Voices We Shall Never Hear

Two animals live with my wife and me in Beersheba, Israel. One of them is a senior blue merle Rough Collie named Kulfi. Kulfi is his short name. He has a longer one on his pedigree. We purchased Kulfi from a breeder in the United States. After meeting Kulfi, I met his mother. His ancestors are listed on his papers.

The other animal who lives with us is a kitten. Kulfi and I found her when she was about a month old, sitting beneath a tree outside a cemetery, staunchly standing her ground, defending herself from the pecking attacks of a large crow, a crow much larger than she was. She has only one name, Nisan. We gave her that name because we found her on the first of the Jewish month, Nisan, earlier this year. She is not purebred but what my mother OBM would have called a Heinz-57, a mixed breed. Nisan’s father was a traveling man.

Last month, Kulfi turned eleven. A website I use that calculates a dog’s comparative age in human terms by breed told me Kulfi is the age, in human terms, of a seventy-three-year-old man. Kulfi and I are the same age. On his next birthday, בע״ה, he will be older than I. He is holding up well, a bit slower than he used to be, negotiates steps more carefully, and seems to sleep a lot more. It is interesting to observe changes in me as I age and to do so simultaneously with such a wonderful animal companion experiencing the same natural process.

Nisan is at the other end of the age spectrum, enjoying all the beauty and fascination in the world. Like all cats, she is a natural hunter, a born predator. I often watch her practicing her martial arts, leaping out from hidden places to surprise her enemy, e.g., my wife going upstairs or doing her morning yoga. Nisan’s claws are incredibly sharp, and we have found no way to persuade her to let us cut them. Our vet, well-schooled in the care of animals, will not even attempt to cut Nisan’s nails. She likes to sit up on high spots and survey her demesne. She claims the right to all of it unequivocally.

Kulfi is mild-tempered. Well, that’s the minimum that one might say about this very docile collie. He cedes to Nisan anything she wants. For example, our living room has two mats. There is one for each animal. One of the mats is especially warm, soft, furry, and larger than the other. Before the coming of Nisan, it was Kulfi’s favorite sleeping spot. No more! If he is resting on it, and Nisan walks over to it for no other reason than to say hello, he vacates it and moves to the smaller one. Nisan seizes the opportunity and stretches herself out regally to enjoy a nap on the big mat. 

If, after a walk, I get Kulfi an ice cube, one of his favorite post-walk treats, and Nisan hears the freezer door open, she comes running into the kitchen. At this point, Kulfi immediately drops his ice cube and leaves the room. Nisan walks over to the fallen ice cube and bats it around like a hockey puck a few times before returning to whatever she was doing before she heard the freezer door open. In an attempt to remedy the situation, I followed my wife’s advice [she raised four children], and I began giving Nisan her own ice cube. She bats it around once or twice, then runs into the living room to get Kulfi’s.

I enjoy having these two animals around me; it’s fair to say that I need them. I learn a lot from them. For instance, Kulfi shows me how to age with dignity and grace. He has patiently accepted his slowly encroaching limitations, adjusted his responses, and lives without complaint. At least, it seems that way to me. And from Nisan? From her, I am constantly reminded of the sheer bliss of life, how interesting the world is, and the pleasure of joyful interaction with someone we like.

Jewish congregations that read the Torah using the annual cycle started over on October 7 this year. So once more, we began with creation, moved quickly to failure, suffered a devastating flood, and had another hope-filled beginning. An interesting aspect of the story, as recorded in Scripture, is its emphasis on the shared fate of humans and animals. Here is an excerpt from the Genesis narrative recorded at 6:17. God is speaking to Noah. The translation is by Robert Alter.

As for me, I am about to bring the Flood, water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh that has within it the breath of life from under the heavens, everything on the earth shall perish.

Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (pp. 75-76). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

We understand that the creatures in the sea survived. But the birds of the air, all humans apart from Noah and his immediate family, and all the earth’s creatures except those on the ark perished. They all suffered the same fate. My wife, Kulfi, Nisan, and I have a shared history and destiny. After the catastrophe, Genesis 8 begins, “And God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark.” Notice that God does not think of only Noah. After the flood waters decrease and the ark is emptied, we read the following in chapter 9. 

And God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “And I, I am about to establish My covenant with you and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the fowl and the cattle and every beast of the earth with you, all that have come out of the ark, every beast of the earth. And I will establish My covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the Flood, and never again shall there be a Flood to destroy the earth.”

Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (p. 87). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

What an absolutely amazing thing! God enters into an agreement and makes a covenant with every living creature. It’s not only about us, we humans.

I have quoted the following passage in past blogs. But I am reminded of it yet again. Indeed, I am reminded of it every time I walk Kulfi or hold Nisan. It is taken from Henry Beston’s book The Outermost House.

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Beston, Henry. The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (p. 35). Kindle Edition. 

The Torah teaches me that Kulfi and Nisan, indeed all animals, are, in Beston’s words, “fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” Now, I am aware that not everyone shares my belief in Scripture. However, I hope that even if you don’t share it, you share and understand the beauty and truth in Beston’s words.

All the best,
Gershon