An Interview with Rabbi Anson Laytner, Translator of "The Animals' Lawsuit Against Humanity"
An Interview with Rabbi Anson Laytner, Translator & Editor of The Animals' Lawsuit Against Humanity
Book description from the publisher:
In this interfaith and multicultural fable, eloquent representatives of all members of the animal kingdom—from horses to bees—come before the respected Spirit King to complain of the dreadful treatment they have suffered at the hands of humankind. During the ensuing trial, where both humans and animals testify before the King, both sides argue their points ingeniously, deftly illustrating the validity of both sides of the ecology debate.
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About the translator:
Anson Laytner is a happily retired rabbi, living in Seattle, whose career focused on building positive interfaith and interethnic relations in our community. His most recent book is The Forgotten Commandment. For more information or to contact him, go to www.ansonlaytner.com, and see the bottom of this page for a fuller bio.
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This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Grant Wilson: Before we dive into the book, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about who you are and your background.
Rabbi Anson Laytner: I'm a native of Toronto, Canada. I majored in Chinese studies and spent a year in China back in 1973 - ’74 before coming to America and going into rabbinical school. And so I am an ordained reform rabbi, but I chose, in part because of my experience in China, to focus mostly in the nonprofit sector. I did a variety of jobs there, doing community relations in the Jewish community, as well as 11 years doing housing for people with AIDS. After being in several other jobs, I ended my career teaching at Seattle University, which is a Jesuit university. So, one of the major focuses from my career has been on improving interfaith and inter ethnic relations.
I'm an author and have six books to my credit, most recently, The Forgotten Commandment. And I am president of an organization called the Sino-Judaic Institute, which looks at Jewish life in China.
Grant: You mentioned that diplomacy between religions is something that you're interested in. In the book, The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity, the first thing you learn when you read the introduction is that the story is a kind of cross-religious fable that passed through the hands of all these different people and different times. I noticed that there are some origins in India and then it's seen in Iraq and then it's translated into Hebrew and so forth. Was that part of your interest in this to begin with? That it was so cross-religious and cross-cultural?
Anson: Not initially, no. Initially, what drew me to the story were interests that grew out of my rabbinic thesis on the Jewish tradition of arguing with God, which later became the book Arguing With God. I was researching how various biblical and Jewish figures down through the ages have argued with God and taken God to task for being an underperforming deity. And I came across a reference to this “Letter of the Animals” in Hebrew. And I said, “Oh, that sounds really interesting, the animals arguing against humanity.” And so I photocopied the whole manuscript, which wasn't very long, and took it with me on my travels, first to New York and then out here to Seattle, where a friend and I decided to start translating it.
As soon as we started doing the translation and looking at the introduction to the Hebrew version, which isn't in our version, I was impressed and amazed because I had always thought that Jewish-Christian relations in Europe were kind of tense. And here was a rabbi translating this Hebrew story, which itself was a translation from the Arabic, and the Arabic version had been borrowed from Sanskrit stories. So you've got Indian and Muslim-Arab sources being translated into medieval Jewish Hebrew at the behest of a Christian duke in fourteenth-century France. It’s hard to believe. But that was the culture in Provence at the time. It was a real hub for interfaith learning and a center for the transmission of Greek culture to the European world via Arabic.
Grant: That's so interesting. At Earth Law Center, we do a growing amount of research into different religions and faiths and how they might support the idea of giving voice to nature. We look at Islam, we look at Protestant sects, Catholicism, Judaism, and so forth. But this is interesting in that it kind of brings all of these different faiths together. So would you say that even today, this book would be well-received or of interest to all these faiths from which it originated?
Anson: Absolutely, I think it would be. I mean, it's still well-known in the Arab speaking world by its Arabic name. It's been published a lot. Sadly, the Hebrew version has not been published since the version that we used as a translation, which was published in Israel in 1949. Ours is the only English translation of the Hebrew text, although a couple of scholars, subsequent to our text, translated the Arabic version into English. They called it The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn, and that's a much bigger book than ours. We really cut ours down.So I think between our version and this other text that I just mentioned, it's beginning to gain some awareness in the English speaking world, which means I think people will notice it and say, kind of like your initial reaction, “Hey, this is amazing. How could a thousand years have passed and here we are still at the same place regarding our treatment of animals?”
