The dog scared the court's visitors and, to their surprise, refused to leave even after they attempted to drive him away. One of the judges suddenly recalled that about 20 years ago, a famous secular lawyer who insulted the court was cursed by the panel of judges, who wished that his spirit would move on to the body of a dog (considered an impure animal by Halacha). The lawyer passed away several years ago.
Still offended, one of the judges sentenced the poor animal to death by stoning, recruiting the neighbourhood's children to carry out the order. Luckily, the dog managed to escape. The head of the court, Rabbi Avraham Dov Levin, denied that the judges had called for the dog's stoning. But one of the court's managers confirmed the report.
"It was ordered by the rabbis because of the grief he had caused the court," he said. "They didn't issue an official ruling, but ordered the children outside to throw stones at him in order to drive him away. They didn't think of it as cruelty to animals, but as an appropriate way to 'get back at' the spirit which entered the poor dog."
7 comments:
Anyone want to chip in and we can buy off a chunk of a country who's in financial hot water to make an Atheist country? We could stop setting fire to leopards because they may be shape-shifters and stoning dogs because they're the reincarnation of someone who once insulted your great aunt Flo?
I'll pitch in a buck.
No thanks, Ratz. Today, I was at the Christening of the baby boy of a close relative, and while I found the ritual stupid and in some sense even wrong and harmful, the people there with their silly beliefs were my family and they are very dear to me. I wouldn't want to live anywhere where they weren't welcome, not even in The Utopia of Reason and Education. (Well, maybe there, if supernaturalists and other unreasonables were also allowed in, at least with tourist visas...)
Insolitus;
There's a bunch of people who hold female circumcision to be a right and proper tradition.
If you had family amongst them that were otherwise very kind and dear to you, would you still accept it?
Accepting a christening without voicing dissent is approval of a barbaric tradition.
@ Slumlord72
Female genital mulilation is steeped in the same insane mythos and traditions that religion come from.
An Atheist state could be just as bad as a religious one... save that atheists tend not to have traditions of burying people up to their neck in the sand and throwing stones at their heads just because they disagree. We tend to settle on foul language at our worst instead of gunning down dissenters a-la Evangelical Christians in the US or suicide vests over the the desert.
Telling people what to believe? Nonsense; you could believe what you wish but there would be no churches, no priests getting fat on tax-free and work-free lives, no religious fanatics controlling the governing body.
Will it be perfect? Of course not. But it would be a far sight better than most options today.
Are you serious, The Rat King? Because I didn't object to a baby being splashed with some water and called a Christian, you suspect I might also accept little girls having their private parts butchered?
I don't live in a black and white world.
An atheist state where there are no churches or priests getting fat sounds theoretically good to me, but only if it is the natural product of human progress and not an enforced construct.
Thank God the dog got away.
All rituals that involve hurting other beings are insane. Isn't it obvious?
My paternal grandparents were Jewish, and though there is much I love about Judaism (the mizvah quality of helping others etc). I could never become Jewish because I am against circumcision and all such bodily mutilation.
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