The Princeton Devaluation: Man, the Animal-Man

by Rabbi Moshe Dovid Tendler

The value system which directed the development of Torah Judaism places humans at the apex of creation. The developmental principle of Torah ethics is the axion: a human being is of infinite worth. When Noah left the ark after the flood waters receded, G-d instructed him as to the new relationship between man and animal. Indeed, Torah law obligates us to care for our animals and proscribes us from causing them unnecessary pain. However, there is no equality between man and animal. The relationship is one of owner and possession, as expressed in Genesis [9:2-3], "all the animals that inhabit the earth and the stars I have given to you...to consume."

Man is not an animal although he shares many animal traits with infrahuman species. Man is the only species created in G-d's Image, "To populate this world and to master it." [Genesis 1:28] Last month, Princeton University appointed Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher, to a tenured professorship of bioethics. Who is this Peter Singer whose three grandparents died in the Holocaust? Dr. Harold Shapiro, President of Princeton University and Chairman of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, defined him as one who "challenges long established ways of thinking."

And what are his challenges? I quote:

1) "Truly ethical behavior will not flourish until we abandon the fallacy of 'sanctity of life.'"

2) "The moral order that supposes that human beings are extraordinarily precious because G-d made them so, must be rejected."

3) "To consider that the pleasures and suffering of other species are of inferior significance is to be guilty of 'speceism.' Some infanticide is not as important as killing a happy cat."

4) "Until a baby is capable of self-awareness, there is no controlling reason not to kill it to serve the preferences of the parents...a period of twenty-eight days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to live as others."

5) "It might be more compassionate to carry out medical experiments on hopelessly disabled, unconscious orphans than on healthy rats."

A headline in an Australian newspaper read, "Good Riddance to a Warped Philosopher." But just how warped is he when measured to our societal ethics? Do we not permit first trimester abortion even if the fetus is perfectly healthy, but in the opinion of the parents, of the "wrong sex?" A study of two hundred medical students at Ben Gurion University to determine their attitudes toward animal rights revealed frightening statistics. The study was directed by Professor and Dean, Shimon Glick, a fine talmud chochom and internationally acclaimed endocrinologist. He posed a dilemma in which students had to choose between saving their dog or an unknown vagrant from drowning in a situation where only one of the two could be saved. Only seventy-three percent chose to save the vagrant instead of the dog. Their attitude toward sanctity of life was revealed in their answer to the preposition: Do you agree that humans deserve different treatment than animals because of the "sanctity of human life?" Only seventy-one percent of these future physicians agree.

We have not done well enough in transmitting our value system to the next generation. Seventy-one percent is hardly a passing grade when dealing with life and death decisions. Princeton has forfeited the traditional role of a University, which is to transmit society's values to a new generation, in favor of sensationalism and intellectual ferment. It is a warped substitution of educational goals.