Grant: The book starts with this beautiful utopia of Nature on a remote island, and then the humans show up in this big ship and when they see this wide array of animals, they kind of lick their lips, saying, “We own them, they're our property, they can serve us.” That starts a thread that carries throughout the book – this idea of human superiority and of animals being human slaves and so forth. Can you share a little more about how the story is set up?
Anson: So, as you say, the animals are living in peace and harmony. Then a shipload of people get shipwrecked there, and they have a very hard time making a go of it until they notice that the animals are completely unafraid of them. And then they say, “Hmm, this is a great opportunity for us to make life easier for ourselves and to have meat and dairy products.” So they just grab the animals they need and enslave them and treat them the way people have generally treated animals down through the ages. A few of the animals escape and go to the king of the island, who, in The Animals Lawsuit Against Humanity version, we call the Spirit King, but in the original is actually called the King of the Jinn, the genies.
Grant: Jinn or genies? Like genie in a bottle?
Anson: Yeah, like a genie in a bottle, that kind of thing. And there's a long history of Jinn in ancient literature.They don't have bodies, they're ethereal, they change shape, they can be mischievous, troublemakers, but they're also part of God's creation according to the ancient perspective of things. So, in this case, the king of the island is a very benevolent, wise ruler, and he is outraged that these new creatures are treating his subjects so poorly. He demands that humanity come to his court and account for their treatment of the animals. And so the human beings send a delegation and basically say, “This is our God-given right. It says right there in the Bible that we are meant to rule and subjugate and govern. And so we're just doing what God wants us to do.” And then the animals say, “That's not so, you're never meant to treat us this way.” And then they go back and forth, with the human beings trying to assert their claim to superiority and the animals refuting every one of their claims.
Grant: So they start to plead their cases, and the humans are like, “Yeah, we have dominion over nature, we're superior. Here's all the reasons we're superior.” When you were working on this, did you follow parallel arguments being made in modern society? There's a long line of thinkers like Thomas Berry, who wrote about Earth Jurisprudence and this idea that we're all a communion of subjects and that human dominion over nature is the root cause of the environmental crisis. As you were writing this, did you have the current environmental crisis in mind?
Anson: Yeah, and also another person that I was in touch with a little bit, Peter Singer. And in fact, when our book came out, almost 20 years ago, I had gotten so convinced by the story that I started clipping things from the newspaper, showing how close our environment was to disaster and how different species were disappearing. Now I'm even more committed to the premise of the book that animals need to be treated better because they are like our canary in the coal mine.
Grant: I wonder if you've noticed any of the legal innovations that have been happening in recent years in this arena? Like there's a group, the Nonhuman Rights Project, who tried to secure standing in a court of law for Happy the Elephant.
Anson: I have been following some of those stories in the news and been very hopeful for them.
Grant: I feel that parts of this book should be introduced as parts of those cases.
Anson: They really could. And here's the thing, I mean, when Kolonymus ben (son of) Kolonymus, the rabbi who translated the story from Arabic into Hebrew in the fourteenth century, was doing his work, there was a whole debate in society about whether animals were equal to human beings in terms of their rights or whether human beings had some kind of superiority. So it's not just a contemporary issue: it goes back to the fourteenth century, and it even goes back to the tenth century when the story was first done. So this is a perennial debate: Are human beings substantially, qualitatively different from other living beings?
Grant: In the book, the humans make arguments like, “Well, we stand on two legs and you stand on four.” Of course, that's not true for all animals. “We have culture, we have arts, we have a conscience.” The animals respond that having four legs around the ground suits their purpose perfectly. All of the animals are made to serve their role in this larger earth community. And is having a conscience and free will really so great if you are using it for exploitation and for the poor treatment of life? I think these same arguments are also happening in religious circles. Is that right?
Anson: I can't generalize to the non-Abrahamic religions, but certainly Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all three religions have strong teachings about how to care for other living things. But they also have equally strong traditions saying that humanity are overlords and are the pinnacle of creation and so therefore can do what we want. So you have this tension in each religion about which view is going to win the day.
Grant: And even in the book amongst the humans, there are two camps. There's the ones that are like, “These are our slaves.” And then the other group of humans who sometimes go along with the humans that are the dominant voice, but other times they're like, “You know what? Maybe the animals have a point.” And so that's basically the environmentalists in the book.
Anson: That's the thing - there's always been this tension, and I would say through much of human history, it's the side with the physical power, the brute force, that has won the day as opposed to those groups who want to listen to what the animals are saying. And that includes those of us today who are talking about reconciliation and coexistence, whether it's with animal species or people of other faiths or people of other backgrounds and ethnicities.
Grant: And by the end, it seems like even the humans who were the worst actors were starting to come around to the animals’ arguments, which is hopeful.
Anson: Other than the humans who disappeared. Once the bad ringleaders are gone, everyone seems better off.
Grant: Yeah, right. You can take that literally, or they can disappear over time as the generations learn. You know, the first time I read this, I kind of chuckled at the phrase “winged swarming things.” I took that to mean the insects, in part since the bee is the ruler of the winged swarming things. So when I saw this stuff about bees in the book, I immediately sent it to our bees team, who are working on protections for bees in several places in Latin America. For instance, there’s a town in Costa Rica that has declared citizenship for bees. I felt a particular affinity for the bee and the donkey in the book. Are there any animals in the book that you felt particularly connected to?
Anson: I also really enjoyed donkey a lot. I was particularly touched by the sheep's plea when she says, “There we are in the marketplace, being chopped up and sold, and that's us! That's our bodies, that's our babies!” That really resonated with me. And I liked cricket. Cricket was very thoughtful.
Grant: When I read that line from sheep, it made me think of factory farming today. I'm not trying to give you too much work, but I feel now we need an updated factory farming focused version of the story, and a screenplay, for the lawyers, law students, judges, and so on. I did see a reference to rights in the book, which was interesting. It wasn't the focus, like the idea of who has rights and who doesn't, like us legal nerds like to talk about. But I did see our friend, the cricket, talk about animals communicating their right to a life free from violence and abuse. That's what I would put in my brief as a lawyer.
Anson: I was just remembering that one of my favorite lines in the story is when the king asks the people for proof of their claim to be ruling the animals. The people say, “Well it is our God given right, and it says so right in the Bible.” And the king says, “Well, do you have further proof of that?? And they think for a while and say, “Oh no, the documents were lost in the Flood.”
Grant: That made me laugh, it’s so funny. Like classic lawyers like to say, “It is our word against theirs.”
Anson: I also wanted to mention one of things that we did in The Animals Lawsuit Against Humanity that was a big change from the original. In the original, the king says, “I rule in favor of the human beings, but you human beings should behave better.” [Cotranslator] Dan Bridge and I felt like the ending needed to be kicked up a notch, so we came up with the “10 Warnings” - if you see these things happening, be wary and know that you need to change your path. And then everyone lives happily ever after after that. In my new book, my one and only novel, which just came out, called The Forgotten Commandment, I've taken the animal story, condensed it a bit, and transformed it into this story of a secret manuscript. And there, I kick up the ending even stronger. You have the 10 Warnings, but I make it even more specific that the Earth as a living entity is kind of kicking back against humanity.
Grant: Tell me more about your new book. Do you recommend that people read it as a supplement to the Animals Lawsuit Against Humanity, or is it a stand alone thing? Is it totally from your own brain or did you have any source material?
Anson: The Forgotten Commandment was published by Wipf and Stock in December 2023. It weaves together four different strands. One strand is tracing the history of a Sephardic Jewish family from the land of Israel at the time of the First Crusade leaving for Spain and Portugal, later leaving the Iberian Peninsula at the time of the Spanish Inquisition and going up to Holland and settling there. So, along the way you meet various important figures dealing with historical happenings like the expulsions from Spain and Portugal. You meet Spinoza, an excommunicated Dutch Jew, for example. And this family are the carriers of an ancient manuscript which is The Animals Lawsuit Against Humanity. It gets confiscated by the Inquisition and shipped off to the Vatican, but the family has an oral tradition that goes along with the story, so it's passed along from generation to generation.
