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"R. Hanina ben Dosa had some goats and was told,
'Your goats are damaging people's property.'" [1]
Although goat's milk was
widely used as a remedy for a chest cold (Proverbs 27:27), the rabbis frowned
upon the rearing of goats. Goats were regarded as "armed robbers who
would jump over people's fences and destroy their plants (see illustration
below). [2]
Although sheep and goats both belong to the category of small cattle called
( tzon) in Hebrew, there is a marked difference in the grazing habits
of each species. Sheep crop at an even height several centimeters above ground
level. The goat, on the other hand, not only crops much closer to the ground,
but also tears leaves, buds and fruit off trees.
A Greek inscription
prohibiting the breeding of goats has been uncovered at Heracleas.
So, too, is the goat's unsavory reputation clearly expressed in the
New Testament: According to a reference to the Day of Judgment in
Matthew 25 – "When the Son of Man comes... he will separate
men into two groups, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,
and he will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his
left...."
During the destruction
of the second Temple (70 CE) and the terrible wars that devastated the Land
of Israel in the ensuing years, much of the fertile land was turned into
desert wasteland. Unavoidable conflict arose between the shepherds who took
advantage of the increase in thickets and forests, and the landowners who
wanted to reclaim their fields for cultivation. The rabbis issued strict
injunctions regarding the grazing of both sheep and goats to help overcome
these conflicts and to restore the destroyed agricultural base. "Sheep
and goats are not to be raised in the land of Israel but are permitted in
the desert located in Judea and in the desert bordering Acco [Acre]."
[3]
Acco is located in the lower western Galilee, an area not familiar to us
today as being associated with desert; clearly during the period after the
destruction of the Second Temple, this once-fertile area had been transformed
into desert, fit only for grazing.
Detail
from David Roberts' painting of Nazareth, 1830s
Click
to view detail enlarged
An incident related
in the Talmud vividly illustrates how meticulous the
sages were in following the ruling concerning the raising of sheep
and goats only in the desert and thickets.
His
disciples asked Rabban Gamliel [of Yavne, Land of Israel, late first
century] whether it is permitted to breed sheep or goats. He replied:
It is permitted. But did we not learn: It is forbidden [outside the
specified regions]? What they actually asked us is this: May it be
kept around temporarily for an immediate need? He said to them: It
is permissible, provided it does not go out to pasture with the flock,
but is fastened to the bedpost.
Our rabbis
taught: There was once a certain pious person who suffered from heart trouble,
and the physicians said the only hope for his recovery was for him to suck
warm milk every morning. A goat was therefore brought to him and fastened
to the leg of the bed, and he sucked from it every morning. After some days
his colleagues came to visit him, but as soon as they noticed the goat fastened
to the legs of the bed they turned back and said: An armed robber is in
the house of this man, how can we come to see him: They thereupon sat down
and inquired into his conduct, but they did not find any fault in him except
this sin of the goat.... [4]
In a later passage in
the Talmud, Rav Yosef (early fourth century, Babylon) said: "He who
dreams of a goat, his year will be blessed; he who dreams about goats, his
years shall be blessed, as it is written (Proverbs 27:27): 'The goats' milk
will suffice for your food.'"[5]
Rav Yosef, who taught in Babyon more than 200 years after Rabban Gamliel,
has no negative associations with the goat. Focusing on the Biblical verse
in Proverbs, he has no reason to infer anything relating to daily livelihood
problems in the Land of Israel.
Epilogue
After
the destruction of the country's agriculture, especially following
the Muslim conquest, goats were imported to Erez Yisrael, and they
increased in number. Some maintain that they were responnsible for
the erosion of the land by ruining the terraces, destroying the
natural vegetation, and creating fissures on the slopes. The eroded
soil was deposited in the valleys, blocking the flow of rivers to
the sea and forming marches such as those of the Valley of Jezreel,
which were drained by Jews only in the 20th century. Even now, goats,
still kept in large numbers by the Bedouin population, cause great
damage to Israel natural woods by chewing the young shoots, thereby
preventing them from growing to full height. In the 1940s, the Jewish
settlers introduced into the country the white European goat, distinguished
for its yield of milk.
(From
the Encyclopedia Judaica, Keter Publications, 1973)
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