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Rav
Hirsch on Compassion for Animals
Everything around us was created by God and serves
Him. Every force of nature is the messenger of God;
matter is what God has apportioned to these forces to
work with, in, and through, in accordance with His mighty
laws. Everything exists in God's service, at its post,
in its time, to fulfill God's Word with the means and
powers allocated to it, contributing its share to Him,
to become part of one all-inclusive entity. Everything
serves God (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Nineteen
Letters, Letter Three, trans. Karin Partitzky, Jerusalem:
Feldheim 1995).
With ten utterances the world was created. What does
this come to teach us? Indeed, could it not have been
created with one utterance? It was to exact punishment
from the wicked who destroy the world that was created
with ten utterances and to bestow goodly reward upon
the righteous who sustain the world that was created
with ten utterances (Mishna: Avos 5:1).
Commentary: It was not with just one word, one summons
of Creation, that the Almighty brought this world into
being, the whole of it and every detail; for if it had
been created in this manner, everything would be directly
dependent on God's Word for its existence, life, and
functioning. Instead, He called His world into existence
in ten stages; He created an abundance of forces, intermingled
and functioning closely together, according to His Word
- and then He separated them, so that each had to sustain
the other: none was henceforth able to exist and function
by itself, but had to be sustained by fellow creatures
and, in turn, had to help them exist and function. In
this way everything contributes according to its strength,
however much or little, to the existence of the whole;
and if it destroys a fellow creature, it robs itself
of what it needs for its own existence (Rabbi Samson
Raphael Hirsch, The Nineteen Letters, Letter
Three).
Guided by the Torah, we have discovered the position
of man within Creation. He is to be neither a god nor
slave of this earthly world, but a brother and fellow
worker. However, because of the nature and scope of
his service, he holds the rank of the firstborn; he
is to be the administrator of the Earth, and it is his
task to attend to everything on it and further it in
accordance with God's will. It is only from God, the
source of all power, that he has received the right
to appropriate the world for his own use; and with this
privilege comes also the duty to take only that which
the Giver has permitted and to use it according to His
Will (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Nineteen Letters,
Letter Five).
The Earth was not created as a gift to you - you have
been given to the Earth, to treat it with respectful
consideration, as God's Earth, and everything on it
as God's Creation, as your fellow creature, to be respected,
loved, and helped to attain its purpose according to
God's Will. To this end, your mind is able to form the
right image of all that exists; to this end, your heartstrings
vibrate sympathetically with every cry of distress sounding
anywhere in Creation, and with every glad sound uttered
by a joyful creature; to this end, you are happy when
the flower blossoms and sad when it wilts (Rabbi Samson
Raphael Hirsch, The Nineteen Letters, Letter
Four).
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