Birds of Noach

Have you ever had close encounters with our feathered friends, the birds? My most stunning encounter occurred when I was on vacation in Fairbanks, and took an early morning walk/run, and stopped dead in my tracks to see and hear the dance of the sand-hill cranes. Another happened at one of my favorite places in the world, Isabella Friedman. I climbed a trail and sat transfixed as red tailed hawks soared effortlessly on thermals. In the Spell of the Sensuous, Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, David Abram writes of an encounter with pair of condors who flew close to his still and waiting form"And then I felt myself stripped naked by an alien gaze infinitely more lucid and precise than my own. I do not know for how long I was transfixed only that I felt the air streaming past ...and heard the wind whispering in my feathers long after the Visitor had departed." He writes despairingly "how had Western civilization come to be so exempt from this sensory reciprocity? How , that is, have we become so deaf and so blind to the vital existence of other species, and the the animate landscapes they inhabit, that we so casually bring about their destruction? The current commodification of "nature by civilization (has caused) our senses first relinquished the power of the Other, the vision that for so long had motivated our most sacred rituals, our dances, and our prayers".

Our obligation in the Brit is to be Noach, to provide comfort, a resting place Manoach, protection from the wiping out of species we earthlings are perpetrating.

Perhaps the birds represent our soaring spirits, both the raven, eater of carrion, and the dove, purveyor of peace. G*d takes the blame for wiping out species, although the ultimate cause is the yetzer hara of human beings. (Is there a flaw in our design?) We activate the destructive forces of the planet with our greed: you think you're powerful human? You are playing with WATER!