Bava Kamma 32a ~ Liability for Intimate Injuries

בבא קמא לב,א

בעא מיניה רבה בר נתן מרב הונא המזיק את אשתו בתשמיש המטה מהו כיון דברשות קעביד פטור או דלמא איבעי ליה לעיוני

Rabbah bar Nassan asked Rav Huna this question: If a man injured his wife during sexual intercourse, what is the law regarding his liability? Do we say that since he is acting with permission of his wife, he is not liable? Or perhaps we say that he should have been more careful to avoid injuring his wife, and therefore he is liable to pay her damages? (Bava Kama 32a)

In the daf we will learn tomorrow, the Talmud records a series of legal precedents to help decide this perplexing question, and concludes that a wife does not have any legal culpability in causing her injury, however active or passive she may have been. Therefore, the husband is legally deemed responsible for damages and must compensate his wife, which is codified in the authoritative Code of Jewish Law (שולחן ערוך אבן העזר סימן פג ,ב).

Intimate Injures in the Medical Literature

The Talmud’s case discussion is not simply theoretical. Injuries during consensual sexual intercourse are not uncommon, and over the years I’ve treated several in the emergency department. Because of sexual taboos however, the amount of scientific knowledge in this area has been very limited, particularly regarding the female. In one (very small) study, about 5% of women reported an injury after consensual intercourse, compared with 41% of the woman who were forced to have non-consensual intercourse.

A more recent study from the University of Manchester in England evaluated genital injuries in a cohort of 68 women who had recently had consensual penile-vaginal intercourse, and compared them with a group of 500 women who had been victims of non-consensual penile-vaginal intercourse. Of the 68 women, one (1%) had a single injury, and three (4%) had more than one injury.  One woman had a laceration, another had an abrasion, and a third had bruising.  The posterior fourchette was the most commonly injured area both in women who had consensual intercourse and those in whom intercourse was not consensual. 

Another study, from emergency medicine researchers, looked at the rates of genital injury in adolescents (aged 13-17) who had either consensual (51 women) or non-consensual (204 women) sexual intercourse. They found rates far higher than the Manchester study: anogenital trauma was documented in 73% of adolescent females after consensual sexual intercourse (versus 85% of victims of sexual assault). The researchers helpfully add that several predisposing factors have been suggested: “first coitus, rough or hurried coitus, intoxication, variant coital positions, anatomical disproportion, mental factors (fear of discovery), postmenstrual state, and clumsiness.” (Really. Clumsiness.)

Men Too

Rabbah bar Nassan’s legal question concerned only the husband causing damage to his wife, and does not address another kind of coital injury: that caused of husband.  One of these injuries is a penile fracture, and over the last six decades about 1,330 cases have been reported in 183 medical publications. I’ve treated these too. But don’t worry: they are a lot worse than they already sound. Sexual intercourse is the most common cause, and inexplicably, “more than half of the [reported] cases are from Mediterranean countries including Turkey.” Here, for example, is a case in the Asian Journal of Urology published last June:

A 54-year-old male presented to the emergency department with penile injury. The trauma occurred when the patient was having sexual intercourse with his wife at around 2 o’clock in the early morning. His wife kneeled forward and he penetrated from behind. The patient then accidentally collided his penis into his wife’s buttocks. He felt a popping sensation and reported rapid detumescence followed by severe penile pain and hematoma formation.

And here are the causes and complications of a fracture of the penis in 32 unhappy men treated in the Department of Urology in Tehran.

Asgari, MA. Hosseini, SY. Safarinejad, MR. et al. Penile  Fractures: Evaluation, therapeutic approaches and long-term results. The Journal of Urology 1995: 155; 148-149. 

Rabbah bar Nassan asked only about the rights of a wife to claim compensation for intimate injuries from her husband. But he might well have asked the question about compensation for the husband. In this age of equality, it seems only fair.

