The Zoo in You

By Rabbi Ari Taback

It has got to rate as one of the most bizarre news stories of the decade.

A few weeks ago, authorities in the town of Zanesville, Ohio began receiving alarming calls about exotic wild animals roaming their neighbourhood. On investigation, they zeroed in on a smallholding belonging to a man by the name of Terry Thompson, the owner of Muskingum County Exotic Animal Farm. Thompson, who had recently been released from a one year prison term for unlawful possession of firearms after more than one hundred illegal guns were confiscated in a raid on his home, was more of an animal collector than a zoo-keeper. His private menagerie included some eighteen Bengal tigers, seventeen lions, two grizzly bears and a host of other decidedly hazardous creatures, all housed in a strange assortment of cages and enclosures on the farm. A wolf was reportedly confined in the interior of an abandoned car. Thompson was apparently under significant financial strain, and on October 19, he tragically took his own life. He left no note, and for some inexplicable and macabre reason, he chose to first open all the cages and enclosures of his fierce faunal collection before pulling the trigger.

Within a short time, wild animals were being sighted in and around the small town. Police were mobilized, as were Ohio Wildlife and Parks officials. Staff members of the Columbus Zoo also raced to the scene, including former director of the world-renowned zoo and TV personality Jack Hanna. With daylight fading, they soon realised that the animals could not be safely darted, and considering the significant threat they posed to human life, the chief of the Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office issued his officers an instruction to “shoot to kill”. By the end of the evening’s carnage, all but six of the creatures were dead, including all of the eighteen rare tigers. A missing monkey was assumed to have been eaten by one of the lions. Hanna, a veteran animal keeper, is reported to have commented that “It’s like Noah’s ark wrecked here in Zanesville, Ohio.”

After reading the news reports and various commentaries on this story, it struck me as intriguing that the incident occurred only a few days before we read the portion in the Torah dealing with our famous ancestor and his floating zoo. The Torah describes in great detail how Noah was to collect the creatures which would ride out the deluge with him in the ark, and how he should construct its various sections. We are taught that the craft consisted of three decks, the uppermost for its human residents, the second tier miraculously had enough place for all the animals, and the lowest deck was reserved for the waste.

The structure of the ark serves as a fascinating model for the human being. Torah sources write that like in the ark, there are three sections to every person. The uppermost section, his head, contains his mind, the seat of his elevated Neshama and the element of his spiritual being which makes him uniquely human. Beneath this is the upper torso, containing the heart and lungs. This section of the person contains a more “animalistic” life force and is associated with the world of emotions. In the lower torso is the digestive system which processes a person’s food and stores the waste products, the most basic necessity for life. This directly parallels the three tiers of the ark, the uppermost deck for human beings parallel to the mind, the middle deck for the animals parallel to the emotions, and the lower deck for the waste, parallel to the digestive system.

It is not by chance that the head and mind occupy the uppermost space of the human body. It is the role of the mind to harness and care for our emotional energies, like Noah who from his top floor was instructed to care for and contain his animal passengers.

The dramatic events in Ohio serve as a powerful demonstration of the critical role that the zoo-keeper plays in the care and containment of the creatures in his charge. But as an analogy, it perhaps highlights how when the mind stops playing its crucial role, the emotions of a person can run rampant. So often we see people who lose all sense of reason when their honour is slighted, or how a person will become consumed in the irrational pursuit of a particular physical vice. It is the role of the mind, the keeper of “the zoo in you”, to contain and care for the energies which lurk in the deck below.

But emotions are not intrinsically negative. On the contrary, the emotional forces which swirl around in our bosoms are the very life force which gives our lives passion and energy. Not only must the mind not suppress our emotions, but they must be cared for and channelled, “taken for walks” and trained, so that they can express themselves in a positive way.
The Mishna teaches: “Said Rabbi Yehuda ben Teima: Be strong like a lion, bold like a leopard and swift like a deer to do the wishes of your Father in Heaven”.

This is the Torah’s advice on how to truly utilize the powerful energies of our emotions, and to properly care for “the zoo in you”.