Where do we flee to?

The Torah classifies animals according to their chief form of locomotion and habitation, be it walking, swimming, flying, or creeping. These divisions appear in this week’s parsha in the section dealing with the permitted and prohibited animals. There are land-based animals, aquatic species, flying creatures, and creeping animals. Each of these groups has its own identifying features attesting to its permissibility for consumption by Jews.

There’s another area of Jewish law where it’s important to know the correct habitat and movement of an animal, and this is in the realm of ritual purity and impurity. When one makes a utensil from the hide or bones of an animal, the finished product is susceptible to receiving impurity from different forms of tumah, such as a dead body. However, if the hide is sourced from an aquatic creature, it cannot receive impurity, in keeping with the Mishna’s ruling that, “whatever is [manufactured from the hide of a creature] in the sea remains pure”.

There is, however, an exception to this rule. Rabbi Akiva rules that a utensil or garment made from the hide of a seal, is susceptible to receiving impurity “for it flees to dry land [when pursued]”. The seal is an animal that is at home in two habitats, water and land. This, of course, leads to the difficulty of determining in which category to place it for the purposes of impurity. Rabbi Akiva rules that because the seal will flee from predators by moving to the shore, dry land is its primary habitat.

Rabbi Mordechai Gifter applied this rule to people: how do we know what group someone belongs to? The answer is to watch where they run when pursued. Where will he or she seek shelter when threatened? It may very well be a place that the person has ignored most of their life.

There are many Jews who have little affiliation with the Jewish community. In good times, they aren’t to be found in a shul or communal centre. But when they are victims of a crime or they suffer a loss, they run straight into the arms of the community. It’s there that they will find comfort and receive support. I recall some years ago a young man came to shul and requested an aliya in order to recite the thanksgiving (gomel) blessing. This man wasn’t a shul-goer but he had just survived an aborted act of crime and he felt the need to come to shul. He was as white as a ghost and was shaking like a leaf when he came onto the bimah. He revealed his true nature by coming into the bosom of the community when under attack.

We tend to define ourselves in reference to the groups we affiliate with and the people we socialise with, but we should consider the uncomfortable question of where we will flee when under attack, for that’s our real home.