The Mother Bird and Her Empty Nest - Haftarat Ki Teitzei

Now, clearly these weren't Australian birds in this parashah, in this season - that's how you know we're in galut. But all jokes aside, despite (or maybe because) this is a chok the RamBam feels compelled to reason with it.

"People should be restrained and prevented from killing the two together in such a manner that the young is slain in the sight of the mother, for the pain of the animals under such circumstances is very great. There is no difference in this case between the pain of man and pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for her young ones is not produced by reasoning, but by imagination, and this quality (to care for ones' children) exists not only in man but in most living beings."

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’10 ? 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.

Biting, Berurya. The language of this verse evokes a trope known as the Mother of Exile - a complicated image that is replicated throughout history in art, never more famously than by...

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) was born into a wealthy New York Sephardic Jewish family. Educated privately, she began writing poetry as a teenager and gained recognition for her literary talent. Her efforts included fundraising and raising awareness about the plight of these immigrants, leaving a lasting impact on both American literature and social justice.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Words and Worlds: Emma Lazarus's Conflicting Citizenships, Diane Lichtenstein, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2, Woman and Nation (Autumn,1987), at 260-61.

"The famous Statue of Liberty becomes, through Lazarus's imagination, a symbol of what America has meant to Jews, as well as to other "huddled masses." It also becomes a symbol of womanhood that defies traditional stereotypes of passivity and demureness. This "mother" is a "mighty woman" who promises not the easy comforts of gold-paved streets but the challenges of economic, political, and social freedoms. She is not the sentimentally glorified True Woman whose mothering took the form of gentle guidance and warm consolation but is, rather, the Victorian woman whose majestic strength supplied a nation with courage. She also personifies Devorah [ed. eshet lapidot], the original Mother in Israel who valiantly defended her Jews, as well as the nineteenth-century Jewish woman who created for her family a refuge from a potentially hostile world. The Mother of Exiles is a regnant figure from whom both Americans and Jews could draw strength. By glorifying America's welcome of the "homeless" and by combining the two images of ideal womanhood into a single, more powerful figure, Lazarus effectively reconciled her multiple nationalities. Clearly not a conventional Jewish or American woman, Lazarus did not define herself through the roles of wife or mother. As a woman who consciously chose a public Jewish identity, at the same time that she was known as an American author, she forged a unique model of the American Jewish woman who could use her words to legitimize her identities."

Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate,

Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword,

The children of the prophets of the Lord,

Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.

Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state,

The West refused them, and the East abhorred.

No anchorage the known world could afford,

Close-locked was every port, barred every gate.

Then smiling, thou unveil’dst, O two-faced year,

A virgin world where doors of sunset part,

Emma echoes something timeless - that we cannot prevent the pain of the exile. It is, in many ways, a fait accompli - but we can lessen the suffering of the return to our nest, diminish it in some small way.

We can use this to reconcile the mystical and the rational approach; that, in the same way that we complete shiluach hakan, by recognising and sympathising with others and their genuine pain, we are driven towards small acts of kindness. And in turn, these small acts of kindness, whose impact we may never know, create an inordinate amount of good. After all, a few verses later: