June 21, 2011

GOOD DOG, BAD DOG -- Was my DOG, LAWYER... blog based on Urban Legend?

A friend responded to my blog by saying the dog story was a hoax. The court denied the story. OK, just another urban legend. But then here's another story from the same town from back in 2006. About a Good Dog.

Far be it from me to be a transmitter, a vector, of Urban Legend. But these may not be far from the truth, small 't'. So here goes Good Dog:



Meah Shearim residents believe dog arrived at neighborhood to ask for absolution following death of resident early Saturday.

... A 95-year-old Meah Shearim resident, Nahman David Dovinski, is said to have been “a righteous man, a worker of God, waiting every day, every minute, for redemption. He was really not of this world.”

Upon returning from the funeral, which took place on Saturday night, Dovinski’s family found an unfamiliar dog sitting on their doorstep. All attempts to remove him failed.

Dovinski’s family took the dog out of the neighborhood, but it insisted and returned again to the same house. From the early hours of the morning, endless attempts were made to expel the dog, but the dog refused to leave the house.......

During the attempts at convincing the dog to leave, a neighborhood rabbi arrived at the house and instructed that the dog be served a Shabbat meal, in hopes that this would convince the dog to leave.

Only after the dog was told, “you are forgiven, you are forgiven, you are forgiven,” did it agree to taste the food it was served.

Residents and neighbors began wondering what the meaning of this strange event was, and turned to Rabbi Meir Brandsdorfer, who is considered one of the senior rabbis in the haredi congregation, for answers.

Rabbi Brandsdorfer recommended reciting Psalms and Mishnas. The rabbi himself left the home of the deceased at around 5 a.m. Sunday and headed towards the Mount of Olives in order to say Kaddish on Dovinski's grave.


Neighborhood residents and family members report that the dog willingly left the house during the Kaddish.

A crew from Jerusalem municipality’s veterinary services arrived at the scene and picked up the dog, as hundreds of residents from Meah Shearim and other neighborhoods watched and escorted the vehicle that evacuated the dog."


You can simply not believe either story, believe both, or believe that they believed (which I believe).

Good dog:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3305192,00.html

Bad dog:

"...UPDATE: According to Hebrew news sources, the story originally published in the Behadrei Haredim newspaper may not have been based on factual reporting. The court denies the sentence was ever handed down, claiming the only action taken against the dog was in calling animal control officials to remove the dog."