits to such a privilege could only be given to those that are of such spiritual and selfless stature as of Noach and his children who toiled for forty days and forty nights with great care in serving and feeding the animals. Only those so attuned to the sensitivity of the animals could be the ones to kill them and consume them for their own pleasure.
This level of sensitivity to animals is echoed by Rav Shamshon Rephael Hirsch:
There are probably no creatures that require more the protective Divine word against the presumption of man than the animals, which like man have sensations and instincts, but whose body and powers are nevertheless subservient to man. In relation to them man so easily forgets that injured animal muscle twitches just like human muscle, that the maltreated nerves of an animal sicken like human nerves, that the animal being is just as sensitive to cuts, blows, and beatings as man. Thus man becomes the torturer of the animal soul, which has been subjected to him only for the fulfillment of humane and wise purposes . . . (Horeb, Chapter 60, Verse 415)
This is perhaps what the Ramban is telling us, in connecting the permission to slaughter the animals and eat their meat and Noach saving them from extinction. That by caring for them they showed that they were most capable of not losing their humanity and sensitivity to them while using them for their own benefit.
Shabbat Shalom.
