A Window to the World: Jews and sled dogs

Jews, like any other social group, take pleasure in the success of one of their own. In the complex historical relationship between Jews and non-Jews in the West, a special place is reserved for Jewish people who accomplish feats of bravery or physical strength.

When news of Braverman’s feat broke, this reporter had no reason to examine it closely. When a new planet is discovered, a newspaper does not send a reporter to the observatory to check if the telescope is in good working order. I wrote up the story for The Jerusalem Post, based on reliable sources and published it, expecting never to think about the topic again.

 

Then an email from Jewish-Canadian filmmaker Fern Levitt arrived. Levitt suggested that it was wrong to celebrate Braverman’s success as a Jewish achievement because using dogs to pull sleds as sport, especially in the context of the Iditarod race, is highly problematic because it entails animal abuse, which is against “our Jewish values.”

 

Levitt’s 2016 documentary film Sled Dogs takes place in the breathtakingly beautiful landscapes of Alaska and contains interviews with mushers, veterinarians and dog breeders to make some of the following claims.

 

The Iditarod, as it is currently run, is harmful to dogs. The practices used to maintain kennels are not in the dogs’ best interests. It would be a good thing to change the Iditarod or even, perhaps, stop it until measures are installed to ensure dogs are well looked after.

 

The experts on film explain that while sled dogs were indeed bred to pull weights and seem to enjoy doing so, the Iditarod race demands that the dogs race day after day in rough conditions, a demand they compare to asking a human being to run a marathon, and then another marathon, and then another.

 

Dog breeders who maintain kennels often tie each dog to a pole to manage such large packs. Yet dogs are not happy to spend their entire lives tied to a chain, and seek the company of humans and other dogs to explore and play.

 

Tethering is, of course, not illegal. Guard dogs might be kept on a chain to prevent them from attacking people outside the space they are defending. Yet anyone would agree that to keep a dog chained at all times would be cruel.

 

Dogs, Dr. Paula Kislak from the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association (HSVMA) told The Jerusalem Report, are biologically programmed to defecate outside their cave, which is why they can be housebroken. When a dog is forced to urinate and defecate where it sleeps, this causes it extreme psychological anxiety.

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Another claim about the Iditarod is that it honors the historical route taken by mushers to deliver supplies across Alaska. Yet on these functioning routes, which were not for pleasure or sport, dogs were replaced at various stops and allowed to rest as fresh dogs took their place.

 

Historically, mushers did not ask one group of dogs to pull them all the way. In that sense, activists argue, the current race is not authentic and does not honor the traditions it means to promote.

 

The relationship between humans and animals is complex and multi-layered. We kill and eat animals, and use their skin, milk and eggs. We use them to carry us and lift heavy burdens, and have no reason to suspect they enjoy it. We train them to attack our enemies and help our friends. We exploit animals, and we feed them, heal them when they are sick, and breed them to promote the traits we wish them to have. Some of us love our animals, and, in an age in which human contact is wanting, people say in jest or in earnest that their dogs are their real family.

 

Radical animal-rights activists argue humans should not exploit animals at all, eschew meat, cheese and leather in favor of plant-based foods and products – yet Sled Dogs is not that kind of film. Humans did not create dogs, but we shaped them into what they are now, and they helped shape us too.

 

Jews are allowed to milk cows, ride horses and keep dogs same as any other person. While Genesis 1:28 presents God instructing Adam and Eve to subdue and rule animals, the whole Earth even, Jewish sages argue that there is a Jewish value in preventing the sorrow of animals, pointing to the instruction given to Noah not to tear limbs  from a living animal and eat them as the origin of the moral treatment of animals.

 

Kashrut laws are meant to be humane. Jews who keep kosher are permitted to eat beef if the cow is slain correctly, by an observant Jew with a good sharp knife in one stroke.

 

In most Jewish communities throughout the world and throughout history, dogs were not celebrated but thought of as dirty and violent. Cats, on the other hand, were seen as clean. The Talmud suggests that even if the Torah was never given, Jews could learn modesty from the cat [Eruvin 100:72].

 

In the 1948 Yiddish novel Di Meshumedeste [The Baptized Jewess], Zalman Shneour describes how a Jewish couple adopts a black feline as a stand-in for their daughter, who converted to Christianity.

 

Today, many Jews raise and love dogs. The Jewish state even has an official dog, the Canaan Dog bred by Austrian-Jewish scientist Rudolphina Menzel. In this respect too, modern Jews are very different from their ancestors.

 

Returning to the claims made in Sled Dogs, it might be mistaken to think of animals as we think of human athletes. Kislak also explains it is “folly” to view some breeds as “super-dogs” that are exempt from the need to rest, sleep and play like breeds kept as pets.

 

Kislak states there are jobs dogs enjoy, like being a search and rescue dog. Such dogs are loved by their handlers and are not asked to work beyond their endurance, she told The Report, which is why they don’t need to be whipped and chained to do it.

Braverman is not only a musher, but a talented writer. Her book, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, was released in 2016 before she finished the Iditarod.

 

Those who listen to the audio book will have a pleasant surprise, as she herself is the narrator. The book is autobiographical, and the reader is invited to learn how Braverman chose to explore her mother’s Norwegian heritage by attending a folk school in Norway. These schools are meant to help keep specific Norwegian folk traditions, like dog sledding, alive in the modern world.