שולחן ערוך אבן העזר הלכות כתובות סימן פג סעיף ב 

המזיק את אשתו בתשמיש המטה, חייב בנזקיה 

Bava Kamma 24b ~ Dogs, Bites and Liabilities

בבא קמא כד, ב

ת"ש שיסה בו את הכלב ... פטור מאי לאו פטור משסה וחייב בעל כלב? לא אימא פטור אף משסה אמר רבא אם תמצי לומר המשסה כלבו של חבירו בחבירו חייב שיסהו הוא בעצמו פטור מאי טעמא כל המשנה ובא אחר ושינה בו פטור

Come an hear [a proof from a Mishnah in Sanhedrin]:

If one incited a dog [against another person]...he is not liable. Who is "not liable"? Does this mean that the inciter is not liable, but that the dog's owner is liable? No. Say that this Mishnah means that even the one who incites is not liable. Rava said the following: Even if you conclude that when a person incites a dog against his fellow, [that the owner is liable], if the victim incited the dog against himself, [and brought the attack upon himself, then in this case the dog's owner] is also not liable. What is the reason for Rava's ruling? Because whenever a person acts in an irregular way, and another person comes along and acts in an irregular way against him, [the second party] is not liable.

JEWS AND DOGS

From this passage in today's daf yomi, we learn a couple of things about dogs in the period of the Mishnah. First, we learn that Jews, or those who interacted with Jews, kept them. And second, that some of them were very bad dogs.  

Jews and dogs don't traditionally get along. Later in our tractate, (Bava Kamma 83a,) Rabbi Eliezer does not mince his words: 

רבי אליעזר הגדול אומר: המגדל כלבים כמגדל חזירים .למאי נפקא מינה? למיקם עליה בארור

Rabbi Eliezer the Great said: Someone who breeds dogs is like someone who breeds pigs. What is the practical outcome of this comparison? To teach that those who breed dogs are cursed...

The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that in the US there are about 43 million households that own almost 70 million dogs; that means over one-third of the households in the US own a dog.  (Fun Fact: Cats are owned by fewer households in the US, but are more often owned in twos or more. That means that there are more household cats - some 74 million - than there are dogs.) In the UK, a 2007 study estimated that 31% of all households owned a dog. In Israel, over 10% of all families own a dog. 

BAD DOGS

Most dogs are wonderful pets, but a few are really bad. In a 10 year period from 2000-2009, one paper identified 256 dog-bite related fatalities in the US. Of course that's a tiny number compared to the overall number of dogs owned, but that's still 256 too many; the tragedy is compounded when you read that over half the victims were less than ten years old. 

Partaken, GJ. et al. Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite–related fatalities in the United States (2000–2009). Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 2013. 243:12: 1726-1736.

“Az a yid hot a hunt, iz oder der hunt keyn hunt nit, oder der yid iz keyn yid nit

If a Jew has a dog, either the dog is no dog, or the Jew is no Jew”

— — Sholem Aleichem. Rabtshik. Mayses far Yidishe Kinder. Ale Verk. Warsaw 1903

Although fatalities from dog bites are rare, dog bites are not. Over my career as an emergency physician I must have treated hundreds of patients with dog bites. And my experience is pretty typical. One recent study estimated that more than half the population in the US will be bitten by an animal at some time, and that dogs are responsible for 80-90% of these injuries. 

