Imu Shalev: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha … diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, I’m Imu Shalev. Parshat Ki Tetzei contains a mitzvah that may not come up in our lives very often. It tells us that when we find a nest with eggs or baby birds in it, and we want to take them for ourselves, we’re not allowed to do that unless we shoo away the mother bird first. Now, I’m pretty sure that in my neighborhood, there aren’t a whole lot of opportunities for people to put this mitzvah into practice. We tend to do more of our foraging at Fresh Direct or Trader Joe’s. Birds’ nests, not so much.

So does that mean this mitzvah has no relevance to us? I don’t think so. Yes, the Torah allows us to capture animals for our food. But that doesn’t mean that our needs are the only ones that matter. It seems as if the Torah asks us to consider the feelings of animals as well. So how exactly are we trying to protect the mother bird, when we send her away from her nest? And how does this mitzvah help us grow as human beings, as people who are sensitive to the feelings of others? Let’s listen in as Rabbi Fohrman explores those questions.

Rabbi David Fohrman: This is Rabbi David Fohrman, and welcome to Parshat Ki Teitzei. Our parsha contains the famous mitzvah of shiluach hakan, sending away a mother bird. The way the Torah phrases it is: If you find a nest with chicks in it or with eggs in it, and on top of the nest you notice that there is a mother bird who is crouching over her young, so the mitzvah is: שַׁלֵּחַ תְּשַׁלַּח אֶת-הָאֵם – send the mother bird away; וְאֶת-הַבָּנִים תִּקַּח-לָך – and then you can take the chicks for yourself, or the eggs for yourself (Deuteronomy 22:6-7).

Why Send Away the Mother Bird?

The great $64,000 question here is: What exactly is the rationale for this mitzvah? It seems to have some sort of ethical message – that, indeed, is the way almost all the commentators interpret it – but exactly what is that message? So again, there's a lot of discussion of this among the major medieval commentators, but basically the theories that are out there break up into two main groups led by the Rambam (Maimonides) and Nachmanides as the principal proponents of two different approaches.

The Rambam (Maimonides) argues that the basic idea here is that the worst thing you could do to any parent is to force them to witness the demise of their child. The Rambam says it's not something unique to our own humanity that we can't deal with that, that's true for animals as well, and therefore the mitzvah of shiluach hakan – sending away the mother bird – is: Don't impose that kind of cruelty even upon a bird. The Torah gives you permission to take eggs or take the chicks, but don't force the mother to watch helplessly the demise of her young. Send her away and then you can take the chicks. 

Nachmanides and those in Nachmanides' camp see it a little bit differently. Nachmanides argues that there's something here that smacks of species extinction. In other words, while the Torah gives human beings the right to consume animal products and indeed animals themselves, we all understand that there's a difference between killing a cow for food and killing out the entire species “cow.” There is something ethically abhorrent, the Ramban argues, about driving an entire species to extinction, and even though you're not actually doing that here, nevertheless, if you were to kill two generations at once – you were to take the eggs and the chicks and take the mother bird – that's a kind of unconscionable over-consumption of the species, and you don't do that. So if you're going to take the chicks, or you're going to take the eggs, you're going to send out the mother bird, let her live. That's the Ramban's way of looking at it.

What I'd like to do with you now is to explore the actual text of the mitzvah itself as given in this week's parsha, because I think if we do, if we pay attention to the words carefully, we will discern yet another layer of meaning here in the rationale behind this mitzvah – beyond what Maimonides and Nachmanides already tell us. 

Focusing on the Mother

Let me begin by asking you a couple of questions. First, why is this mitzvah phrased in particular with reference to birds? Is there any reason for that? In other words, if it's just an issue, like the Rambam says, of “don't inflict this cruelty upon a parent to watch the death of its child”... that would be true for any species. If it's a species-extinction issue like the Ramban says, so why specifically phrase it in terms of birds? So that's question number one.

