“When a woman conceives, and gives birth to a male child, she shall be impure for seven days…” [12:2]

Rav Simlai says in the Medrash, “just as the formation of man followed all the animals and birds in the order of Creation, so his laws are explained after the laws of animals and birds.” The Medrash also quotes Reish Lakish: “‘Back and front You have held me’ [Psalms 139:5] — if a person merits it, then they say to him, ‘you preceded all the works of Creation.’ And if not then they say to him, ‘the mosquito preceded you.'”

We know that in Genesis, the creation of man is last. So how can one say to a person “you preceded all the works of Creation?” We also need to know what’s wrong with being last. On the contrary, “saving the best for last” comes from an old saying of our Sages: “the last is most important!”

The Bais Yitzchak answers these questions, with an apocryphal story of a gathering of philosophers and naturists devoted to studying and understanding all of the components of the natural world. They determined that everything in the world has a purpose — as we know today, complex ecosystems depend upon the interactions of every plant and animal within them, and the disappearance of even a single species can throw an entire system out of balance.

Other species are especially valuable in the service of man: horses and donkeys, for example. Various plants provide us with food; even poisonous varieties often have medical value when used externally.

This conclusion was finally reached after great effort over a long period of time. They were delighted to have discovered a true structure in all that had been Created, and were ready to celebrate. One of them, however, was not satisfied. When they had all gathered and sated themselves at the party, he stood up and reminded them that they had failed to determine the purpose of one extremely important species: homo sapiens. “What was the purpose of creating humans, and does the world need us?”

So they chewed on that one for a while, and came up with no physical contrubition made by humans to the rest of the world. We are not providers of natural resources — we consume them. We cut trees and slaughter animals, destroying and eating while contributing nothing in return. Even human waste is useless, unlike the waste of many animals.

What do we conclude from that? If we decide that there is no great purpose to Creation, that it represents merely the random quirks of natural selection, then we conclude that humans are indeed destroyers. This being the case, preservation of natural resources, minimizing consumption, can become our highest priority. Or we can quickly reach the conclusion that humans have no greater rights than any other animal, the assertion of Princeton Professor Peter Singer and the organization he helped create, PETA.

PETA, of course, is the group that wrote to Yasser Arafat when a donkey was used in a bombing, leading to the death of the animal. They protested the death of the innocent animal, while consciously declining to “involve themselves with human conflicts” and comment upon the murder of innocent men, women and children. They later outdid even this example of moral degradation by consciously comparing those who consume meat with Germans of the Nazi era: http://www.masskilling.com/ . [This exhibit highlights PETA’s lack of both morals and basic intelligence — the first panel compares an emaciated Jew to an emaciated cow, as if we are to believe that the starvation of animals is a meat industry goal.]

What conclusion avoids this slippery slope of moral vacuity? The one reached by the philosophers in our story: that the purpose of man is not physical, but spiritual. We know this, however, not because we invested years of study into the natural order, but because the Torah tells us that had no nation accepted the Torah, the Creation of the world would have had no purpose. We exist not to provide physical contributions to the world, but spiritual.

When a person makes bread and separates challah from it, makes the blessing when slaughtering an animal, or makes a blessing upon kosher food on his or her table, this sanctifies the act of eating and consumption, and in so doing brings spiritual value to all the natural phenomena which went into the production of those foods. The person is then not a mere consumer or destroyer, but the provider of final perfection.

This being the case, then we understand the Medrash with which we began. “If a person merits it” — if he or she invests in spiritual pursuits and brings spiritual perfection to the world, then they say “you preceded all the works of Creation.” Meaning, the world was created for the sake of this person and what he or she has done with the physical resources it provides. So although the physical Creation of all else came first, the reason for it all, the initial consideration upon which all of Creation was based, was indeed this person.

And if not, if a person ignores the purpose of Creation, then “the mosquito preceded you.” Even the lowly mosquito was here on earth first, so what right do you have to come and dominate and destroy it — or any other thing — afterwards?

Every one of us has the tools in hand to bring perfection to the world — and it’s so easy!