🎤Kol-🐥Hayyah🐘 - קוֹל־חַיָּ֖ה
VaYeira’ 5779: Michal Morris Kamil
"Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years; Sarah had stopped having the periods of women. And Sarah laughed to herself, saying, 'Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment—with my husband so old?' Then the Lᴏʀᴅ said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am?’ Is anything too wondrous for the Lᴏʀᴅ? I will return to you at the same season next year, and Sarah shall have a son.' Sarah lied, saying, 'I did not laugh,' for she was frightened. But He replied, 'You did laugh.'" VaYeira’ 18:11-15
This week in Parashat VaYeira’ we are introduced to the laughter of our foremother Sarah, advanced in years, childless and to date, unable to conceive, who hears that within the year she will be pregnant. Her response? Laughter. We don’t know what kind of laughter, and there have been many interpretations about what feelings and emotions underpinned her particular response. We know that people laugh for different reasons, and that laughter is sourced both in nurture and in nature, and is subject to cultural socialization and norms as well. Take the sobbing and wailing at a Jewish funeral and the laughing and celebration at an Irish wake. Both hurt deeply and feel loss. Laughter symbolizes pure joy, and can also be sourced in a feeling of sheer bitterness and anger. Laughter can release tension, and can be therapeutic. Laughter can connect between people, but it can also offend and alienate people. Laughter is in its most natural form, an authentic response to stimuli, and is not specific t humans alone.
A chimp, a dog, and a rat walk into a bar. The wolf huffs, the chimpanzee lets out some excited squeaks, and the rat makes chirping sounds that are inaudible to the human ear. These were the responses to amusing stimuli to these animals as interpreted by scientists studying laughter among animals. Studies on chimps, dogs and rats demonstrate that certain pitched sounds they make may be interpreted as laughing responses. Rats’ squeaks are pitched highly when playing with each other, and monkeys also appear to laugh in play. The canine’s huff when he is excited suggests that these animals laugh. Scientists are still working out the cause for these responses. Some studies indicate excitement and happy, while others as a way of gaining attention. Playfulness induces a laughing response. There are even those who claim that a knock on the door results in a dog’s laugh, which would be a version of a ‘knock, knock’ joke. We know that laughter produces endorphins that make us feel good. Does it have a similar effect on animals? One can assume that the answer is a definite yes. If kids laugh up to 400 times a day, and adults, a little less,
In an article in the National geographic it was reported that in 2009, Marina Davila Rodd, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth, conducted experiments in which she tickled primates including Orangutans, Gorillas and Chimps. The apes responded by laughing—technically called "tickle-induced vocalizations." Ross, who studies the evolution of laughter, suggests we inherited our own ability to laugh from humans and great apes’ last common ancestor that lived 10 to 16 million years ago. Jaak Panskepp, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Washington State University in Pullman, has found that tickled rats make happy noises. Panskepp says that play elicits happy sounds and therefore we should be more attentive to the sounds we hear from animals as they play in order to identify ‘laughter’.
There were a number of possibilities why Sarah laughed upon hearing she was going to have a baby, having been barren for all of her adult womanhood. But we do know from research that there are two kinds of laughter. Complex social laughter is the kind that requires a sense of humor to get it. The other kind of laughter is in response to physical stimulation like tickling. Though animals can verbalize to us humans the cause of laughter, humans can sense when an animal is having fun from certain actions and behaviors (think of your own pets who know you, or the beautiful documentaries we see of dolphins in response to divers). The famous Koko, a gorilla in Woodside, Calif. who passed away in June this year, had learned more than 2,000 words and 1,000 American Sign Language signs, and had been known to play with different meanings of the same word. When she was asked, “What can you think of that’s hard?” she signed, “rock” and “work.” She also once tied her trainer’s shoelaces together and signed, “chase.”
Just as humans feel sadness, and pain, happiness, joy, and love, so too, do animals. We just haven’t developed enough understanding about animal laughter beyond apes, dogs, and rats. But for sure, just as the human world needs to laugh a lot to cope and deal with today’s challenges, something tells me animals have this need as well. You may ask this Shabbat, do animals have funny bones? Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado–Boulder Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and author of The Emotional lives of Animals believes they do. In fact, he thinks we’re on the cusp of discovering that many animals have a sense of humor, maybe even all mammals. As Bekoff points out, Darwin argued that the difference between human and animal intelligence is a matter of degree, not of kind. Or as Bekoff put it, “If we have a sense of humor, then nonhuman animals should have a sense of humor, too.”. So when my teacher tells me that I share a genetic code with a banana, I will take him seriously.