Here's question number two. There's a piece of the text that seems problematic here. You see, the language of the text is: כִּי יִקָּרֵא קַן-צִפּוֹר לְפָנֶיךָ – if you find this nest and the mother is crouching over these chicks or over these eggs. But then the phrase is:  לֹא-תִקַּח הָאֵם עַל-הַבָּנִים – do not take the mother upon the children. Now you have to sort of sit there and ask yourself: What that phrase is doing there?

You see, as the text continues, שַׁלֵּחַ תְּשַׁלַּח אֶת-הָאֵם וְאֶת-הַבָּנִים תִּקַּח-לָךְ – send out the mother and then take the children – according to the Rambam, that would mean: Send out the mother, because don't inflict this pain upon her, to make her watch the demise of her young. According to the Ramban, it means: Send out the mother so that you don't kill both on the same day.

But back up a little bit and ask yourself about that phrase – לֹא-תִקַּח הָאֵם עַל-הַבָּנִים – and you find yourself in a little bit of a problematic position. What do you mean, “don't take the mother upon the children”? I mean, that's not really the point according to either the Rambam or the Ramban.

According to the Rambam, that it's about not inflicting this pain upon the mother to watch the demise of the child, it really should be: ”לֹא-תִקַּח הַבָּנִים בִּפְנֵי הָאֵם”- – “don't take the children in front of the mother.” What do you mean, “don't take the mother in front of the children”? It's not about taking the mother.

According to the Ramban, it's not really any better. לֹא-תִקַּח הָאֵם עַל-הַבָּנִים should really have been: ”לֹא-תִקַּח הָאֵם עִם הַבָּנִים” – “don't take the mother with the children.” What do you mean, “don't take the mother upon the children”? Why the emphasis on taking the mother?

Unless there's another layer of meaning in this mitzvah. The key to seeing it, by the way, is to look at the reward.

The Promise of Long Life

It turns out that sending out the mother bird comes with a promised reward of long life. And there's only one other positive command in the entire Torah that comes with a promised reward, and it just so happens that that promised reward for the other mitzvah is also long life.

What is that other mitzvah? The other mitzvah that carries the same reward is kibbud av va’em – honoring your mother and your father. It too comes with a promise of long life: כַּבֵּד אֶת-אָבִיךָ וְאֶת-אִמֶּךָ לְמַעַן יַאֲרִכוּן יָמֶיךָ – honor your mother and father so that your days will be lengthened.

What possible common denominator could there be between the mitzvah of sending away the mother bird and “honor your mother and father”? The Torah seems to be linking these mitzvot – why?

A Mother’s Devotion

The common denominator would seem to be the honoring of motherhood. Let me ask you a question: How easy is it to capture an adult bird? Just go out there – there's plenty of trees, probably a lot of birds in them, you can hear them chirping all over the place – just go out with your bare hands and catch me a few birds and come on back and write me an email.

How many emails of successful bird catches do you think I'd get from you guys? Like none, right? It ain't easy to capture a mother bird. That's the point of the Torah.

Here you are walking down the street and you see a nest with a mother hovering over its young. Right there is the one chance you have to take a mother bird with your bare hands. You know why? Because that mother bird will do anything to protect her young. She will sacrifice herself, if need be, in a desperate effort to fend you off. She will flutter her wings, she will hover over that nest.

Therefore, you might say to yourself, you could take not just the eggs, but you could take her too, right? Don't do that, the Torah says.  לֹא-תִקַּח הָאֵם עַל-הַבָּנִים – do not take the mother as she hovers over her young. Send her away and then take the eggs. Why? Because it's a desecration of motherhood. Let me explain. 

When God first created the earth, human beings could only eat vegetation. Then later on, God says: You know what? You can eat animals too, but there are restrictions. One natural restriction is that God gave animals various abilities to evade predators. For a bird, that ability is flight. Its wings protect it. In effect, God said: When it comes to birds, you can have as many birds as you can catch. But I'm going to give the birds wings; you're not going to be able to catch that many of them.

