A Mitzvah For The Birds: Shiluach Haken And Divine Compassion

In the lead-up to the High Holidays, my mom would always get ahead of herself and the calendar, and begin thinking about Sukkot first. Of course, there was always the brisket to think about for Rosh Hashanah, the blintz souffle for Yom Kippur break-fast. Also the Teshuvah. But she always spent the most time thinking about and preparing for Sukkot. Making her famous sukkos soup, making sure my dad and brother were on track to put the sukkah up– but always most important, was the task of decorating the sukkah– of making our temporary home for the week just that– a cozy, warm dwelling-place, full of all the usual decorations and creature comforts. We had the requisite paper-chains and classroom art, but there was also a more unusual decoration, that my mom took immense pride in. 

While my brother and I usually did the bulk of the decorating, somehow, my mom would always manage to sneak into the sukkah (probably when we were taking a well-deserved tv break), and put up 12 birds. She would fasten these very real-looking birds to the poles and corners of the sukkah with the thin wire threads that came attached to their feet. She would place as many as she could in the schach roof that covered the sukkah. And she put them up in such a way that the 12 weren’t immediately noticeable. And we would spend the rest of the holiday, looking for them. An avian sukkot scavenger hunt. And over the course of the holiday, over many warm bowls of sukkos soup, inevitably one of us would call out, would interrupt, would sometimes knock over a drink or a wine bottle, and announce, “I found bird number 8!” Or “There! I hadn’t seen that bird before.” And so the holiday continued, and our meals and conversations were so often wonderfully interrupted by this game. A game that only my mom, in her loving and unusual way, could have devised.

Interestingly enough, birds make an important appearance in this week’s Parsha, Ki Teitzei. In Deuteronomy chapter 22, verses 6-7 we read:

If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life. 

This commandment is called Shiluach HaKen– the mitzvah to send away the mother bird before taking her eggs. This is an unusual mitzvah, and it has given rise to centuries of debate about the purpose of this law specifically, and law or halacha more broadly. Is this law compassionate or cruel? Why does this law exist in the first place? Is this mitzvah trying to teach us something about our relationship to and consumption of animals? 

The list of philosophical questions that surround this idea is long. But I’d like to focus on this mitzvah’s symbolic purpose, and its connection to the moment on the calendar in which we currently find ourselves. 

Chizkuni, the 13th century French commentator writes:

It would be an act of cruel insensitivity, comparable to cooking a kid in its mothers milk, something the Torah has repeatedly forbidden, as well as the prohibition to slaughter, even as a sacrifice, a mother cow together with its calf on the same day.

For Chizkuni, the mitzvah of Shiluach HaKen revolves around protecting the dignity of the mother bird. Acting compassionately toward her, preventing violence and cruelty at all costs. Here, Chizkuni points to our human capacity for compassion. Many other commentators take this idea one step further, and reflect on G-d’s capacity to act compassionately:

The Midrash explains:

There is an angel appointed over the birds . . . and when Israel performs this commandment, and the mother departs weeping and her children crying, he agonizes for his birds, and asks G-d: “Does it not say that ‘His compassion is on all of His works’ ? Why did You decree on that bird to be exiled from her nest?” And what does the Holy One do? He gathers all of His other angels and says to them: “This angel is concerned for the welfare of a bird and is complaining of its suffering; is there none amongst you who will seek merit on My children Israel, and for the Shechinah which is in exile, and whose nest in Jerusalem has been destroyed, and whose children are in exile under the hand of harsh masters? Is there no one who seeks compassion for them and will attribute merit to them?” Then the Holy One issues a command and says, “For My sake I shall act, and I shall act for My sake,” and compassion is thereby aroused upon the Shechinah and the children in exile.

This Midrash is a theological goldmine. In it, we see a G-d who interacts with the whole of the known world; we see a G-d who needs help; in this Midrash, we also meet a G-d who takes suffering seriously, who is unable to let the cries of humanity go unheard.

In our liturgy, we encounter the many facets of G-d’s personality and role. In one prayer, we might meet a gentle parent, and in the next, an angry master. In one instance, G-d is our patient shepherd; and the next, G-d is spiteful and struggles to let go of grudges. G-d, like each of us, is complex, striving, and fundamentally a work in progress. 

But we might come away from our liturgy, and our Biblical texts, especially in this lead-up to the High Holidays with an incomplete sense of who G-d actually is. There is this notion that we are supposed to arrive at the High Holidays feeling intimidated by G-d, Afraid, even. But there is a great difference between awe and fear. Between reverence and panic. And this Midrash reminds me that at the end of the day, G-d is a presence that we should be excited to encounter, grateful to encounter– because fundamentally, G-d is concerned with our dignity, with mitigating our suffering. 

We are exactly halfway through the month of Elul, through this month of special spiritual preparation for the High Holidays. We have two weeks left to ask for forgiveness, to grant forgiveness, to continue the work of searching high and low for the dignity in others. As we inch closer to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I hope you’ll allow this Midrashic image of G-d to stick: This G-d who is desperate to help us, to protect us. This G-d who doesn’t always get it right, but wants so badly to stand with us in the breach. A G-d that cannot bear to hear our cries of anguish, and who strives to put compassion and dignity at the center of the human-divine relationship.

Sins, like birds, can fly away. We are reminded in this week’s Parsha of G-d’s desire to act compassionately toward us and the whole of creation. This year, I want to challenge all of us to follow G-d’s lead– giving ourselves and those around us, the kinds of compassion we all desperately need right now. 

Shabbat shalom!