The Brooklyn Ink

By Sharyn Jackson

Holding up the stuffed leg of a giraffe, Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch commanded the unwavering attention of nine sixth-grade boys on a June afternoon. The class from Yeshiva K’Tana in Waterbury, Conn., had come to Deutsch’s museum, Torah Animal World, to see the difference between kosher and non-kosher animals, an issue of Jewish dietary law discussed at length in two passages of the Torah they were studying in school. Deutsch showed the group the clean split down the center of the animal’s hoof, one sure sign that a giraffe is indeed kosher. He later pointed out on a two-humped camel upstairs that its hoof is not fully split, its meat therefore forbidden to enter Jewish mouths.

“It’s amazing to actually see the animals that we learn about,” said Rabbi Elisha Freedman, the students’ teacher and chaperone. While buying keychains of scorpions encased in plastic, Freedman’s students echoed his sentiment as only 11-year-olds can: “Really cool!”

In two years, Torah Animal World, a taxidermy museum claiming to display every animal mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, has become the final resting place for approximately 350 specimens gathered from taxidermists, zoos and private collectors around the world. The museum, in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, will be complete once Deutsch builds an annex for the sacrificial animals listed in the Torah—oxen, sheep and goats, mostly. But the rooms of this row house-turned-museum are already brimful with $3.5 million worth of wildlife that once traipsed about the ancient Middle East, assembled by one man determined to make Torah-learning a hands-on experience.

Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch, director of Torah Animal World, tells a group of students from Yeshiva K'Tana in Waterbury, Conn., about the animals mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. (Sharyn Jackson/The Brooklyn Ink)

“I was always extremely interested in seeing different animals you don’t see in city life every day,” said Deutsch. Raised in Brooklyn, his contact with wildlife was limited to what he saw in the Bronx Zoo, at the American Museum of Natural History and on trips to the Catskills. “So much of the Torah talks about this animal is kosher to be brought as a sacrifice, this is not, these are the 24 birds considered not kosher. If you’re sitting in a classroom and really want to understand what you’re learning about, the curiosity of a child is going to make you say, ‘What is that exactly?’”

Operating on an annual budget of close to $1 million and relying on a network of 35 craftsmen who mold animal skins into lifelike forms, Deutsch puts out calls for the specimens he needs, and then pays up to tens of thousands of dollars to acquire them, usually from zoos where animals have died of natural causes.

What should be the living room of 1605 41^st St. is crowded with a lion, a bear, the top half of a giraffe, a cow and many more four-legged creatures, plus a few extra legs, which have been converted into stools. Upstairs are the birds and reptiles, and in a sunken room at the rear of the first floor are several animals described in the Perek Shira, an ancient Jewish text about the natural world—including an enormous elephant’s head, ears and trunk fully extended.

Deutsch’s mission to educate students of the Torah about the animals therein stems from an insatiable curiosity that goes back to his student days. “Growing up and going through the yeshiva system, there were many times when I asked questions,” said Deutsch, 43, “and not always would I receive answers that were sufficient.”

So Deutsch taught himself French, Arabic and other languages in which scholars of the Torah wrote their commentaries, and he read everything he could about the wildlife described in the Hebrew Bible. When the written word was no longer vivid enough, he began collecting animals nine years ago, assembling enough to open the museum in 2008.

Besides Torah Animal World, Deutsch also runs the Living Torah Museum, a collection of biblical artifacts two doors down, and an animal exhibit in the Catskills featuring the creatures mentioned in the Talmud, the collection of writings on Jewish law. On the horizon is a plan to open a botany museum, with freeze-dried examples of every plant in the Torah. Deutsch also hopes to one day build a full-size model of the Tabernacle, the ancient shrine believed to be the dwelling place of God. His plans are part of a pursuit, he said, to make Jewish scripture both visible and tangible to those as curious as he was. “The things I struggled through,” said Deutsch, “I want to make that available to everybody.”

A cow is one of the many four-legged creatures on display at Torah Animal World. (Sharyn Jackson/The Brooklyn Ink)

So far, Torah Animal World has drawn 35,000 visitors annually. While a majority are Orthodox Jews, Deutsch has hosted other religious groups, such as Amish and Mennonite schools and an African-American Bible study class, as well as secular animal lovers. And guests are welcome to touch everything. Handing out rats mounted on wooden planks, Deutsch warned his guests not to get too used to the access. “Don’t try to do this at the Natural History Museum,” he said. “They will take you out in silver bracelets.”

Though the opportunity to play with stuffed rodents certainly appeals to a young crowd, not only children visit the museum. A group of adults from the Jewish Education Center of South Florida in Boca Raton stopped by during a trip to New York City for a Torah dedication at a synagogue in Queens last month.

Joel Hasner, 25, has been studying Torah with the education center for one-and-a-half years. Raised Reform, Hasner said he was unfamiliar with some of the terminology Deutsch used in his tour of the museum, but said he still found the visit valuable. “My favorite thing is that he makes a lot of references to things we say in davening,” said Hasner, using the Yiddish word for praying. “We don’t always know exactly what we’re referencing when we’re davening, but this makes it so much more meaningful.”

In an upstairs room for small animals the Torah calls “creeping things”—reptiles, rodents and insects—Deutsch removed a few snakes from wooden shelves on one wall and gave them to the pupils before referring to the Shulchan Aruch, a Jewish law manual from the Middle Ages. The Shulchan Aruch says that when one recites the Shmone Esre, the fundamental Jewish prayer also known as the Amidah, he should “come up like a snake.” Deutsch then demonstrated the movements one makes when davening the Shmone Esre, bowing at the waist and leading with the head to stand again upright. Deutsch said he plans to make a video of himself davening with a split-screen of a snake moving in the wild, and will play it on a loop in the exhibit.

Deutsch then pointed to a massive white snake. Once at a zoo, the zookeeper put a 13-foot boa constrictor around the rabbi’s legs, pulling the snake off only when it reached his chest. The journey took the boa constrictor 11 minutes. “Now, why would I do something like that?” Deutsch asked the group. “Because the Talmud tells us that if you’re standing and praying, even if a snake is around your legs, don’t stop. You have time to finish. It takes him a while till he gets up there.”

Torah Animal World occupies a row house in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. Inside, over 350 specimens of taxidermy represent almost every animal mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. (Sharyn Jackson/The Brooklyn Ink)