Ari Levisohn: 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, this is Ari Levisohn. This week, we’re reading Parshat Yitro. It’s a pretty exciting parsha which includes the giving of the Torah, something we love to talk about at Aleph Beta. This week, though, we are actually going to be talking about one verse that comes a little bit earlier. It’s one of those verses that easily gets ignored with all of the excitement that’s about to come. But it turns out, when you zoom in, this one verse teaches us not just about the lead-up to Revelation, but also about the nature of our connection to God. 

So what is this verse? It comes as God is giving Moses some instructions for the Israelites to prepare them for Revelation. And the instructions begin with these words. Tell the children of Israel: You saw what I did to the Egyptians, how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me.

Eagles’ wings… Rabbi Fohrman and Imu get curious about that. And they want to know, not just what’s with the eagles, but what’s with birds in general? Why do birds come up at particular times in the Torah? Let’s listen in.

Rabbi David Fohrman: I have a question that's sort of always puzzled me. One of the things that you find throughout the Torah is, you find the appearance of birds. Sometimes they appear within the context of laws and sometimes they appear within the context of metaphors, and they sometimes show up in the strangest of places. I'm wondering if there's any sort of overarching master theory of birds going on in the Torah. It may be that there's completely not and we might just be crazy, but is it possible that there is some sort of theme running through birds in the Torah?

And for just a minute or two, I want to play a game with you, which is: Let's see if we can sort of mention all the examples of birds that we remember throughout the Torah. Let's maybe play tag team over here, start with you. Give me some birds in the Torah. Go.

Imu Shalev: Birds in the Torah? Creation of birds.

Rabbi Fohrman: We have the appearance of birds, birds get created. All right. Next birds in chronological order, birds of Noah. Noah sends out these birds, he sends out a raven, he sends out a black bird. He also sends out a white bird, a yonah (dove).

By the way, thinking about creation, Imu, back in Creation one of the first things God creates is light and darkness, and we've got a light and dark bird as the world was recreated after the flood...

Imu: Oh, and the ruach Elokim is merachef.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. Look at that.

Imu: Al pnei hamayim, right, God himself is kind of bird-esque hovering over the deep (Genesis 1:2).

Rabbi Fohrman: That is kind of interesting. If you think about the very beginning of Genesis, you have a wind of God hovering over the waters, or literally, fluttering over the waters. It almost seems as if a phantom image of God as a bird, of course, later on – and that brings us to another example of birds, Imu – where in the Torah do we have a bird being explicitly described as merachef, as fluttering?

Imu: עַל־גּוֹזָלָיו יְרַחֵף – Haazinu or something.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly, in Haazinu. כְּנֶשֶׁר יָעִיר קִנּוֹ – Like an eagle waking up his nest, עַל־גּוֹזָלָיו יְרַחֵף – upon his young gozalim, upon his young little birds he is fluttering, he's taking care of them (Deuteronomy 32:11). And the imagery seems to be God taking care of us.

Imu: I didn't even realize that. That's actually very cool. So you have עַל־גּוֹזָלָיו יְרַחֵף – so it's the God-like bird that is hovering, that mirrors the beginning of the book where the wind of God is hovering.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. But now think about עַל־גּוֹזָלָיו יְרַחֵף – that you have the eagle hovering over its gozals. Now, I don't know what gozals is. Is it a young eaglet? Is it another kind of bird? I'm not sure. But if you think about a gozal, that type of bird, where in the Torah do we meet that kind of bird? A gozal?

Imu: Is there a gozal in the bris bein habesarim?

Rabbi Fohrman: There absolutely is. Genesis chapter 15, a gozal. Could it be that in the very end of Deuteronomy, when it says that God is like an eagle hovering over his gozals, it's referring to which gozals? The one in chapter 15, which is the birds that survive the brit bein habetarim. That's that moment where Abraham splits all these corpses and there's a bird that flies free. Maybe that bird is us. Maybe that's the bird that the eagle treasures and keeps safe. It's the gozal, and it's the gozal that shows up later in Deuteronomy…

Imu: One second. That imagery is really powerful. I never really thought of bris bein habesarim that way. Remind me what happened there. You had three different kinds of animals. You had goat, you had cow, and you had what else?

