Peter Novecosky, OSB

Animals in the Holy Land

Liturgically, the solemnity of Pentecost completes the Easter season. Pentecost, in a sense, brings the mission of Jesus to an end — or marks the beginning of a new way of Jesus being present in the world. After his death, resurrection and ascension, Jesus sent his advocate, the Holy Spirit, to animate the new Body of Christ — the church. The mission is the same. The instruments used are different.

As the church settles into Ordinary time, we have reason to reflect on less heady aspect of the Christian mystery than Jesus’ death and resurrection. One such reflection that probably doesn’t strike many Christians as particularly significant is the state of the natural world in the time of Jesus.

While Christians take the death and resurrection of Jesus as the the basis of their faith, in the book of Job God uses nature to explain why Job should believe. Yehoshua Shkedy, chief scientist for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, notes that if you count the number of phrases, at least one-third of those in the book of Job are about nature.

Shkedy has a particular interest in the animals that live in the Holy Land — or used to live there. He notes that nearly 100 different types of animals are mentioned in the Bible. Today, many of these are gone — hunted to the point of extinction or driven away by human settlement. Shkedy is trying to change this.

He has spent 15 years trying to repopulate Israel with biblical animals. Of the 10 animals that are listed as acceptable dinner fare in Deuteronomy 14, for example — ox, sheep, goat, deer, gazelle, roe deer, wild goat, ibex, antelope and mountain sheep — only two (the gazelle and the ibex) could still be found within the historical boundaries of Israel in 1960.

Animals are key players in some well-known biblical stories. There is the dove that Noah sent out to look for dry land, the ram that Abraham sacrificed in place of his son Isaac, and the lions in the den where Daniel was cast to die.

Shkedy and his team realize that it would be difficult to reintroduce lions and hippopotamuses in today’s Holy Land because of various circumstances. Israel is now too densely populated to bring back large predators such as the bear.

He is trying, however, trying to bring back other animals. His current project is to bring back vultures — birds described in Leviticus 11:13 as “detestable” and “an abomination.” There were some 400 vultures in Israel 10 years ago, but at last count they have been reduced to 240. “Farmers want to kill wolves and jackals that hunt their chickens and cattle, so they put out bait to poison them,” said Michal Erez, a bird keeper at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. Because vultures eat dead animals, they get poisoned, too, he explained.

Illegal poisoning and low birth rates have placed vultures in a critical situation. Erez helps raise vultures by incubating vulture eggs for about two months; then she places the baby birds with foster parents. Ideally, within three months, the birds are then reintroduced to the wild.

But because foster parents are hard to come by, Erez rears many babies by hand. The eggs come from across Israel. Park rangers check vulture nests for eggs in the wild; the eggs are brought to the Jerusalem zoo, where they stand a greater chance of survival.

Roee Arad is a park ranger who hunts for eggs in northern Israel. He said if there is no intensive effort to salvage birds and animals, the next generation will have nothing to see.

Shkedy’s fight to save Israel’s natural wonders is personal. His parents immigrated from Europe in 1947 to fulfil the Zionist dreams of their ancestors by working the land with their own hands. Their generation came to develop and invest; the next generation has to conserve and protect, Shkedy said.

“We should keep in mind that we didn’t come to this country just because we wanted to see a sea of houses. We came to this country . . . because of biblical things.”