That’s the title of the original post from Nosson Slifkin, the Zoo Rabbi, and it’s hard not to use — that is, after all, what happens in the clip below. But I don’t understand why Rabbi Slifkin’s website, ZooTorah, isn’t visited by everyone in the world — it’s so interesting, and it’s so weird. His book Sacred Monsters has been perpetually on my Amazon Wishlist (hint, hint), and is renown by Talmud experts and Jewish academics because of the thoroughness and accuracy with which he matches up Talmudic descriptions of fauna with their representatives in the contemporary animal kingdom.
Plus, hello — videos of a rabbi riding an elephant and getting bit by a lion. How cool is that?
Talmud
Pronounced: TALL-mud, Origin: Hebrew, the set of teachings and commentaries on the Torah that form the basis for Jewish law. Comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara, it contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis from different periods in Jewish history.
