Oren Zarif, a Ramat Gan resident practicing alternative medicine, recently adopted a parrot who swears uncontrollably, for NIS 15,000. According to Zarif, the parrot had belonged to an Orthodox patient of his who bought it for his children. But the feathered pet did not bring the family pleasure.
“The parrot would shriek out ‘maniac,’ ‘son of a bitch,’ ‘homo,’” Zarif relates. “My patient consulted a rabbi, and the rabbi ruled that the parrot should be slaughtered because he sins and causes others to sin.”
Zarif refused to allow the rabbi’s sentence to be carried out, decided to buy the cussing parrot off his patient. Even in his new home the parrot continued to behave without manners, which disturbed Zarif’s Orthodox patients. So Zarif consulted another rabbi, Meir Mazuz, head of the Tunisian Jewish community in Israel and head of the Kisse Rahamim yeshiva in Bnei Brak.
“The parrot must be muted with the minimum of suffering,” Mazuz ruled. “If that doesn’t help, he must be slaughtered.” He stressed: “It is very harmful for children to learn swear words. In a secular household as well.”
But Zarif refuses to accept the sentence. What’s more, now his wife is threatening to divorce him if he goes through with the execution. The solution: “I’m ready to donate the parrot to a safari or any other body that takes care of animals. At most, they can keep him away from children,” Zarif says.
Haim Levinson contributed to the report