Jerusalem rabbis ‘condemn dog to death by stoning’
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A JERUSALEM rabbinical court has condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court’s judges 20 years ago.
The large dog made its way into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs.
Despite attempts to drive the dog out of the court, the hound refused to leave the premises.
One of the sitting judges then recalled a curse the court had passed down upon a secular lawyer who had insulted the judges two decades previously.
Their preferred divine retribution was for the lawyer’s spirit to move into the body of a dog, an animal considered impure by traditional Judaism.
Clearly still offended, one of the judges sentenced the animal to death by stoning by local children.
The canine target, however, managed to escape.
"Let the Animals Live", an animal-welfare organisation, filed a complaint with the police against the head of the court, Rabbi Avraham Dov Levin, who denied that the judges had called for the dog’s stoning, Ynet reported.
One of the court’s managers, however, confirmed the report of the sentence to Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot.
"It was ordered… as an appropriate way to ‘get back at’ the spirit which entered the poor dog," the paper reported the manager as saying, according to Ynet.
Certain schools of thought within Judaism believe in the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation.
1 Comments
June 21st, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Ynet deleted the article as it was fabricated. so u can delete your picture.
The Telegraph who was one of the first to jump on this story too, as its orientation towards Israel is known announced
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8588536/Israel-dog-stoning-reports-strongly-denied.html
Israel dog stoning reports strongly denied Reports that a Jerusalem rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a dog have been strongly denied.
9:01AM BST 21 Jun 2011
Israeli newspaper Maariv had originally reported that a dog had wandered into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs, who believed the dog was a reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court’s judges 20 years ago.
Reports that the court decree the dog be stoned to death however have been dismissed by the secretariat of the court however, who said it was “bitter humour”, and all that happened was the dog had been removed by the local dog catcher. Maariv newspaper apologised for the original report.
A court statement said: “There is no basis for stoning dogs or any other animal in the Jewish religion, not since the days of the Temple or Abraham.
“The female dog found a seat in the corner of the court. And the children were delighted by it; there were hundreds outside the court. They are used to seeing stray cats but most have never seen a dog before. The only action we took was to dial the number of the Jerusalem Municipality to get the people in charge to take it away.
“There was no talk of reincarnation, a lawyer has never been mentioned, either now or 20 years ago, and there was no stoning. Such inventions are a kind of blood libel, and we wonder why the inventor of the story did not continue to describe how we collected the blood of the dog to make our matzah.”