There shall be a great cry of anguish throughout all
Egypt.... But among the Israelites, no dog shall howl for man or beast.
(Exodus 11:6, 7)
In Egyptian mythology, the Dog God Anubis gains its powers from the howling of dogs at death to raise the soul to eternal afterlife.
The awesome quiet of the dogs at the freeing the Israelites
from slavery gives dogs an honored place in Judaism.
Every day, Miriam reads Perek Shira (Chapter of Song)
that gives voice to each creation to praise God together in a grand symphony.
The climax of Perek Shira is the song of the dog, Come!
Let us bow in humility and adoration, let us kneel before God our Maker. (Psalm
95:6).
The loyalty of a dog to his master provides a model for
human gratitude to God for everything in life.
Today, we saw the development of the highest level of
loyalty of a dog to its master at the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind
(see http://israelguidedog.org/).
We witnessed dogs learning to control their instincts and
desires to become the reliable eyes of their blind human partners.
At the Center, we saw puppies bred to combine the docile
characteristics of the Labrador with chutzpah of the Golden Retriever.
The dogs learn to follow the commands of their human
partners, but to ignore them if they are in danger.
They learn to navigate obstacle courses at the Center and
then in the real world where their blind partners live and work.
Guide dogs turn the negative mitzvah to not place a
stumbling block before the blind to a positive mitzvah to avoid the block.
Do not place a stumbling block before the blind.
(Leviticus 19:14) Accursed is one who causes a blind person to go astray
on the road. (Deuteronomy 27:18)