Rabbi Fohrman: Goat, cow, and ram, and all of those animals get split up and there's these corpses and there's blood all over the place. It's a prophetic nightmare, and God talks about slavery in Egypt, and then at the very end, there's this moment of – 

Imu: There are birds. 

Rabbi Fohrman: God says, there are these birds, don't touch the birds. There's a turtledove and there's a gozal, this little bird. And it's like God is saying: There's going to be this slavery and suffering, but I'm the Master Bird. I'm the one who's merachef. I was the one who was merachef at the beginning of the Torah, in the second verse of the Torah. I'm the one who's merachef at the end. I'm the nesher (eagle). Of course, where does God as nesher, as eagle, show up? Not just in Deuteronomy, but where do we have God as the great eagle in the sky?

Imu: I know that one. That's in our parsha.

Rabbi Fohrman: Welcome to Parshat Yitro. You knew there was a reason we were talking about Parshat Yitro. That's why. God comes here as eagle. He is the one who brought us on eagles' wings. All of these birds seem connected.

Imu: That's really interesting.

Rabbi Fohrman: The other question which I don't know the answer to is, what does gozal mean? Does gozal just mean generic young bird? It doesn't seem to mean eaglet. Is it a different species of bird, like a tor? A tor is a turtledove. Is a gozal a different species of bird? Because if it is, then the gozal in the Torah are specifically not eagles, which I think is also fascinating. Because if you're an eagle, what would you take care of? 

Imu: Your eaglets.

Rabbi Fohrman: You would take care of eaglets.

Imu: But you wouldn't take care of any other birds.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. So God is different than birds that way. You see, a bird would only take care of its children. But God has a nest and He's the great eagle in the sky, but what are the cute little birds in the nest? Other little orphan birds from different species. A tor (turtledove) and a gozal. The eagle has adopted another species of bird and brought it into its nest, כְּנֶשֶׁר יָעִיר קִנּוֹ. And the nesher in Deuteronomy, the eagle, takes care of the little birds in its nest, this other kind of bird, a gozal, יְרַחֵף. So there's this tor and there's gozal, which are very different than eagles, but God 's going to take care of them anyway.

And we are different than God. God is transcendent. You can't touch Him, you can't feel Him. Very different from human beings. But that difference doesn't mean that He doesn't care about us. Despite the fact that we are flesh and blood creatures, God still cares about us and is there for us the way an eagle would adopt another little bird and take care of it.

Imu: I think what's interesting about the connections you're making, especially in the bris bein habesarim and in our parsha and in Haazinu, is that all three of those scenarios are dealing with Israel and exile and God as savior. Bris bein habesarim is talking about God 's promise to Abraham that his children are going to be strangers in a strange land. And somehow what you're suggesting is – despite terrible pain, despite terrible suffering, the bird is some sort of symbol of deliverance.

And here in our parsha, God is saying וָאֶשָּׂא אֶתְכֶם עַל־כַּנְפֵי נְשָׁרִים – literally talking about His delivering them from Egypt and how He takes them out on wings of an eagle (Exodus 19:4).

And at the end, in Haazinu, God is talking about His protection of the people of Israel and how He hovers over them and protects them. Is it talking about their stay in the desert? Is that what it is doing in Haazinu?

Rabbi Fohrman: It's not clear. It sounds like we're talking about God taking us out of Egypt and bringing us back, and yes, God taking care of us in the desert. The desert there is being analogized to the wastelands of pre-Creation. Just like in pre-Creation there was a wind of God hovering over the chaos, so the chaos now is וּבְתֹהוּ יְלֵל יְשִׁמֹן – in the howling wasteland of the desert, God was there and taking care of us (Deuteronomy 32:10).