GOOD DOGS

Although Jews are thought not to have a historical affinity for dogs, one theologian has reassessed the evidence. In his 2008 paper Attitudes toward Dogs in Ancient Israel: A Reassessment, Geoffrey Miller  suggests that in fact dogs were not shunned in Israelite society. He notes that the remains of over a thousand dogs were discovered in a dog cemetery near Ashkelon dating from about the 5th century BC. It was described as "by far the largest animal cemetery known in the ancient world" by Lawrence Stager who also pointed out that during this period, Ashkelon was a Phoenician city - not a Jewish one. Miller surveys several mentions of dogs in the Bible and the Book of Tobit, and concludes that at least some Israelites "valued dogs and did not view them as vile, contemptible creatures." Joshua Schwartz from Bar-Ilan University surveyed Dogs in Jewish Society in the Second Temple Period and in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud (a study that marked "...the culmination of several years of study of the subject of dogs...").  He found that while "most of the Jewish sources from the Second Temple period and the time of the Mishnah and Talmud continue to maintain the negative attitude toward dogs expressed in the Biblical tradition" there were some important exceptions. There were sheep dogs (Gen. Rabbah 73:11) and hunting dogs (Josephus, Antiquities 4.206) and guard dogs (Pesahim 113a), and yes, even pet dogs (Tobit, 6:2), though Schwartz concedes that "it is improbable that dogs in Jewish society were the objects of the same degree of affection as they received in the Graeco-Roman world or the Persian world."

“A certain person invited a sage to his home, and [the householder] sat his dog next to him. [The sage] asked him, ‘How did I merit this insult?’ [The house-holder] responded, ‘My master, I am repaying him for his goodness. Kidnappers came to the town, one of them came and wanted to take my wife, and the dog ate his testicles.”

— PT Terumot 8:7

Liability for Dog Bites in the US

In contrast to the talmudic rule requiring three occurrences of goring or biting before an animal is considered "forewarned" and so liable to pay full damages, many states have a "one bite and you're out rule". But New York, for example has a law that has aspects of the talmudic category of mu'ad, at least according to this opinion:

New York Agriculture & Markets Code section 123 (part of the Laws of New York) addresses a dog owner's potential civil liability when the owner's dog injures another person. The statute covers both injuries caused by bites and non-bite injuries, like those suffered when a dog knocks a person to the ground. The statute states that the owner of a "dangerous dog" is liable if the dog causes injuries to another person, to livestock, or to another person's companion animal, like a disability service dog.

The statute defines a "dangerous dog" as one that:

 - attacks and either injures or kills a person, farm animal, or pet without justification, or

 - behaves in a way that causes a reasonable person to believe that the dog poses a "serious and unjustified imminent threat of serious physical injury or death."

However, the statute specifically states that a law enforcement dog carrying out its duties cannot be considered a "dangerous dog." 

Under New York's "dangerous dog" statute, a dog owner is "strictly liable" for all medical bills resulting from injuries caused by a "dangerous dog." This means that if the dog is found to be dangerous, the dog's owner must pay the injured person's medical bills (or bills for the treatment of injuries to livestock or pets) even if the dog's owner had taken reasonable precautions to control or restrain the dog. For other types of damages resulting from a dog bite or dog-related injury, the injured person must usually prove that the dog's owner was negligent. In other words, the injured person must show that the dog's owner failed to use reasonable care to prevent the injuries from occurring (failed to take reasonable steps to control or restrain the animal, in other words). For example, suppose that a dog slips out of its own yard, breaks down the neighbor's fence, and enters the neighbor's yard, where it bites the neighbor. While the injured neighbor may be able to recover the costs of medical care under New York's strict liability rule, the neighbor cannot recover the costs of replacing the broken fence unless the neighbor can show that the dog's owner failed to take reasonable steps to keep the dog in its own yard. 

The legal category of mu'ad - an animal (or more precisely here, a dog) that was forewarned as being a danger is clearly noted in New York Agriculture & Markets Code section 123. The law allows  charges to be filed if:
 - the dog was previously declared to be a "dangerous dog"
 - the owner negligently allows the dog to bite someone, and the injury suffered is a "serious injury."

If a "dangerous dog" overcomes an owner's attempts to restrain it and kills a person, the owner may also be charged with a misdemeanor. Any owner who faces a criminal charge relating to a dog bite might also face civil liability if the injured person decides to sue in civil court.

