It is forbidden to organize or attend bullfights, because they cause animals suffering and also endanger human life. The bulls are first starved in order to make them agitated. Then, in the arena, the bullfighter, or matador, waves a red cloth before the bull, provoking and enraging it until it attacks. If the bull refuses to fight, the matador stabs it until it rises in anger. When the bull finally charges at the man who provoked it, the matador must evade the charge and stab the bull to death, while the crowd roars and cheers. Occasionally, the bull is quicker than the matador, and the matador is killed or injured. In such a case, halakha does not assign the bull any guilt. Ordinarily, an ox that kills a person must be killed; here, however, since the matador provoked the attack, the bull is exempt from punishment (Bava Kamma 39a; MT, Laws of Monetary Damages 6:5).
In the Roman period, cruel spectacles of this sort were a popular form of entertainment. At first, they would set dogs against other animals and watch with pleasure as the animals tore one another apart. Whenever one animal overpowered another and ripped out its throat, the spectators would rejoice and cheer. They would then bring slaves and captives into the arena to fight wild beasts, and even when a beast killed a person, the crowd would rejoice and cheer. Many Jews captured by the Romans were killed in this way. Shamefully, some Jews were drawn after the dominant culture and wanted to watch these acts of cruelty, presumably when the captives were from other nations. The Sages firmly opposed this and ruled that it is forbidden to attend such wicked spectacles, applying to them the verse (Tehilim 1:1): “Happy is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners.” Happy is one who did not go to the theaters, circuses, and stadiums of the gentiles, where the murder of slaves and the suffering of animals were staged amid revelry and mockery (Avoda Zara 18b). In our time, thankfully, public spectacles in which human beings are murdered are no longer staged. Bullfighting, however, remains forbidden, both because of tza’ar ba’alei ḥayim and because it endangers human life. Similarly, it is forbidden to train roosters to fight and kill one another. Anyone who buys a ticket to such a spectacle becomes a partner in sin and damages his own capacity for compassion.[9]
