LEV663 In light of the biblical and rabbinic sources mentioned above, there is no question about whether animals matter, but only why and how. Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) goes so far as to include animals in the command to "Love your neighbor as yourself" [this verse] [Elijah Judah Schochet, Animal Life in Jewish Tradition (New York: KTAV, 1984, p. 263)]. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (1707-1746) makes compassion for animals a basic virtue. [The Path of the Upright=Mesillat Yesharim), Mordechai Menahem Kaplan, trans. (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995), p. 155]. Noah Cohen concludes that the classical rabbis see compassion for animals as "categorical and undeniable.… not a proposition to be proved." [Tsa'ar Ba'ale Hayim--the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1959)]. This notion constitutes the opening horizon of Jewish animal ethics: our treatment of animals matters. Human-animal relations are an important religious issue. While it is clear that animals matter, it is equally clear that there is widespread agreement in rabbinic sources that whatever human and Jewish responsibilities there are to protect the lives of animals, such protections should not preclude the use of animals for legitimate human interests, such as--paradigmatically--satisfying the desire to eat basar, flesh. This principle, rarely explicit but constantly operative, constitutes the closing horizon of Jewish animal ethics. One can argue that Judaism is a tradition friendly to and even encouraging of ethical vegetarianism (though this is a position many would dispute), but one cannot persuasively argue that traditional and modern forms of Judaism demand a complete ban on meat consumption such as, for example, we find in several south Asian traditions. Significantly, some powerful minority streams within Judaism would insist that consuming meat is in principle unethical--a moral compromise--and would argue that vegetarianism is an ideal even though not a mandatory practice. These minority streams, perhaps as old as the book of Genesis, are found in traces throughout the Talmud and classical commentaries on the Bible [Yael Shemesh, "Vegetarian Ideology in Talmudic Literature and Traditional Biblical Exegesis," Review of Rabbinic Judaism 9 (2006)] and are vibrant in Jewish materials throughout modernity. In light of the way in which Judaism has evolved over time, there is no reason these now marginal views could not one day become dominant. This simultaneous insistence on both the value of animal lives and the greater value of human well-being is articulated in a dialectical fashion throughout Jewish texts by juxtaposing countervailing principles of, on the one hand, kindness to animals (often coupled with an emphasis on human creatureliness), and, on the other hand, human ascendancy, (often coupled with an emphasis on human distinctiveness). [Aaron Gross, "The Question of the Animal: Dietary Practice, Ethics, and Subjectivity" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, 2010), chap. 6)]. We have in fact already seeing this dialectical strategy in the story of Rabbi Judah [B. Bava Metzi'a 85a; Genesis Rabbah 33:3] and in Genesis's juxtaposition of God's violent command to dominate ("master" and "rule") animals with a command to be vegetarian. As the modern Orthodox rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg explained, "the Jewish strategy was to combine human activism and restraint, yoking mastery over in nature with a reference for the national order." [Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way (Northgale, JH. Jason Aronson), p. 105)]. (Continued at [[LEV896]] Leviticus 22:28 young OXFORD 422-3). (By Aaron S. Gross, "Jewish Animal Ethics")