Here's how the lawyer Mary Randal explains the factors that courts take into account when deciding if a dog owner is liable for the damages of a pet. See how many times there is an echo to the talmudic concept of mu'ad:

Previous bites. This one is pretty easy. If a dog bites once, the owner will forevermore be on notice that the dog is dangerous. But even this is not as straightforward as it may appear; for example, at least one court has ruled that if a puppy nips someone, its owners are not necessarily on notice that the dog is dangerous. (Tessiero v. Conrad, 588 N.Y.S.2d 200 (App. Div. 1992).)

Barking at strangers. If a dog, usually kept in the house or a fenced yard, barks at strangers but has never threatened a person, its owners will probably not be liable if it bites someone. (See, for example, Slack v. Villari, 476 A.2d 227, cert. denied, 482 A.2d 502 (Md. 1984) and Collier v. Zambito, 1 N.Y.3d 444 (2004).)

Threatening people. A dog that often growls and snaps at people who come near it when out in public, but hasn't ever actually bitten someone, is a different case entirely. The dog's actions should put its owner on notice that the dog might bite someone. If the dog does bite, the owner will be liable. (See, for example, Fontecchio v. Esposito, 485 N.Y.S.2d 113 (1985).)

Jumping on people. The owner of a friendly, playful, and large dog, which is in the habit of jumping on house guests, will be liable if the exuberant dog knocks over a friend who comes to the door one day. The owner knew that the dog behaved this way and might injure someone because of its size.

Frightening people. If a dog likes to run along the fence that separates his yard from the sidewalk barking furiously, or chases pedestrians or bicyclists, the owner may be liable if the dog causes an injury. At least one court, however, has ruled that an owner wasn't responsible for foreseeing that a barking dog could frighten someone so much she would run into the street. (Nava v. McMillan, 123 Cal. App. 3d 262 (1981).)

Fighting with other dogs. If a dog that is gentle with people has a history of fights with other dogs, that's probably not enough to put the owner on notice that the dog might bite a person. Courts usually recognize that canine society has its own rules, and the way a dog behaves under them isn't a reliable predictor of how it will act toward humans. (As one court put it, the “question was the dog's propensity to attack a human. The canine code duello is something else. That involves the question of what constitutes a just cause for battle in the dog world, or what justifies a resort to arms, or rather to teeth, for redress.” (Fowler v. Helck, 278 Ky. 361 (1939).)

Fight training. If a dog has been trained to fight, a court will almost certainly conclude that the owner should have known that the dog is dangerous. (This conclusion is disputed by some people experienced with dogs used for fighting, who maintain that there is no connection between a dog's drive to fight other dogs and its aggression toward people. However, a dog that has been agitated and abused when used for fighting may be dangerous.)

Complaints about the dog. If neighbors or others complain to the owner that a dog has threatened or bitten someone, the owner would certainly be on notice that the dog is dangerous. But in one Alabama case, where a dog's owner had been scolded by a neighbor for having a dog that was a "nuisance," the court ruled that the owner did not have any knowledge that his dog was dangerous. (Rucker v. Goldstein, 497 So. 2d 491 (Ala. 1986).)

The dog's breed. Generally, courts don't consider dogs of certain breeds to be inherently dangerous. So if you have a German shepherd, a court probably won't conclude that you should have known, just because of the dog's breed, that it might injure someone. (See, for example, Roupp v. Conrad, 287 A.D.2d 937, 731 N.Y.S.2d 545 (2001).) But in some places, pit bulls and a few other breeds have been defined by law as dangerous dogs.

VERY GOOD DOGS

Whatever your feeling about dogs, lets's be sure to remember that they serve alongside soldiers in the IDF, where they save lives. In 1969, Motta Gur (yes, the same Mordechai "Motta" Gur who commanded the unit that liberated the Temple Mount in the Six Day War, and who uttered those immortal words "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" הר הבית בידינו‎,) wrote what was to become a series of children's books called Azit, the Canine Paratrooper (later turned into a popular feature film with the same title. And now available on Netflix. (Really. It is available on Netflix.)  But IDF dogs don't just feature in fiction. They are a fact, and an amazing addition to the IDF, where they make up the Oketz unit.  Here's a news report (in Hebrew) about the amazing work these dogs - and their handlers- perform. These are very good dogs indeed.