Imu: So what's interesting here is that it's not just that there's some arbitrary birds in the Torah, and are they connected? It's that these three at least, these three mentions of birds, are all about deliverance. And maybe yonah (dove) with Noah is also something to do with that, with – you know, the world had been totally wiped out, and the way humanity is ushered back into its deliverance from chaos is through a bird. 

Rabbi Fohrman: It's a fascinating notion. In other words, could it be that when Noah was releasing those birds into the world, they were precursors of the salvation of humanity? This little boat with people who were saved from destruction was about to disembark. But before that, birds had to somehow be the vanguard of that deliverance. If you think about that bird coming back with the olive branch, which becomes such an important symbol for us of peace and of deliverance, that goes back to that bird with Noah.

So there is something, I think, comforting about the notion of birds. You know, when we wake up in the morning, we hear those birds tweeting, there's something that is rejuvenating just about the presence of birds in your life. I think maybe God's tapping into that by saying that, you know, I'm the great bird in the sky and I take care of you.

Imu: That's a really powerful and resonant metaphor, especially in this week's parsha, where you have God kind of introducing Himself to the people. The way He chooses to introduce Himself is through this metaphor, I'm the God who took you out of Egypt, I brought you out on eagles’ wings. Exactly in line with how you're describing this metaphor, which is... Think about our experience. We live in two dimensions to some extent. We walk on the surface of the earth, and a bird gets to move in the third dimension. It flies above us and it can pluck you out of your existence. It can pluck you out of the harmful circumstance that you're in and you can't get out of. And so while you can only walk forward and backward, here comes this bird who lifts you up out of something.

To begin a relationship with God understanding that metaphor, understanding that you may be in narrow straits, Mitzrayim (Egypt), literally meaning metzarim, in narrow straits, boundaries, and God will lift you up out of there and take you out of that… that's a really incredible way to begin a relationship.

Rabbi Fohrman: It is a beautiful way of thinking about it, especially if you think about God as transcendent. Transcendent is a very fancy word, but if you would make it more tangible, the closest thing that we have to a being that's transcendent in our world is a bird. 

For all of humanity, we've been mystified, as humans, by flight. We’ve always wanted to fly. Leonardo da Vinci with his flying machines. There's something about the bird being able to take flight which is a symbol of freedom and deliverance. It's like, if you could fly in a dream, that vivid image of being able to fly is one of the most powerful images of really being free. God seems to know that about us, to sort of latch on to that image and say: If you want to have some understanding of who I am – this being that's so different than you, that you can't touch, you can't feel – think of Me as a bird. Think of Me that's someone that lives and that can fly in ways that you can only dream of, and yet, despite the fact that I'm so different than you, I take care of you despite that difference. I'm an eagle that doesn't just care about eaglets. I care about tors and gozals also. You're the tor and the gozal and you can come into My nest.

Imu: Rabbi Fohrman, I am flying high with the height of this Torah learning.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, I am flying high too, Imu. This is, it's heady stuff. It's airy stuff, perhaps, but it's heady stuff too. 

Ari: I think Rabbi Fohrman and Imu opened up a fascinating door. I would never have imagined that this one image, of God carrying us on eagles’ wings, could be packed with so much meaning, or that so many of the birds in the Torah might be connected. What I really want to know now is: What do you think about the metaphor of the eagles’ wings? Or, are there other birds in the Torah that fit into the ideas that Imu and Rabbi Fohrman discussed? 

Let us know by leaving a voice message. Just click on the link below. We can't wait to hear from you! And I really mean that! Connecting to our listeners through these voice notes has become my favorite part of the job. So don’t hesitate! We are waiting eagerly for your ideas. 

Credits

This episode was recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman, together with Imu Shalev. 

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 editorial director is me, Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening.