The Giraffe Blessed Twice

The Giraffe Blessed Twice: A Kabbalistic Midrash on Rarity, Compassion, and the Mission of Israel

By Rabbi Mikhail Salita

There are animals that the Torah names directly, and others it describes only through signs and characteristics, and then there are those whose very existence in the world points to a deeper intention within Creation, as if their presence carries a whisper from the earliest garden.

The giraffe belongs to that last category.

According to the halakhic signs given in the Torah, the giraffe is, without any doubt, a kosher species: it chews the cud, it has split hooves, and the law is clear; yet throughout the generations the people of Israel never treated it as a food animal, not because the halakhic details were unknown, but because no tradition of consuming it ever existed, because it is a rare and vulnerable creature, and because its nature evokes a form of reverence that stands above the level of formal permission, reminding us that not every permissible act is necessary, and not every allowed possibility is aligned with the deeper spirit of our service.

When halakha says “allowed,”
the Jewish heart sometimes replies,
“but not fitting.”

In the Land of Israel this sensitivity becomes even more pronounced, perhaps because this is the land entrusted with safeguarding life in all its forms, and perhaps because, as our sages taught, Jerusalem stands at the threshold of Gan Eden, a gate where the spiritual and the physical draw close to one another. In this land, in the Biblical Zoo of Jerusalem and in the Ramat Gan Safari, places dedicated to preserving the species mentioned in Scripture and Midrash rather than displaying them as curiosities, careful breeding programs for giraffes have taken root, quiet efforts to sustain a species whose future in the world depends on human restraint rather than human appetite.

The fact that such programs exist specifically in Israel is not incidental, for a land that stands at the gate of the primordial garden carries a responsibility not only to teach Torah but also to guard the living echoes of Creation, and so the presence of the giraffe under the care of Israel becomes a subtle reminder that we were placed in the world not merely to use, but also to protect.

The kabbalistic tradition teaches that every species has a spiritual root, and the giraffe is linked to the quality of gvoha — height — a vertical line that binds the upper realms with the lower, revealing what is usually concealed, and stretching the boundary between mind and heart in a way that makes the creature not a resource but a sign, an invitation to contemplate the layers of Creation rather than consume them. The sages of the Zohar taught that where the measure is unusual, a hint is hidden, and the unusual height of the giraffe has long been seen as such a hint — a living reminder that there are beings whose purpose is not utility but wonder.

It was an Israeli rabbi who once remarked, with the simplicity of truth, that taking the life of a giraffe is not meaningful, that it serves no purpose, that even if its meat were to cost ten thousand dollars per kilogram — which is an estimate sometimes mentioned in discussions — the act itself has no spiritual logic, because a rare and noble creature is not created to become meat simply because it is technically kosher; and in that moment one understands that the deeper path of compassion lies beyond the letter of the law, and that the holiness of life often reveals itself precisely where restraint is chosen over permission.

Thus the giraffe carries a double blessing:

First, that it is kosher according to the laws of the Torah.
Second, that it is preserved by the conscience, mercy, and spiritual mission of Israel — a mission that belongs to a land standing at the gate of Eden, a land tasked with guarding what the Creator placed in its care.

And in the presence of such a creature we are reminded that rarity is not an accident, but a trust; that compassion can be a form of service; and that some beings exist not to be taken, but to be seen.




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