Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

Science is perhaps the greatest entertainment of all. There is always something new. And just when we begin to weary of yet another multi-million-year-old fossil from Africa, or yet vaster stellar clouds from Hubbleland, the ladies and gentlemen in the white smocks come up with a change of pace. This time it's something from the backyard---a centipede discovered recently in the leaves and dirt of New York City's Central Park. There is no other centipede quite like it, and it qualifies as a species all of its own. A new line of existence, a new franchise in the eco-system.

Actually, such discoveries of hitherto unknown life forms are not at all uncommon. In 1993, for example, the antelope-like wild saola was sighted for the first time in Vietnam.* In the Amazon region, they've been cranking out new monkeys at the rate of about one a year. And the unexplored depths of the oceans promise much more.

However, there are certain life forms that scientists will not find. They will not find any quadruped with cloven hooves that does not chew its cud; nor will they find the opposite, ruminants without cloven hooves.** How do I know? How can anyone place such an arbitrary limit on the possibilities that exist in nature, especially considering that our knowledge of biodiversity is constantly expanding?

Yet, that is exactly what is predicted in the Torah.

According to the Jewish dietary laws stated in Leviticus, only animals that both chew their cud and have split hooves are kosher (permissible for Jews to eat). The rest of the animal kingdom---which have neither sign---are forbidden to eat. The Torah also specifies four animals that have one of these two signs: the camel, the hare and the hyrax (a small mammal indigenous to the Negev) are ruminants with closed hooves; the pig is singled out as the only split-hoofed animal which does not chew its cud. There is, according to the Torah, no other example in nature of an animal possessing only one of these indices of kashrut.

The Talmud extrapolates from these verses that if "a person was traveling [and in need of food] and found a toothless animal (and cannot determine if it chews its cud, since it is no longer possible to verify this fact from the position of its teeth) he should check its hooves. If it is cloven-hoofed, it is certainly kosher, providing that he recognizes that it is not a pig. If the animal is not cloven-hoofed, it is certainly impure."

But that is not the end of the story. The ramifications of this passage in the Torah extend far beyond the eccentricities of the laws of kashrut. For the Five Books of Moses is a law for all times and all places. How could its author have known that no other species like the four anomalies mentioned above would ever be located? Moses never made it to the forests of Vietnam or the Amazon. How could he or any other human being know or dare to predict what would be found? And yet, here we are, 3300 years after the giving of the Torah, and we have yet to find another animal like the camel, hare, hyrax or pig, displaying only one of the kashrut signs!

There are those who claim that the Torah is not divine, that it was written by men like any other book. But, unlike other books, it contains knowledge that no human being could possess.

Of course, they are still finding new things, new species. Perhaps someday soon a quadruped that chews its cud but does not split its hoof, or vice versa, will suddenly appear in the shrinking rain forests of Brazil or Borneo, or in the leafy arborage or sunny meadows of Central Park.

So there is still hope for those who cling to disbelief. Indeed, free will is a fundamental part of Judaism. Even regarding such vital precepts as the existence of G-d and the divine origin of Torah, it is ultimately our decision whether or not to accept them. We have, in a sense, permission to disbelieve.

Which is just the way G-d wants it.

* The Torah makes a similar prediction about fish that is even more sweeping. Only fish with fins and scales are permissible. But it so happens, the Torah declares, that all fish with scales also have fins. Therefore even if the fins were removed, or you only have a section of the fish without the fins, you can assume it had fins and is kosher. A known exception is a certain poisonous fish that was once brought for rabbinical inspection in Vienna, that had scales but no fins. Why was it not mentioned in the Torah? Because the Sages were not concerned to mention a fish known to be poisonous, since no one would think to eat it anyway. (MiShulchan Gavoha)

** This animal is a ruminant with split hooves, which would seem to qualify it for kosher eating. However, since there is no existing tradition regarding it, there remains a question whether it would be permissible to eat one, if you could catch it. In any case, it clearly poses no difficulty for the Torah passage to be cited, since only those animals with one indication of kashrut are limited to the foursome in Leviticus.

Sources: This essay was adapted from "Do We Know All The Kosher Animals?" Zamir Cohen, Science Outscienced, Pp. 42-45, citing Leviticus 11:4-7, Chulin 59a, Sifrei, Parshas Re'eh 102, Torah Temimah to Leviticus, paragraph 17. Information regarding the wild saola was from Nature, 396, 410, cited in Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, Fall 1999, P. 128; the hyrax description is from The Living Torah by Aryeh Kaplan; new monkeys were reported on by the Associated Press, December 28, 1997.

The title of this essay is a play on the title of Rabbi Lawrence Keleman's excellent work, "Permission to Believe", in which he explains the rational basis for belief in G-d, along with a critique of the irrationality of atheism.

Reprinted with permission from www.e-geress.org.