The Mother and the Young - Commentary on Ki Teitze
Weekly Torah reflections from Matthew Schultz, a rabbinical student at Hebrew College.
“When you go out to war…”
So begins Parashat Ki Teitze.
The Hasidic sages read these wartime-laws in a completely allegorical fashion.
War is a spiritual battle.
The military camp is the Torah itself.
Our weapons are study and prayer.
The enemy is our own inclination to sin.
The Hasids are utterly unconcerned with the literal meaning of these passages, almost as if war had no practical import in their world, as if it were an archaic practice from a bygone age.
For me, however, war means war. Even the parts of this portion that aren’t about war mean war as well.
“If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother and the young alike. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life” (Deuteronomy 22:6-7).
I’ve always liked this mitzvah for its sweet (if partial) concern for the wellbeing of animals, for the deep symbolic readings it has inspired throughout Jewish history, and for the interesting element of chance. This is a mitzvah that can only be performed if chance permits. One is forbidden to go hunting bird’s nests for the sake of this mitzvah.
The words “the mother and the young alike” evoke another episode in the Torah. In the book of Genesis, when Jacob prepares to reunite with his brother Esau, he fears that Esau will attack his camp, killing “the mother and the young alike.”
The Torah accepts violence as a fact of life, but has a particular moral sensitivity to this act of killing mothers together with their children. This notion recurs again and again.
Leviticus admonishes, “no animal from the herd or from the flock shall be slaughtered on the same day with its young.”
One might also say that the famous injunction against boiling a kid “in its mother’s milk,” which is the origin of the Jewish prohibition against mixing meat and dairy, is an example of the same moral impulse.
But when I read this phrase in Deuteronomy, “do not take the mother and the young alike,” I think first of Shiri Bibas, the mother of young Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and wife of Yarden Bibas—all four of whom were dragged into Gaza eleven months ago.
I don’t think I will ever be able to read the phrase “the mother and the young alike” without seeing her anguished face, two young children clutched to her chest as she turns left and right with no one to save her.
We do not know if Shiri Bibas and her two young children are still alive. Hamas has said that they are not, but the IDF has not confirmed this, and there is still hope that she and her family will return to us.
On October 7th, there were many stories of parents being killed with children, or parents being killed while the children were kidnapped. Carmel Gat, for instance, witnessed Hamas kill her mother before she was taken captive, only to be killed herself eleven months later.
In Gaza, as well, there have been countless parents who have died alongside their children. Unlike with Hamas’ attack, this is not the intention of Israel’s strikes. Rather, Hamas is responsible for these deaths as well because they started this war and because they continue to fight it in a way that puts their civilians in danger. But this in no way lessens the human tragedy.
Perhaps someday we will have a world where Ki Teitze will again be read allegorically, where the discussion of wartime has no pertinence to our daily lives, where the law of the bird’s nest has no tragic resonance.
Until then, may our study of Torah and the merit of our prayers protect the hostages and bring them home to us alive today.
❤️