So what is the Torah saying in this week's parsha? Let's look at the situation. There's a bird's nest, there's eggs, there's chicks, there's a mother bird. The eggs, you have a right to. God gave humans the ability to consume animal products, even animals themselves. But the mother… what's the only reason you'd be able to capture that mother? It's because she's protecting her young and she won't fly away. It's like there's a trap here, and the bait in the trap is nothing but the mother's own maternal instincts. You're using the maternal instinct itself against her. That's a desecration of motherhood; don't do it! Let the mother bird go free. You don't really have a right to catch her.

Honor Your Parents to Strengthen Your Own Life

Here, I think, is where you get to the most amazing insight in the world as to what it means to honor your mother. Because what exactly is the idea here with the mother bird? It's that a mother will do anything for her young, will even sacrifice herself for her young. And we are commanded to honor that, not to turn a mother's own instinct against her. 

Well, that's not just true for the mother bird, that's true for your own mother, too. Your own mother will do anything for you. Yes, she has expectations for you, yes, she has hopes for you… but at the end of the day, if you do not rise to her expectations and even if you disregard her hopes, she will still love you because you are her child.

Do not desecrate that love and take advantage of it. That love, that parental love, is intended to help you grow. Do not use it as a trap that you set against her, where you take and you take all of that love and you give nothing in return. Honor your parents.

And if you do, and if you send away the mother bird, you will find that in venerating motherhood, the source of all life, your own life will be strengthened. Have a good Shabbat.

Imu: So for my thoughts this week, one thing that was sort of paradigm-shifting for me is the connection between mother bird and honoring your parents. Particularly what Rabbi Fohrman said at the end, the idea that it’s hard to capture a bird. A common way to do that would be to take advantage of a mother’s own mercy for her child. It’s not rational for her to stay with her eggs, but she will. And on the metaphoric level, it helps me think of my own mother, or of motherhood in general. When will they stay in danger, in harm’s way, when they can easily fly away? When are they willing to suffer and put themselves in the line of fire for their own children? So this law helps us be aware that that’s even happening, and more than that, it seems to exhort us not to take advantage of that in our mothers.

I think of the book The Giving Tree, where the kid goes back to the tree, he wants the fruits, and then the kid gets older, he wants the branches, and then the tree is a stump at the end. So don’t do that to your parents. They will give and give and give to you, to their own detriment, and you’re not supposed to take advantage of that.

Which leads me to one final thought. You know, for many people, honoring your father and mother is a very difficult thing to do. Not all of us have the best relationship with our parents. And we go through a lifetime of self-discovery, learning more and more about our weaknesses, putting together more and more evidence for all the ways in which our parents have messed us up. How in that case, when you can see so clearly all of your parents’ failures, how in that case can you practice honor for your mother and your father? And I think I got a way of answering this question from Rabbi Fohrman in his classic piece on the Ten Commandments. 

Rabbi Fohrman has a beautiful theory about the Ten Commandments, that the two tablets and the laws on each tablet parallel one another, that the first commandment parallels the sixth, the second commandment parallels the seventh, and so on. Well, the fifth commandment, which is “honor your parents,” parallels the command against jealousy over others. So if you had to say what was the common idea between not being jealous of others and honoring your parents, how would you talk about that idea? Well, someone who’s jealous believes that their life is fundamentally flawed. What do you call somebody who can’t be happy until they have Bob’s possessions, Bob’s relationships? That person doesn’t want to be themselves; they want to be Bob. And a person who doesn’t honor their parents is a person who got the gift of life from their parents and says, hey, I got a raw deal. 

And even though we know our parents’ flaws so well and we know all the ways they messed up, it seems that the Torah is asking us to put down that worldview and to focus on the gift of life we did receive. So when the Torah asks us to honor our parents, and even more when the Torah asks us to honor the mother bird, what I think the Torah is getting at is to treat the gift of life as something weighty, as something precious. If you can respect and value mother and motherhood, you may come to respect and appreciate your own life. Thanks for listening.

Credits

This episode was written and recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman. 

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Rivky Stern. 

Into the Verse editing was done by Sarah Penso.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. 

Our CEO and editorial director is Imu Shalev. 

Thank you so much for listening.

Interested in hearing more about the Ten Commandments idea Imu mentioned? You can find Rabbi Fohrman’s course here: The Ten Commandments and Their Meaning