Building the World with Love, One Nest at a Time

Parashat Ki Tetse, Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19

Dave Nichol, Ruach Israel, Needham, MA

In parashat Ki Tetse, we find a list of seemingly random commandments, including this one:

If there happens to be a bird’s nest in front of you along the road, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the hen sitting on the young or on the eggs, you are not to take the hen with the young. You must certainly let the hen go, but the young you may take for yourself so that it may go well with you and you may prolong your days. (Deut 22:6–7)

I, for one, have never had this happen to me. Even so, I can’t help but ask, why? Ramban (Moshe ben Nachman, 13th century) uses his comments on this verse to ask the question, what is the purpose of the commandments

In this case, Ramban declares that the commandment is not intended for God’s benefit, finding it presumptuous to claim that God needs anything. Nor is it for the benefit of the mother bird; after all, the Torah certainly allows slaughtering animals for food. Rather, the purpose of this commandment is to prevent us from acting cruelly. This mitzvah (commandment) teaches us that even this (destructive but permitted) act of taking young birds for our nourishment must be mitigated, if only a little, by compassion. 

So, what is the purpose of the commandments? They are first and foremost to benefit us. In the case of this mitzvah, the primary benefit is teaching us the importance of compassion.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Hama explores the verse “You shall follow after the Lord your God…” (Deut 13:5), asking the question: is it really possible to “follow after” the Divine Presence? Put differently, how do we, mere humans, imitate God, who is so profoundly other?  He answers his own question: “Rather, the meaning is that one should follow the attributes of the Holy One, Blessed be He.” He provides several examples: 

Just as He clothes the naked, as it is written: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin, and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21), so too, should you clothe the naked. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, visits the sick, as it is written with regard to God’s appearing to Abraham following his circumcision: “And the Lord appeared unto him by the terebinths of Mamre” (Genesis 18:1), so too, should you visit the sick. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, consoles mourners, as it is written: “And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that God blessed Isaac his son” (Genesis 25:11), so too, should you console mourners. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, buried the dead, as it is written: “And he was buried in the valley in the land of Moab” (Deuteronomy 34:6), so too, should you bury the dead. (Sotah 14a).

These actions attributed to God strongly echo those listed by Yeshua as characteristic of those who would enter his kingdom:

Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger and you invited Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.” (Matt 25:34–36)

These examples—clothing the naked, visiting the sick, comforting mourners, visiting prisoners—can be summed up in the concept of gemilut ḥasadim, or “works of ḥesed.” 

While ḥesed can be translated as simply “love,” it is often translated as “lovingkindness.” Alan Morinis, in his excellent book Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar, defines it as “generous sustaining benevolence.” From the thirteen attributes that we recite (especially during High Holidays), we learn that ḥesed is a fundamental attribute of God. 

But ḥesed is not just any old attribute of God. Some streams of our tradition see it as an essential part of the fabric of creation. Some read olam ḥesed yibaneh (Psalm 89:3, rendered by the TLV as “Let your lovingkindness be built up forever!”) as “the world was built with ḥesed.” Pirkei Avot states that “the world stands on three things: Torah, worship, and acts of ḥesed” (1:2). 

R. Chaim Friedlander, a 20th century mussar teacher, taught that Noah’s ark was not a place simply to wait out the flood, but was a training ground for ḥesed (Siftei Hayyim, “Olam Ḥesed Yibaneh”). Noah and his sons and daughters had to work all day with minimal rest to care for the animals. What’s more, they had to approach each animal according to its own needs and requirements—as an individual. In this way, the ark was a “school of ḥesed”—a perfect antidote to the violence that characterized humanity before the flood. According to this reading, the ark was not to save Noah’s family from the water, as much as to get humanity back on track morally. 

Ramban concludes that the commandments are for our benefit; in a sense, they are one aspect of God’s ḥesed toward us. The sages of the Talmud contend that this is a model for us: we imitate God by showing ḥesed to those around us, and even to the natural world. 

There’s a meaningful relationship between “the purpose of the commandments” and “the purpose of our lives.” We can conceive of creation as a flow of ḥesed from God into the created order, where our job is to keep it flowing by giving to others from what we have been given (I owe this particular imagery to R. Shai Held of Yeshivat Hadar). Neglecting to do ḥesed creates a blockage in this flow from God that sustains the world.

Does this mean that our purpose in this life is primarily doing good for others? Should we understand ourselves first and foremost as ḥesed-distributors? Well—spoiler alert—I think it is! “He has told you, humanity, what is good, and what Adonai is seeking from you. Only to practice justice, to love mercy [ḥesed], and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Living in a continual posture of ḥesed is not natural to us. It is radically against the grain to give when we are inclined to self-preservation, to let go of our own priorities—even the noble, important ones—and truly see another person and their needs; to live a life of freely giving. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Love your neighbor as yourself? Habituating ourselves toward ḥesed is where the rubber meets the road.

That’s not to say we should become versions of Doug Forcett, the character in the TV show The Good Place who feels obligated to be generous ad absurdum, letting people walk all over him out of a commitment to a twisted, extreme form of ethics. In the language of the kabbalists, even though the world may be founded on ḥesed, it is balanced with gevurah, strength or boundaries. 

That said, it would be a mistake to contextualize away this commandment to do ḥesed. The teaching of these sages, along with our master Yeshua himself, challenges us to make ḥesed the organizing principle of our lives—even to an extent that would be seen as truly radical in contemporary society.

Recall that Yeshua extends ḥesed even to life itself: “This is My commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13). 

In the end Ramban finds that the commandments are for our benefit, even (especially?) those that require some self-sacrifice. To truly live our lives this way requires a tremendous amount of faith that God’s ḥesed will continue to flow to us. Perhaps when we find it difficult it will help us to remember the words from our parasha: that even taking a posture of ḥesed in routine acts (you know, like taking baby birds from a nest for lunch) will bring about “that it may go well with you and you may prolong your days.”

Scripture references are from the Tree of Life Version (TLV).

Russ Resnik