Bava Kamma 18b ~ Braying Donkeys and Broken Glasses

Do you remember the ad for Memorex video and cassette tapes that aired in the 1970s? It showed the late great Ella Fitzgerald breaking a glass with her pitch perfect voice, and was followed by the catchy jingle “is it live, or is it Memorex?” Here’s the ad, to refresh your memory.

Tomorrow's page of Talmud mentions the ability of roosters, horses and donkeys to shatter glassware and pottery with their cries:

בבא קמא יח, ב

תא שמע דתני רמי בר יחזקאל תרנגול שהושיט ראשו לאויר כלי זכוכית ותקע בו ושברו משלם נזק שלם ואמר רב יוסף אמרי בי רב סוס שצנף וחמור שנער ושיבר את הכלים משלם חצי נזק

Come and learn:Rami bar Yechezkel taught a Baraisa that states: If a rooster put its head into the hollow of a glass vessel, and cried out and broke it, the rooster’s owner pays full damages.  But Rav Yosef said that they say in the academy of Rav: if a horse neighed or a donkey brayed and broke vessels with the noise, the animal’s owner pays only half damages..

Rashi is very clear (and this does appear to be the plain meaning of the Talmud) that these cases do not refer to damage that was caused by the animal’s body, but rather by its voice.

ותקע בו ושברו. שנבקע הכלי מחמת הקול:

סוס שצנף ושיבר כלים. בקולו וכל הני צרורות נינהו דכחו הוא

 Which raises the question: can you actually break a glass with your voice – and can animals do so?

How to shatter a glass with perfect pitch

It would appear that Ella Fitzgerald’s Memorex feat was achieved by sleight of hand – she did in fact break the glass, but her voice was amplified.  Which is kind of cheating. But as The Scientific American explained, this trick should be physically possible:

Every piece of glass has a natural resonant frequency—the speed at which it will vibrate if bumped or otherwise disturbed by some stimulus, such as a sound wave—as does every other material on Earth. Glass wine goblets are especially resonant because of their hollow tubular shape, which is why they make a pleasant ringing sound when clinked. If a person sings the same tone as that ringing note—a high C in legend but in reality the matching pitch could be any note—the sound of her voice will vibrate the air molecules around the glass at its resonant frequency, causing the glass to start vibrating as well. And if she sings loudly enough, the glass will vibrate itself to smithereens. 

But singing the correct note does not guarantee breaking the glass. For that to happen, there needs to be microscopic defects in it that will buckle and fracture under pressure. The volume can help a lot too (hence the amplification in Ella’s Memorex commercial), because the louder the note, the more forceful the pressure exerted on the glass molecules.

The ability for a human voice to break a glass – usually a wine glass – was considered by many to be an urban legend, but it is in fact perfectly feasible. If you are a trained opera singer.  In 2005 the entertaining television series Mythbusters dedicated an episode to exploring the myth, and concluded that it is indeed possible. In so doing, the show provided the first documented evidence that a natural, un-amplified human voice can break a glass. It took twenty attempts, and a voice that reached 105 decibels (that's louder than jackhammer) and could hit a perfect 566 Hz.  Here's a montage that recaps the attempt. If you are impatient, fast-forward to minute 2.05

All of this raises the question: how on earth could a braying donkey or crying rooster achieve the same feat? It takes incredible volume, a perfect pitch, and close proximity to be able to pull of a stunt like that. Perhaps that's why the Baraisa noted that the rooster would have to have put its head inside the hollow of the glass vessel (שהושיט ראשו לאויר כלי זכוכית). But even so, there's the volume and pitch thing.  Given what we know about the difficulty in shattering a glass with the human voice, talmudic donkeys and roosters must have had incredible musical talent.  Or perhaps the pots and glasses used in the talmudic era tended to break much more readily than do ours, and the animals were convenient to blame. It's too bad that the 282nd episode of Mythbusters, which aired in March of this year, was its last. Perhaps they could have replaced Jaime Vendera, the vocal coach who broke the glass, with a couple of chickens and a donkey.  Now that would be worth watching.