We get a peek into the hard and often grueling life of a female adventurer working as a tour guide on an Alaskan glacier. The book is as much an exploration of northern Norwegian culture and the conflicts of those with complex multicultural identities as it is about dogs.

 

People who love language will enjoy hearing Braverman’s crisp, singsong Norwegian as she shares stories from her life in a place where people say things like “I’ll meet you after five cups of coffee” – unlike the southern Norwegians, who are more European in their attitudes to time.

 

The book also deals in surprising ways with the various forms of hostility and even aggression that women experience daily. In a tough masculine world like dog sledding, this leads to some remarkable insights that stay with the reader long after the book is finished.

 

While Braverman makes no bones about being Jewish – in the book she teaches children about Jewish culture and lays stones on Norwegian graves to honor her relatives – it is not the main theme of the book. It is inspiring in the sense that it’s a daring tale of overcoming hardship by someone who is Jewish, but is not meant to inspire one to be Jewish.

 

To this reporter’s dismay, Braverman declined to be interviewed after she was told that her perspective would be sought on the arguments made by animal rights activists against the sport she mastered.

 

In an email, she explained she would have been happy to discuss the intersection of Jewish values [or] spirituality and mushing, but that she was “not interested in an interview that spreads horrible misinformation, even under the guise of discussion.”

Furthermore, she made it clear that “I do not love my blind dogs or my older dogs any less because they don’t pull. I do everything I can to make sure that they, and all my dogs, are happy and healthy…whether they live with me or retire to be pets in loving pet homes.”

 

This was in response to a question about what happens to dogs that can no longer pull. It was explained in Sled Dogs that it is nearly impossible for a dog kennel to survive financially unless old and sick dogs are destroyed or given for adoption, just as old cows or male chicks are destroyed in the milk and poultry industries when they are no longer useful.

 

One of the activists speaking in the film attempted to run a humane kennel, and said that even with donations of money and free labor offered by volunteers, it was impossible for her to keep the kennel in business.

 

Ashley Keith, who had been mushing since 1998, described how she saw a completely healthy dog named Bullet being taken to the vet to be killed because he was too slow and nobody wanted to buy him. His body was then placed in a freezer so that his fur might be used for garments.

 

Keith was forced to do so, she said, to understand the importance of keeping a “sizable, competitive kennel.” When she was working at an Alaska kennel and insisted a sick dog be taken to the vet and given medical treatment, the owner simply took the dog to the woods and she never saw it again.

 

In her testimony, Keith describes dogs breaking teeth on their chains, suffocating on them, and being forced to survive in sub-standard housing to toughen them up.

 

Braverman said that in her 12 years in the sport, she never saw this kind of treatment.

 

She said she had a dog who was dying from untreatable lymphoma, “with whom I was spending his last days, photographed as an example of what mushing does to dogs even after I explained…that the dog had cancer.”

 

In an interview with an Alaska-based rabbi who declined to be mentioned by name, this reporter was told that there is currently an ad campaign in Anchorage against the Iditarod that features sick and pitiful dogs as an example of what mushing does.

“For all we know it’s her dog up there,” he said.

 

Born and raised in Alaska, this rabbi said the Iditarod race is a beloved part of what, in people’s minds, makes Alaska unique, and such efforts make many people in the state unhappy as they see it as an attempt to end something they hold dear, not as a call to improve the way dogs are treated.

 

The Washington Post reported in 2018 that the Iditarod race is facing difficulties, partly due to Sled Dogs. In addition to the arguments the film makes, four-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey allegedly doped four of his dogs with an opioid pain reliever in 2017. Seavey decided not to race in 2018 and opted to take on the Norwegian version of the Iditarod, the Finnmarkslopet, the paper reported. 

 

So here are two Jewish women who both love dogs, both artistic and creative. One spent 12 years in mushing and wrote a book in which she is able to transmit not just her love of dogs but her love of rugged nature and the thrill of navigating in the wilderness, where one may die if one is unlucky. The other, who adopted a former sled dog traumatized by his experiences, made an intelligent articulate film saying that mushing should change because in its current state, it is immoral.

 

In our culture we are used to having two conflicting views, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, Hasidic Jews and Mitnagdim, Jews who support BDS and Jews who scream that these other Jews are gravely wrong. Yet it would be a cop-out to leave it at that.

There is a reason that Jack London is still read today, and a reason why people seek the immediate thrill of being in nature and bound with animals. There are powerful human needs to compete and to take chances, to triumph and, if necessary, to fail.

 

Human beings began to domesticate dogs roughly 15,000 years ago. It doesn’t seem right to end dog sledding now just because some people do it poorly. Yet the Iditarod does not represent the entire field of dog sledding. It is only one race – a race in which, according to Kislak, half of the dogs competing cannot finish due to injuries.

 

Jewish culture, at its best, had been committed to its own continuity while welcoming others and showing compassion when it comes to human beings and animals, as well as being open to ethical questions and social change.

 

Kennels can be inspected to ensure dogs are not kept in chains all their days and do not die chained. Iditarod race dogs can be checked and now are being checked to ensure they are not given drugs to enhance their performances. Efforts can be made to provide former sled dogs with adoptive homes where they can be pets, rather than be destroyed. 

 

Tikkun olam is not always a grand, complex undertaking. It can begin by making just one tail wag.