VaYeira’ 5779: Michal Morris Kamil
"Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years; Sarah had stopped having the periods of women. And Sarah laughed to herself, saying, 'Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment—with my husband so old?' Then the Lᴏʀᴅ said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am?’ Is anything too wondrous for the Lᴏʀᴅ? I will return to you at the same season next year, and Sarah shall have a son.' Sarah lied, saying, 'I did not laugh,' for she was frightened. But He replied, 'You did laugh.'" VaYeira’ 18:11-15
This week in Parashat VaYeira’ we are introduced to the laughter of our foremother Sarah, advanced in years, childless and to date, unable to conceive, who hears that within the year she will be pregnant. Her response? Laughter. We don’t know what kind of laughter, and there have been many interpretations about what feelings and emotions underpinned her particular response. We know that people laugh for different reasons, and that laughter is sourced both in nurture and in nature, and is subject to cultural socialization and norms as well. Take the sobbing and wailing at a Jewish funeral and the laughing and celebration at an Irish wake. Both hurt deeply and feel loss. Laughter symbolizes pure joy, and can also be sourced in a feeling of sheer bitterness and anger. Laughter can release tension, and can be therapeutic. Laughter can connect between people, but it can also offend and alienate people. Laughter is in its most natural form, an authentic response to stimuli, and is not specific t humans alone.
A chimp, a dog, and a rat walk into a bar. The wolf huffs, the chimpanzee lets out some excited squeaks, and the rat makes chirping sounds that are inaudible to the human ear. These were the responses to amusing stimuli to these animals as interpreted by scientists studying laughter among animals. Studies on chimps, dogs and rats demonstrate that certain pitched sounds they make may be interpreted as laughing responses. Rats’ squeaks are pitched highly when playing with each other, and monkeys also appear to laugh in play. The canine’s huff when he is excited suggests that these animals laugh. Scientists are still working out the cause for these responses. Some studies indicate excitement and happy, while others as a way of gaining attention. Playfulness induces a laughing response. There are even those who claim that a knock on the door results in a dog’s laugh, which would be a version of a ‘knock, knock’ joke. We know that laughter produces endorphins that make us feel good. Does it have a similar effect on animals? One can assume that the answer is a definite yes. If kids laugh up to 400 times a day, and adults, a little less,
In an article in the National geographic it was reported that in 2009, Marina Davila Rodd, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth, conducted experiments in which she tickled primates including Orangutans, Gorillas and Chimps. The apes responded by laughing—technically called "tickle-induced vocalizations." Ross, who studies the evolution of laughter, suggests we inherited our own ability to laugh from humans and great apes’ last common ancestor that lived 10 to 16 million years ago. Jaak Panskepp, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Washington State University in Pullman, has found that tickled rats make happy noises. Panskepp says that play elicits happy sounds and therefore we should be more attentive to the sounds we hear from animals as they play in order to identify ‘laughter’.
There were a number of possibilities why Sarah laughed upon hearing she was going to have a baby, having been barren for all of her adult womanhood. But we do know from research that there are two kinds of laughter. Complex social laughter is the kind that requires a sense of humor to get it. The other kind of laughter is in response to physical stimulation like tickling. Though animals can verbalize to us humans the cause of laughter, humans can sense when an animal is having fun from certain actions and behaviors (think of your own pets who know you, or the beautiful documentaries we see of dolphins in response to divers). The famous Koko, a gorilla in Woodside, Calif. who passed away in June this year, had learned more than 2,000 words and 1,000 American Sign Language signs, and had been known to play with different meanings of the same word. When she was asked, “What can you think of that’s hard?” she signed, “rock” and “work.” She also once tied her trainer’s shoelaces together and signed, “chase.”
Just as humans feel sadness, and pain, happiness, joy, and love, so too, do animals. We just haven’t developed enough understanding about animal laughter beyond apes, dogs, and rats. But for sure, just as the human world needs to laugh a lot to cope and deal with today’s challenges, something tells me animals have this need as well. You may ask this Shabbat, do animals have funny bones? Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado–Boulder Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and author of The Emotional lives of Animals believes they do. In fact, he thinks we’re on the cusp of discovering that many animals have a sense of humor, maybe even all mammals. As Bekoff points out, Darwin argued that the difference between human and animal intelligence is a matter of degree, not of kind. Or as Bekoff put it, “If we have a sense of humor, then nonhuman animals should have a sense of humor, too.”. So when my teacher tells me that I share a genetic code with a banana, I will take him seriously.