The second strand of the story is in the twentieth century and deals with a descendent, who is a scholar. He begins to track down the story, which leads him to the Vatican Secret Archives, where he finds the story, starts to transcribe it, but then his work is disrupted by WWII. So then he hustles his way back home, then leads the reader on an escape from the Nazis in France. This strand is based on the true adventures of one of my teachers. In it, you meet the future Pope Pius XII and rescuers like the American Varian Fry, and learn a great deal – as I did – about the Vatican libraries and archives.
The third strand is the tale of The Animals Lawsuit itself, a shortened version with a different, more powerful ending.
And then the fourth strand is a modern one where a scholar from Seattle meets up with a scholar from Toronto and they track down this man's work and follow his leads to the Vatican Secret Archives, and they succeed in translating this story. There is a big interfaith gathering where they reveal the newly-discovered ending to the story, which makes a big impact on everyone because it's eerily prophetic. But then something happens, but I won’t give away the end of the book.
My point in writing the novel was to give the characters a chance to talk about human beings’ inhumanity to other human beings, and how violence and intolerance threaten other human beings first and foremost, and connecting our inhumanity to each other with our inhumanity to animals and the environment. By giving the opportunity to the characters to speculate about why human beings behave the way we do, how we could be behaving differently and better, and giving The Animals Lawsuit a greater environmental punch, hopefully that will make the message of the novel have a greater impact.
I hope that the story will aid in people having a changed perspective, whether they are religious or not, such that they begin to look at other living things in a more sensitive and appreciative way. And to look at our environment as a whole in a more appreciative way, so we do less harm and that applies to everyone, religious or not.
Grant: Do you think that the Spirit King would be pleased with our progress since the initial opinion?
Anson: No, not yet. You're making a good start over there at Earth Law Center.
Grant: Oh, we try. I’ve heard that for interview type formats, it's good to have short answers alongside the more narrative ones. So that can be a short no.
Anson: You can file an amicus brief on behalf of the animals. For me, it was a thrill to learn of your interest in the book and to find out about the work that Earth Law Center is doing. It does bring into concrete manifestation what the story is about, and I think that's wonderful. It takes things to a whole new level from theological literary plain to a concrete reality plane, and that's terrific.
Grant: Well thank you for being part of this meshwork of folks in this space, and we love when religion, spiritual, academic, and law can all move forward together in exciting directions.
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About the translator:
Anson Laytner is a happily retired rabbi, living in Seattle, whose career focused on building positive interfaith and interethnic relations in our community.
During his career, he served as program manager for Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry's Interreligious Initiative, as a hospice chaplain at the Kline Galland Home and a grant-writer for the Jewish Family Service of Seattle, as interim rabbi at Congregation Kol HaNeshamah, and as executive director of the Seattle Chapter of the American Jewish Committee and of Multifaith Works, a Seattle non-profit agency that served people with AIDS. He also directed the Seattle Jewish Federation's Community Relations Council.
He is the author of the cult classic Arguing with God; The Mystery of Suffering and the Meaning of God; Choosing Life After Tragedy; and his first (and probably only) novel The Forgotten Commandment. He co-authored with Dan Bridge, The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity and co-edited with Jordan Paper The Chinese Jews of Kaifeng.
As a volunteer, Laytner serves as president of the Sino-Judaic Institute (www.sinojudaic.org) and edits its journal, Points East. He is a past president of Northwest Interfaith and also served on the advisory board of End of Life Washington. He is an active supporter of the New Israel Fund and J Street.
Laytner has a BA, summa cum laude, from York University in Toronto, a Masters of Hebrew Letters (MAHL) and rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College, a Masters in Not-for-Profit Leadership (MNPL) from Seattle University, and an honorary Doctorate in Divinity from Hebrew Union College.
Rabbi Laytner is married to Richelle Harrell. He has two living daughters, three sons-in-law and five grandkids.
For more information or to contact him, go to www.ansonlaytner.com.
