"A man is forbidden to eat anything until he has fed his beast.” - Talmud

 "A man is forbidden to eat anything until he has fed his beast.” - Talmud (A.D. 1st-6th cent.) Rabbinical writings. In Lewis Browne, ed., The Wisdom of Israel, rev. Ed., p. 178, 1955 (1948)

- You feed your horse, dog, or chickens before you feed yourself, for two reasons. The first reason is that, sometimes, we rely upon these animals. This quote was originally written back during a time when we did to rely upon machines in the way we do today, but instead relied upon draft animals for most of our work. In the case of something like a horse or an ox, we make sure that they are fed before us, because we rely upon them to do so much of our work. If they grow sick or weak, then the work we can get out of them decreases drastically, and it is through the use of their power, and not ours, that we are able to accomplish much of what we do. We cannot run as fast as a dog to catch sheep, pass over miles and miles to deliver a message like a horse can, or draw as heavy of a plow as an ox can. It is by the clever and efficient utilization of these creatures that we are able to live the life we do. If we had to rely only upon what we ourselves could do, then it is likely that we would not be able to accomplish nearly as much. We need them. 

The second reason to feed your beast before yourself, if that they rely upon you. You can’t tell what they are doing or how they are feeling, in the same way that you know this about yourself. When we are hungry and thirsty, then we both know how extreme our need really is at the moment, and how much we cna put off that moment. We possess a sense of the future and a willpower to wait for the future, that most animals seem to not have. A human being can be hungry now and choose not to eat until his work is done, but a dog is hungry now, and will work in order to obtain that food. Say that your horse wants water - exactly how much does he need that water right now? That is, at what point, exactly, will some animal keel over because we did not feed them? IT is hard to tell, and especially difficult without some expertise. They need us. 

What is relevant here for the animal, is relevant also for many other things. We could easily replace ‘animal’ with ‘car’, or some other machine, and still have much of the same issue, and reason for ‘feeding’ the car first, for giving it gas and oil, for checking the air in its tires, and the temperature of the engine. If the car breaks down in the middle of the road, when we are thirty miles from home, then there is nothing we are going to do about getting home that night, at least not without some help. We had better take care of what we rely upon. In the same way, we want to regularly check on our cars, to bring the in for a tune-up, to make sure that we have sensors and remotes to tell us if something is wrong. A car cannot fix itself, cannot bring itself to the doctor like we can. Machines, just like animals, need care. Machines, just like our animals, require some tlc. 

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