Bava Kamma 15b ~ Where the Wild Things Are

 בבא קמא טו,ב

הזאב והארי והדוב והנמר והברדלס והנחש הרי אלו מועדין רבי אלעזר אומר בזמן שהן בני תרבות אינן מועדין והנחש מועד לעולם

The the wolf, the lion, the bear, the leopard, the bardalis and the snake are considered to be forewarned [so that if they cause damage their owner must pay in full].  R. Eleazar says: if they have been tamed, they are not forewarned; the snake, however, is always forwarned.

Wild Animals gone...Wild

In July 2012, while touring a hospital in Johannesburg, I was given a brutal reminder of the dangers posed by the wild animals were were about to see on safari. In the Intensive Care unit and fighting for his life was a young American named Andrew Oberle, who had come to South Africa to study the chimps. Oberle, a twenty-six year old student, had left the group he was guiding and entered a 'no-go' zone. Two chimps interpreted this as an act of aggression, grabbed the young American, and dragged him into their enclosure. By the time he was finally rescued, Oberline had suffered these injuries: 

The chimps tore away his scalp down to the skull. His ears and nose are gone, and he can’t close his right eye. He has wounds on his trunk and all four limbs. He’s lost most of his fingers, and his right forearm has been eaten, the tendons gone. He’s lost parts of his feet, and his right ankle is destroyed.

(Oberle survived his attack, and in December 2017 he talked about it on podcast which you can listen to here.)

Then there was bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell (who later became the subject of an excellent 2005 documentary by Werner Herzog).  Treadwell was a self-described bear conservationist, although he lacked any formal training in the field and was frequently at odds with the Park Service. In October 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend were mauled and eaten by a Grizzly bear in Alaska's Katmai National Park. Thus far, two examples of wild animals acting, well, wild.  

What about training these wild animals to perform tricks?  Well, there's a cautionary tale in that too. Do you recall the great illusionists Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, the pair of magicians who became world famous for their performances with white lions? For over thirteen years Siegfried and Roy performed at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, until um, they stopped. On October 3, 2003 Roy was bitten in the neck by a seven year old tiger named Manticore, who dragged him off the stage "like a ragdoll." He almost bled to death, and remains partially paralyzed as a result of the attack.  So how could Rabbi Eleazar possibly claim that animals as wild as a lion or a bear ever be considered tame or domesticated? Well, read on...

Domestication

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines domestication as

the process of hereditary reorganization of wild animals and plants into domestic and cultivated forms according to the interests of people. In its strictest sense, it refers to the initial stage of human mastery of wild animals and plants. The fundamental distinction of domesticated animals and plants from their wild ancestors is that they are created by human labour to meet specific requirements or whims and are adapted to the conditions of continuous care and solicitude people maintain for them.

Thus we speak of domesticated horses and wild horses, domesticated bees and wild bees, and domesticated plants -(think tobacco, and corn)- and wild plants. What turns a species from a wild to a domesticated form is human patience and careful breeding. But the late professor of anthropology Charles Reed (d. 2000) wrote that many animals are naturally tame - or at least not afraid of human contact:

Among these are manatees, who may not even move aside as one swim among them; sea-otters, from whom one can take the young without any defense by the mother; various basking seals, elephant-seals and sea-lions, among who (other than the males in breeding season) one can walk unconcerned, and whose young, if they've lost their mothers, will follow any human hoping to be fed; various of the porpoises and dolphins, who seem to have no fear of man, and even the great whales.

Can Wolves be Tamed?

