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God teaches us compassion
Torah Study
RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN
Ki Tetze/Deuteronomy 21:10 - 25:19
This week's Torah reading includes the somewhat obscure commandment: "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" (Deuteronomy 22:6-7).
Upon first analysis, it would seem that the Bible is attempting to sensitize us to the special parent-child relationship that exists even among brute creatures, and to prevent us from acting cruelly towards the mother bird.
Nachmanides, in his Torah commentary, is of the opinion that the Torah's command that forbids the capture of the mother bird together with her young is designed to instill compassion within humans. God, the consummate educator, is training our souls. If we are commanded to act with compassion towards birds, how much more compassionate must we be towards our fellow human beings?
Maimonides, in his Guide to the Perplexed, insists that this commandment is an expression of the biblical prohibition against causing pain to any living creature (tzar baalei chaim).
However, in an earlier work of Maimonides, the great sage espoused a different position: "Someone who says in his beseechings to God, 'May the one who shows compassion to a nest of birds ... be compassionate to us,' must be silenced. This is because these commands are decrees of God, and are not laws of compassion. Had they been motivated by considerations of compassion, then God would not allow us to slaughter animals altogether" (from the Laws of Prayer, written approximately two decades before the Guide to the Perplexed).
The Almighty originally permitted Adam to eat fruits and vegetables alone. It was only after God realized the human proclivity to evil and destruction during the generation of the flood that God permitted humanity the flesh of animals and fowl. Nevertheless, the Israelites were commanded to take notice of the moral ambiguity involved in being carnivorous, through the limitations concerning which animals may be eaten, the necessity of proper ritual slaughter, and the prohibition against eating meat with milk.
Ideally, we ought not be taking birds at all for the purpose of human consumption. The Talmud makes it clear that when the Torah says, "Let the mother go," it does not mean that one ought run "up the mountain and down the valley to look for a nest of birds in order to send away the mother bird and take the baby bird" in order to fulfill the commandment. That is why the expression in the Torah is ki yikarei, meaning only "if you chance upon" a mother bird and her young together, does this commandment apply.
Rabeinu Sadiah Gaon explains that this commandment applies only to repair an earlier weakness, similar to the way violations of the prohibition against stealing - "You shall not steal" (Exodus 20:13) - are repaired by the positive command, "When a person sins ... through robbery ... he shall repay the principal amount and add a fifth part to it" (Leviticus 5:21-23).
Just as it would be ludicrous to steal in order to fulfill the commandment to return that which was stolen with interest, similarly one should never take the baby bird in order to fulfill the commandment to let the mother bird go. One should really refrain from taking the birds altogether.
This, I believe, is the point of Maimonides' writings. It is absurd, he says, to invoke the command to send away the mother as an example of divine compassion, since divine compassion would forbid taking birds for food altogether. Once, however, we allow human beings to eat meat and fowl as a concession to the frailty of human nature, then the sending away of the mother bird is indeed an expression of the sensitivity we must feel for the unique mother-child relationship, even among birds.
The overwhelming majority of commentaries see the Torah as attempting to teach compassion above all else. In a perfect world, where true compassion reigns, we neither slaughter animals nor raid the nest.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Efrat, Israel.
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