“Why have you hit me these three times?” Balaam’s long-suffering ass asks his heedless master. Word merchant though he is, he fails to muster a decent answer.

If they could speak, what would the animals tell us today? More precisely, since they very likely are speaking, albeit in their own ways, what might we hear them saying if only we knew how to listen, and how should we respond?

The Mishnah names the first of Ellul as the new year for tithing cattle (Rosh Hashanah 1:1). Nowadays many of us want to celebrate the day more generously as the Jewish New Year for Animals, just as Tu Bishvat, originally also a taxation date, has become the New Year for Trees.

The Bible and Mishnah indicate intimate acquaintance with the natural world. Their authors knew the ways of their fauna and flora, the locusts, ostriches, gazelles and jackals that shared their ecosystems. They lived alongside domestic animals. They appreciated that, like humans, asses and oxen needed relief from their labours on Shabbat (Deuteronomy 5:14).

Yet they compassionately conceded that donkeys could nevertheless walk out with a saddlecloth tied round them on the day of rest, since this was not part of their workaday uniform, but for protection against the cold to which they were considered especially sensitive (Mishnah Shabbat 5:2).

Jews today are overwhelmingly urban, hence largely alienated from animals, except for our pets. Our world, both religious and secular, is almost entirely anthropocentric. This narrows our perspective on non-human life and impoverishes our spirit.

We don’t see the wretchedness in which the vast majority of animals are raised. Shechitah may give them a better death, but that’s no compensation for the misery of most of their lives. Animals feel physical and emotional pain no less than we do, maintained Maimonides, underlining the Torah’s prohibition against causing suffering to animals.

The contemporary philosopher Mark Rowlands argues that we therefore owe them ethical consideration; animals are in “the moral club”. We are no more entitled to treat them with contemptuous cruelty than we are our fellow humans.

“The roots of human exceptionalism look increasingly shallow,” maintains Henry Dimbleby, architect of what will hopefully we implemented as the UK’s national food strategy.

That’s not the only challenge. There’s the huge environmental impact of red meat production. The vast lands devoted to animal fodder account for the destruction of life-sustaining habitats across the globe. The carbon and methane costs are vast. Far less land is needed for alternative foods, leaving more for the wild.

Without forests and wetlands, meadows and prairies, wild birds and animals cannot survive. The preservation of the world’s biodiversity, a task entrusted to us as long ago as God commanded Noah to take two of every species into the ark, is essential not just for the sake of iconic species like elephants and bears, but to save our own children.

We and other species are interdependent, to an extent which challenges even our current knowledge. Our very stomachs are biomes; our digestion needs millions of microbes. The soil we tread on depends on numerous creatures.

We haven’t fully fathomed the innumerable interrelationships which sustain a survivable climate, providing drinkable water and breathable air. The notion that we humans are autonomous masters of creation is a dangerous falsehood. We belong to what has been called a sympoesis, a making together, in which countless lives participate.

These are pragmatic and anthropocentric arguments; we need nature for our survival. But from a biblical perspective, God created the fishes, birds and animals just as God made us; in fact, God made them first. So why should they have so much less right to inhabit the earth?

In the words of Henry Beeston: “The animals shall not be measured by man… They are not brethren, they are not underlings, but Other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.”

The presence of God dwells amidst all creation. So often it’s in nature, in the wren’s song, the swallow’s flight, the glimpse of deer, that we feel closest to God. A deeper sense of belonging suffuses and humbles us; mortal, transient, we yet belong amidst the wonder of all this life.

Without the wild world we would be emotionally and spiritually impoverished. There would be less beauty, less awe, less awareness and praise of God.

Not only, then, should we celebrate the New Year for Animals. We should see it as a fitting opening to Ellul, the month of reflection which leads us into Rosh Hashanah, the New Year par excellence, when we commit ourselves to the service of the God who is not just ours alone, but Melech al kol Ha’aretz, the Sovereign of all Creation.

So what might the animals be telling us? “Allow us our place in the world. Don’t destroy us; don’t be cruel. Remember, you humans need us, practically and spiritually. We too are part of the great wonder of life.”

Jonathan Wittenberg is Senior Rabbi of Masorti Judaism