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Dec. 1, 2008

Max Freidlander, as told to Jacklyn C. Wadler: India Inkings

Mark Steyn: Whodunit!?

Nov. 28, 2008

Rabbi Ahron Rapps: An evil seed that didn't have to be

Melanie Phillips: Carpe diem --- or can we all relax now?

Nov. 26, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet the Orthodox Jew who laid groundwork for scientific development of ordnance that undergirds America's current world leadership

Andrea Simantov: Shades of life

Nov. 25, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Getting Emotional For Influence

The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman : Thanksiving feast!

Nov. 24, 2008

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: 'I just Became a grandchild!'

Barry Rubin: Don't flatter your enemies, protect your friends

Nov. 21, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?

Caroline B. Glick: Civilization walks the plank

Nov. 20, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto

Nov, 19, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality

Elliot B. Gertel: 'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?

Nov, 18, 2008

Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason

Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?

Nov, 17, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason

Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?

Nov, 14, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia

Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead

Nov, 13, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic

The Kosher Gourmet by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla

Nov, 12, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers

Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks

Nov, 11, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?

Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate

Nov, 10, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?

Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist

Nov, 7, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality

Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy

Nov, 6, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism

The Kosher Gourmet By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes

Nov, 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors

Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie

Nov, 4, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law

Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East

Nov, 3, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?

Jonathan Tobin: Was He Wrong About Everything?

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 24, 2007 / 10 Elul, 5767

Man's best, and man's best friend

By Jonah Goldberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Readers keep asking me what I think about Michael Vick, the disgraced Atlanta Falcons quarterback who this week agreed to plead guilty to a number of charges relating to his aspiration to be the Don King of dogfighting. They ask not because I'm a renowned sports lover, but because I'm such a dog lover.


And I do love dogs. They are, evolutionarily and otherwise, man's partners, our wingmen — winghounds if you prefer. Dogs are the only animal to choose to be our friends and comrades in the great struggle of muddling through our turn on this mortal coil. (Cats, I'm sorry to say, hold one paw in each camp so as to forever keep their options open, and all other domesticated animals had to be forced into the arrangement.)


What we see most clearly in dogs are precisely the things we as human beings wish to see in ourselves: loyalty, joy, love, home, family, commitment, humor and an utter disregard for the pieties and pretenses of fashionable life. ("If you take a dog which is starving and feed him and make him prosperous," Mark Twain observed, "that dog will not bite you. This is the primary difference between a dog and a man.") My dog cares not that he is beautiful, that he is rich, that he is prized. All he cares about is that he is loved and that he has someone to love back. And if that someone happens to have a piece of ham behind his back, well, he's no fool either.


Indeed, as many have noted, dogs look to us as we look to G-d. Even Ambrose Bierce, a great cynic, defined "reverence" as "the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man."


This helps us understand why finding joy in cruelty to animals is horrific. Torturing a dog or a cat for sport is not disgusting because animals have rights, it is repugnant because human beings have obligations. If animals look to us as gods, and we in turn torture them for our amusement, have we not willingly made ourselves into devils?


Dogfighting in particular is grotesque because in it we reject all that is lovable about dogs in favor of all that is animalistic. We exploit canine loyalty and trust, stripping away the joy like so much bark in order to make dogs more fearsome than even wild animals. No wolf or coyote could stand up to one of Michael Vick's pit bulls, nor do wolves and coyotes have anything like that kind of bloodlust.


It's revealing, however, that we call dogfighting a "sport." This can partly be explained by the double meaning of the word. One definition is mere "amusement." When we do things "for sport," we're doing them for trivial or base reasons. Yet, we also define "sportsmanship" as among the highest forms of conduct. We talk of the glories of sports, the purity of sports, the nobility of sports. Sport, we are told, is a selfless endeavor of sacrifice and excellence.


Businessmen and hucksters exploit this double meaning. After all, there's a lot of money to be made in athletes being seen as heroes. So, every few years we have one of these canned, fruitless debates about whether athletes should be role models, sparked by the latest incident of some poorly educated multimillionaire egomaniac beating (or killing) his wife, trashing a strip club, buying cocaine or, most recently, electrocuting dogs in his spare time.


When these men make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, we are told that it's because such men are special, super even. They are heroes and community leaders, not to mention role models and brand names. But when these same ubermenschen hit the skids, the lawyers, P.R. flacks and front-office men suddenly decry holding these mere mortals to a double standard. Vick's defenders say he wouldn't be banned-for-life from any other profession, so why, they ask, should he banned from his career as a ball-thrower?


Well, if football were like ditch-digging and if we treated quarterbacks like ditch-diggers, this complaint would ring more true. But we treat quarterbacks like gods and sports like the highest form of human expression.


So when these men behave like devils and revel in the lowest aspects of humanity, it will not do to suddenly declare "it's just a job." (The NFL, though hardly in danger of succumbing to an epidemic of moral integrity, can surely see this distinction, at least as an issue of brand integrity.)


Indeed, if sports is supposed to represent all that is best in men, it should tell us something about more than merely Vick himself that his greatest joy came in bringing out the very worst in dogs — and in us.

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