Not Animal

A few months ago my husband and I take a little visit to the desert. At about midnight we start home from the small settlement next to the Dead Sea. At the entrance stand two soldiers guarding. As we are driving out they flag down our car and walk up to the window with their M16s slung behind their backs.

“Hi Rabbi” the one without the yarmulke says to my husband “we’re having a debate; maybe you can help us.”

“With pleasure” my husband responds.

“Why” asks the one with the yarmulke “is the Torah written on an animal skin?”

Both soldiers bend their heads into the window while my husband thinks and I kvell about the fact that here we are in the middle of the desert not a soul or sound in sight and two young strong heavily geared soldiers sit at an outpost and what do they discuss? Not war not movies not who knows what but why the Torah is written on the skin of an animal.

“One of the reasons the Torah is written on animal skin” my husband says “is because each of us has an animal soul and this soul or drive is very powerful powerfully good or powerfully bad depending on how we harness its power. The words of the Torah are written on animal skin to teach us to direct or to harness our animal drives just as a yoke does for an ox.”