The Mishnah on today's page of Talmud stated that six species of animal can never be relied upon to have been domesticated. One of these is the wolf, which seems kind of reasonable, even allowing for the fact that our dogs are descended from them.  But wolves have also been successfully raised as family pets, (though you should probably check with your spouse before bringing home a wolf cub for the family). "Actually" wrote Charles Reed, "wolf pups reared as a group in Alaskan isolation or a single pup brought up with children and dogs in an urban family are wonderfully affectionate, social, dynamic, interesting, and of course intelligent fellow citizens." Which sounds rather like the opinion of Rabbi Eleazar, who believed that wolves, (and bears, lions and leopards) may be tamed so successfully that they end up about as aggressive as domestic goats.

“Wild animals ain’t so wild, as shown again by a wild-caught penned wolverine in Alaska, which, within a few days of capture, was taking food from the hand...when the hand was empty, the wolverine gently, with its incisor teeth, held the lady’s fingertips without braking the skin.”

— Charles A. Reed. Wild Animals Ain't So Wild, Domesticating Them Not So Difficult. Expedition 1986. 28 (2) 8-15.

A Pet Grizzly Bear called ben franklin

In the Mishnah, Rabbi Eleazar spoke not only of a tame wolf - but of a tame bear.  While our modern sensibilities would be outraged at the notion of raising a wild bear as a pet, these sensibilities are, to be sure, modern indeed. In a charming article published in the American Naturalist in 1886, John Caton described the domestication of the grizzly bear. Just to remind you- a small grizzly bear weights 400 pounds and stands about six and a half feet tall. Now read on:

Among others he [a certain James Adams] fairly domesticated quite a number of the grizzly bear (Ursus ferox Lewis and Clark) with complete success. This is the largest and fiercest known of all the species, and it might be expected the most intractable or unsubmissive to human control, yet such appears not to have been the case.

The first specimens experimented with were two cubs, over a year old when caught, taken in Washington Territory, between Lewis and Clark's fork of the Columbia. They were brother and sister; the latter was retained by Adams, and his experiments were principally conducted on her, which he called " Lady Washington." She seems to have been the more tractable and submissive. The male he parted with to a friend, after he had received but the rudiments of his education. At first they were chained to trees near the camp-fire, and resisted all attempts at familiarity and kindness; then severity was adopted, until they finally submitted.

Soon after the male was parted with, and we have no account of his subsequent career. The female was always after treated with the utmost kindness, and in a few months became as tractable as a dog. She followed her master in his hunting excursions, fought for him with other grizzlies, and saved him from the greatest perils.

She slept at his feet around the camp-fire, and took the place of a most vigilant watch-dog. He taught her to carry burdens with the docility of a mule, and as she grew up her great strength enabled her to render him great assistance in this way.

Another bear of the same species he captured in the Sierras in California before its eyes were open, and raised it on a greyhound bitch in company with her own pup. This he called Ben Franklin, and proved more docile even than the first. He never found it necessary to confine in any way this specimen, but he was allowed to roam and hunt with his foster brother, the grayhound [sic]. They were inseparable companions, and seemed to have as much affection for each other as if they had been of the same species, Before he was full-grown, when his master was attacked by a wounded grizzly, he joined in the fight with such ferocity as to save his master's life, and though he was severely wounded in this contest, with careful nursing he survived, and ever after showed as much courage in attacking his own species as if he had not met with this severe punishment.

I know what you are thinking: grizzly bears are found only in North America, but bears in Israel were a species of the brown bear called Ursus arctos syriacus, or the Syrian Brown Bear. Well that's true, but it's not only grizzly bears that make cuddly pets; the same owner of Ben Franklin, the pet grizzly, also kept black bears (and who knows, perhaps brown ones too):

He found the black bear, when raised in camp, as readily domesticated as the grizzly, and as fond of his society, following him about the camp and through the woods with fidelity and attachment.

So there we have it. Evidence to support Rabbi Eleazar's dissenting opinion that many wild animals may become as domesticated as a dog or cat.  Still, best to stick with dogs and cats as pets.  They take up far less space than the enormous, though very cute, grizzly bear.