In the view of many, saying “I am vegan”
is for “I’ve an eating disorder” a quite useless euphemism.
It may help people who’re obese and wish to sleeken,
but useless when they are so thin you will not want to kiss ‘em.
Those who say they’d like to have a child one day, may not
object to having one for two days, but two days would be the tops,
and punchlines, which a man whose memory is poor, forgot,
provide jokers with death sentences whose periods are full stops.
The Torah’s law to send away the mother bird
from whom you’ve taken a small chick, can’t be explained.
To say it’s because God’s merciful, is wrong, a rule that sounds absurd.
How can He not protect a mother when she’s being pained?
Though weddings can be fun, few marriages last longer
than six months nowadays, which is a reason why
some like to go to funerals more than to weddings, chances stronger
for corpses, than for couples, not to change their minds to die.
Deut. 22:6-7 states:
ו כִּי יִקָּרֵא קַן-צִפּוֹר לְפָנֶיךָ בַּדֶּרֶךְ בְּכָל-עֵץ אוֹ עַל-הָאָרֶץ, אֶפְרֹחִים אוֹ בֵיצִים, וְהָאֵם רֹבֶצֶת עַל-הָאֶפְרֹחִים, אוֹ עַל-הַבֵּיצִים–לֹא-תִקַּח הָאֵם, עַל-הַבָּנִים. 6 If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young;
ז שַׁלֵּחַ תְּשַׁלַּח אֶת-הָאֵם, וְאֶת-הַבָּנִים תִּקַּח-לָךְ, לְמַעַן יִיטַב לָךְ, וְהַאֲרַכְתָּ יָמִים. {ס} 7 thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, but the young thou mayest take unto thyself; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.
The Mishnah Berachot 5:3, legislates that we silence a precentor who prays: על קן צפור יגיעו רחמיך “Upon the bird’s nest does your mercy extend.” Tzvi Novick explains in “Morality and Prepositions: On Taking a Mother on Her Young” that according to the Babylonian Talmud the rationale for this prohibition is that the precentor who attributes this law to God’s mercy “overemphasizes God’s mercy, at the expense of other attributes, in particular anger.”
Novick points out that the name of this law, provided in m. Hul. 12:1, שילוח הקן, sending away the nest, is anomalous, since the law actually really demands שילוח האם, sending away the mother bird. Novick also points out that שילוח, the nominal form of the piel verb תשלח in Deut 22:7, reminds us of divorce, because the word שלח denotes divorce in Deut 24:1. This leads me to surmise that the term שילוח הקן, sending away the nest, implies that the law is an implied polemic against divorce, suggesting that it is problematic behavior which involves not only expulsion of a mother but the breakup of a nest.
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
