Jews & Dogs

Dogs were domesticated around 10,000 BCE, long before the Torah was received at Sinai or written down. This does not, however, mean that they were an early Israelite's or Judean's Best Friend. In fact, in biblical texts dogs are generally portrayed negatively- as beasts who snarl at humans and eat corpses. This makes sense when considering that the pariah dogs that ancient Israelites would have encountered were scavengers. Living outside the walls of the cities, pariah dogs subsisted on refuse, garbage, and even human corpses.

This aversion to dogs continued in the Talmud, where Bava Kamma 83A discusses a case where a dog snarls at a woman, causing her to have a miscarriage. Earlier in that tractate (80A) we are taught that keeping domesticated dogs is permissible, only because they clean the house of vermin. The most positive mentions of dogs in Talmud are the suggestion that G!d's protection for Kayin was a dog, and a story in which a dog eats poisoned food to stop its master from dying.

The Mishneh Torah (a 12th-century code by Maimonides) states that one must keep a dog chained, because these animals are known to cause “substantial and frequent” damage. Maimonides permitted Jews living in border towns to let their dogs loose at night only, presumably for protection. The Shulchan Aruch (a 16th-century legal code) takes a somewhat less restrictive approach, saying only that an “evil dog” must be bound in iron chains. Similarly, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, a 16th-century Polish scholar also known as the Rema, in his commentary on the Shulchan Aruch writes that a dog that is liable to harm people must be kept chained.

Many Jewish families today do own dogs, and in fact there is a whole market of Jewish dog supplies such as toys, clothes, and even books. Some Jewish families even give their dog a "Bark Mitzvah," which has no ritual significance but is super cute. In 2016 Tel Aviv named itself "The Most Dog-Friendly City in the World," and DOGTV was originally based in Tel Aviv and has since opened outlets around the world.

The Torah explicitly allows us to feed non-kosher food to dogs when it says, “You must not eat flesh torn by beasts in the field; you shall cast it to the dogs.” (Exodus 22:30). However, the Jewish law also dictates that one shouldn’t benefit from meat and milk being cooked together. Feeding your dog certainly counts as a benefit to you. So while your dog doesn’t have to keep kosher, she shouldn’t eat meat from a kosher land animal (like a cow, sheep, or lamb) that has been cooked with milk. It is, however, fine for her to eat meat from a non-kosher animal with milk (pork or horse, for instance). Fish and chicken are also allowed to be combined with milk in pet food. (Yoreh Deah87:3)

The one time that you do want to be careful about bringing pet food into your home is on Passover. Pretty much any kind of pet food you can buy is going to be hametz, which is prohibited to have in your possession on Passover. There are a few ways to deal with this problem. Luckily, Evangers is certified by the Chicago Rabbinical Council as free of all hametz, so you can buy it just for Pesach, or you can make your own dog food for a week.