Eric Silver
When Natan Slifkin was a child in Manchester, he was told by his Orthodox parents that he could keep any pet he liked, as long as it was in a cage and it wasn't a tarantula or snake.
So he kept those creatures hidden in his room. One day, a giant monitor lizard escaped and was found in his mother's bed.
At Manchester Jewish Grammar School, he always said he wanted to work in a zoo. "People said that's ridiculous," he recalls. "They thought I would be a good Jewish boy and go into computer programming."
He wasn't put off that easily. Now, aged 25 and living in Israel with his American wife, Tali, Natan not only works as a guide and lecturer at the ambitious, landscaped Jerusalem Zoo, he teaches a course on zoos and Jews at the Ohr Samayach yeshivah.
With the punning delight of a talmudic prodigy, he calls his enterprise "Zoo Torah" ("zu" is Hebrew for "this is"). At the launch party for his commentary, "Biblical Perspectives on the Zoo," a boa constrictor he was fondling struck at Uri Lupoliansky, Jerusalem's strictly Orthodox deputy mayor and founder of the Yad Sarah medical charity. Happily, it missed.
After school, Natan went to yeshivah in England and Israel. "In Jerusalem," he says, "I started looking for what the Torah and Talmud say about nature. I was overwhelmed by how much there was. It deepened my appreciation of the natural world."
The slender, loquacious, ever-curious yeshivah bocher also took a course for volunteer guides at the zoo, which was known in an earlier incarnation as the "Biblical Zoo" and still cites scriptural texts on the labels adorning its cages and enclosures.
"I suggested," he says, "expounding the biblical theme of the zoo more. I wanted to show religious perspectives on animals, that each animal teaches us a different lesson."
So Natan quotes the Talmud: "Had the Torah not been written, we would have learned modesty from the cat and the prohibition against stealing from the ant." God uses the hippo to teach Job humility, he says.
He points to laws about treating animals kindly. Before taking eggs from a nest, you should scare away the mother bird to avoid causing distress. The Torah forbids yoking two different species to the plough as the slower one might suffer. Before sitting down for lunch, you have to feed your animals.
The zoo rebbe has a talmudic answer, too, for sceptics who ask why bother saving the lesser-spotted toad: "The tradition teaches that everything in the world has a purpose, even if we don't know what it is. There is a beautiful midrash (commentary) that when God created Adam, he showed him round and said, 'Look at this beautiful world I've created. Take care not to damage it.'"
Natan is a self-taught zoologist. He reads everything he can lay his hands on and sees no need to pursue his study at university. Not that he is averse to secular learning. His father, Michael, lectured in physics at Salford University and is now a professor at Machon Lev, a Jerusalem college that combines high-tech and Talmud.
The younger Slifkin makes a living giving "Zoo Torah" tours to students and adults. Last year a Jewish day school in San Diego invited him to run a two-week programme. This spring, he lectures in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto.
He has written three books: "Seasons of Life," a naturalist's guide through the Jewish year; the zoo book, "In Noah's Footsteps"; and his latest, "The Science of Torah," which tackles the thorny issues of evolution and religion. Unlike many in his strictly Orthodox world, he contends that they can be reconciled.
"There are eight different concepts of evolution," he says. "I discuss them all, and the age of the universe. Are all living creatures descended from a single ancestor? If so, how did it happen? Darwin said we have a common ancestor. I've got an explanation."
When I protest that the Book of Genesis details the creation of different species, day by day, one after the other, he puts me straight: "Maimonides says it should not be taken at face value. There's little in evolutionary theory that contradicts Judaism."
Maybe, but Natan's hillside flat in Jerusalem's religious Har Nof suburb is strangely bereft of beasties. Tally, his bride of a few months, put her foot down. Animal pictures, yes. Stuffed animals, yes. A fish tank, maybe. But no cats, no dogs, let alone tarantulas, snakes or giant monitor lizards.