Ducks and halacha

On Friday, I saw an interesting reportage on the Czech news TV chanel ČT 24- it talked about a duck farmer in the village of Záluží. His ducks would in very rare cases leave their cot and walk on the village roads. He was affraid that cars that pass by would run them over. Therefore he put the following sign on a fence standing on the border of his farm and the road to warn the drivers about the danger of his wandering ducks. A couple of days later he was informed that he has to remove the sign under the thread of a fine of 300,000 CZK (18,750 US Dollars.) He was told that he abused the shape of red triangle with white inside, which is a registered traffic sign. The only animals that can appear in this sign in my country are a cow and a deerIf you want to warn drivers against any other kind of animal, you have to add a special warning to the already existing symbol - i.e. you post a sign of deer next to a forest and you add a sign "beware of wild pigs" next to it.

Putting any other animal into the red triangle sign is considered illegal. Therefore, the sign with dugs has to be dismantled by the end of the week. The office for trafic signs claims that a) such a new sign is confusing and as such it b) potentially undermines the whole system. Today we put a duck in the sign, what will we put tomorrow? "I ment no harm," said the bewildered farmer: "I just tried to protect my ducks."

I couldn´t help thinking how similar this case was to the problems we face in the development of halacha, the Jewish law. We face great anxiety ever time we think about allowing something new. The novelty might make sense and it very often greatly improves a particular segment of a Jewish life (more intensive involvment of women in public religious life, breaking the barriers between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, more sensitive approach to conversions etc). Very often, however, we ban the new improvement, because we are affraid that the novelty will be confusing in the context of the whole system. We fear that "it will look like something that is forbidden," that it will look like we are giving up on stringency in keeping the law or that it will eventually lead to other changes that will be deadly for the system.

Obviously, it isn´t easy to make changes. Changes mustn´t be made without careful consideration. I believe that sometimes, however, it makes more sense to make the change, which is so obviously good for the practical life than to furiously try to enforce the old version of the rule. After all, isn´t one of the main roles of the office for trafic signs (the rabbis respectively) to flexibly react to the changing needs of the people involved?

If we have the courage (and the common sense as well), we will hopefully dignify the life of numerous Jews and save the life of a couple of ducks. As a special bonus we will also prevent absurd situations like the one featured on the following picture (the sign says "beware of horses.")