Q&A: A Remedy for Running Over an Animal
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
A Remedy for Running Over an Animal
Question
Is there some kind of remedy or money one should donate if an animal was run over?
(by accident, of course)
And what if it may have been a rare and unfamiliar animal, with huge wings and also at a strange height above the road, along with several other things I’ve never seen before.
Is there some special remedy?
(Of course the driving was with due caution, and it was a complete accident.)
Answer
Do you want me to make up an answer for you? It’s no longer accepted nowadays to do that. Hold a séance for the author of Sefer Hasidim or one of his colleagues.
Discussion on Answer
That Noda B’Yehuda was in the back of my mind when I wrote the answer here.
You could also summon the famous Noda B’Yehuda, who said he was accustomed to respond only on the basis of the Talmud, and not on matters that depend on belly-feelings with no source (first edition, Orach Chayim 35) [and there he also says that “penitential measures proportionate to the sin,” involving self-mortification (such as sitting naked before bees or rolling in the snow), were not meant as an end in themselves—to suffer—but as a means that advances remorse, since the essence of repentance is in the heart]. But since they pressed him, he answered. And then… he rains down on the adulterer (as a fixed practice) almost a hundred fast-days a year for three years (after that the number drops), and he must not sleep in a bed or drink liquor, and he must give much charity, plus several other things. And one of the considerations behind obligating the adulterer to reveal to the woman’s husband that he himself is the sinner (and not merely that he knows she has become forbidden to her husband) is so that he should be ashamed.