The Mother Bird and Jerusalem

If you come across a bird's nest with fledglings or eggs, on any tree or on the ground along the road, and the mother is sitting on the fledglings or eggs, you must not take the mother along with the young. You shall send away the mother, and (then) you may take the young for yourself, in order that it should be good for you, and you should lengthen your days.                                        Deuteronomy 22:6-7

            Thus the Torah presents the mitzva to send the mother bird away before taking her fledglings or eggs.

            Rosh (Rabbi Asher ben Yeḥiel 1250 – 1327), in his commentary on the verses, offers a fascinating homiletic interpretation:

“You shall send away the mother” – this is Jerusalem, which is the mother of the nation of Israel. “And (then) you may take the young for yourself” refers to Israel, for when they sinned Jerusalem was destroyed and God sent them away from Him, as the verse states “and your mother was sent away because of your transgressions.” [Isaiah 50:1], and so Jeremiah said “The Lord has exhausted His wrath, poured out His burning anger; He has ignited a fire in Zion, and it has consumed her foundations.” [Lamentations 4:11] When Israel sinned, the Holy One, blessed be He, wished to destroy His entire world, as Scripture states “If not for My covenant (understood as God’s covenant with Israel that they observe Torah) with the day and the night, I would not place the statutes of heaven and earth.” [Jeremiah 33:25] Instead, God said “I will destroy My house and assuage my anger on the wood and stones of the Temple.” “That it should be good for you.”

            The mitzva of sending away the mother bird hints at God’s mercy; rather than taking out His anger on His chosen nation He took it out on the wood and stones of the Temple.

            Indeed, our Sages [Midrash Eicha Rabba 4:14] connected the verse in Psalms [79:1] “A song of Asaph: God, the nations have invaded Your inheritance, desecrated Your holy temple, and turned Jerusalem into ruins” to the verse in Lamentations which Rosh quoted:

This is what is stated “The Lord has exhausted His wrath, poured out His burning anger; He has ignited a fire in Zion, and it has consumed her foundations;” it is written “A song of Asaph: God, the nations have invaded Your inheritance” should it not have stated Asaph cried and wept and lamented? Yet the verse says “a song of Asaph.” The parable is of a king who built a wedding canopy for his son, who then fell into bad ways; immediately the king tore the curtains and broke the poles of the canopy. The prince’s tutor took a flute and sang. Everyone said to the tutor “The king has destroyed his son’s wedding canopy and you sing!?” He answered “I sing because the king destroyed the canopy rather than taking out his anger on the prince.” Similarly, they said to Asaph “The Holy One, blessed be He, destroyed the Temple and you sing?” Asaph answered “I sing because God poured out His anger on wood and stone, and not on Israel.” This is what the verse says “He has ignited a fire in Zion, and it has consumed her foundations.”

            We may point out that what is said of the Holy City applies also to the Holy Land in general. Rabbi Moshe Ḥagiz (born in Jerusalem 1672, spent close to fifty years abroad as an emissary, returned to Israel, died in Zfat c. 1750) ) wrote that for the nation of Israel, the Land of Israel is like a mother, being struck and suffering for us, and she gives life to her sons. For this reason, she is called ‘’the Land of the Living.” [Psalms 27:13]

            In light of the approach of Maharal, that the sanctity of the Holy Land is derived from the presence within her of the Holy City, it is not surprising that both the City and the Land protect the nation of God who live within them. Truly, the City and the Land are the “mother of the nation of Israel.”