Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
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“A Jerusalem rabbinical court 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, Ynet website reported Friday. According to Ynet, 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………”

As far as I know all cases of being stoned in Israel have been of the, well, weedy, greeny, cannabis kind, or worse (a value judgment here). This is a first sentence of actual stoning, with real rocks. This dog missed an opportunity to become a cause célèbre, a la poor Sakinah Ashtiani of Iran.
Occasionally some of these Jewish rabbis act as if totally stoned out of their minds, just like many Muslim ones, almost. Some Muslim clerics have issued fatwas for the elimination of man’s best friend, but none has recommended that they be stoned. As far as I know.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, Christians in Europe have for centuries sentenced and executed innocent four-legged animals on various suspicions. They probably don’t do it anymore.
Cheers
mhg



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