Category Archives: Devarim 21:22-23 & 22:6-7

don’t leave a person hanging or take bird & eggs from nest

Leading Idea: Determining Boundaries

Leading Idea: Determining Boundaries

The selection of text in this Parashah all have to do with ‘setting boundaries’. Boundaries of what is clean/unclean;  what we are responsible for and what we are not; what is part of nature/outside nature; (culturally acceptable) ways to behave / ways not to behave. This discussion plan explores this broader theme of boundaries.

Discussion Plan: Determining Boundaries

Discussion Plan: Determining Boundaries

  1. Does your home have a physical boundary marking where it begins or ends? If so, what is it?
  2. In what ways does your skin mark the boundary to who ‘you’ are?
  3. Does a boundary have to be physical or can it be psychological?
  4. Are rules a kind of boundary? If so, what are they they the boundary between?
  5. Can ideas have boundaries?
  6. Is Kabbalat Shabbat a boundary? If so, what is it the boundary between?
  7. Can families have boundaries?
    • If so, can you name a few?
    • Do families have different kinds of boundaries?
    • If so, can you make a list of the different kinds?
  8. Which of these boundaries are for the sake of other people? Which are for the sake of the shared environment?
  9. What is the point of boundaries? What  functions do they play? (bring sense of order, limit)
  10. Would life be better without boundaries?
  11. When you enter a different country and show your passport, is this the same as crossing a boundary?
  12. Does the imagination have boundaries?
  13. Who is responsible for establishing boundaries?
  14. Who is responsible for making us responsible for keeping them?

Sparing the mother bird

 

The law has traditionally been explained as sparing the mother the painful sight of seeing her offspring taken away. However, it is not likely that chasing the mother away would spare her the pain, since forcible separation from her young and finding them gone later would also be painful. …What the text finds callous are the acts themselves, quite apart from any impact they may have on the mother.

Tigay Jeffrey JPS Torah commentary

Since therefore the desire of procuring good food necessitates the killing of animals, the Law enjoins that this should be done as painlessly as possible. … It is also prohibited to kill an animal with its young on the same day to prevent people from killing the two together in such a manner that the young is slain in the sight of the mother; for the suffering of animals under such circumstances is very great… and does not differ from that of man, since the love and tenderness of the mother for her young ones is not produced by reasoning but by imagination, and this faculty exists not only in man but in most living beings…The same applies to the sending away of the mother bird. The eggs which the bird sits on and the young that are in need of their mother are generally unfit for food, and when the mother is sent away she does not see the taking of her young ones, and does not feel pain. ..

(Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, III:48)

The ruling of the mother bird is not based on the Almighty’s pity for the animal. Otherwise He would have forbidden us their slaughter. The reason however for the prohibition is to teach us compassion and the avoidance of cruelty. Butchers and slaughterers become hardened to suffering by their occupation. These precepts of not slaughtering the mother and the young on the same day and sending away the mother bird are not inspired by feelings of consideration for their suffering but are decrees to inculcate humanity in us. In the same way our Sages regarded all the Torah’s precepts, negative and positive, as decrees.

( Nahmanides, Commentary on Devarim 22:6)

 

 

 

 

Discussion Plan: The limits of our care for the environment

Discussion Plan: The limits of our care for the environment

  1. If you are on a nature walk and there is rubbish lying around from people who did the walk before you, do you find this disrespectful? If so, in what way?
  2. If you are on a nature walk and throw an apple core off the path deep into the forest, does this matter? Is it being disrespectful? If so, what is it disrespectful of? If not, why not?
  3. If you are on a nature walk and throw an empty can off the path deep into the forest, does this matter? Is it disrespectful? If so, what is it disrespectful of? If not, why not?
  4. Are there ways you are already actively involved in caring for the environment? If so, in what ways? Why are you involved in doing this?
  5. Is there a difference between using nature for our own purposes and exploiting nature?
  6. When someone says that we are responsible for maintaining a ‘clean’ environment, what reasons might they give for thinking this? What do you think about these reasons?
  7. When a cat covers up their waste, do you think they acting toward maintaining the health of their own environment? If so, in what way? If not, why not?
  8. Elephants, like humans, bury their dead. Could they be doing this for the same reasons we do?

Is it possible that other animals take care of the cleanliness of their immediate environment  instinctively,  while people have to do it consciously/intentionally? If so, why do you think there is this difference?

Leading Idea: Responsibility toward nature

Responsiblity toward nature:

Devarim 22:6-7: Birds and Bird Eggs.

Is the preservation of nature an end in itself (as well as a means to our ends)? This passage speaks about our responsibility toward the environment. We might feel this responsibility for three different reasons.

(i) Out of a responsibility toward our own children: This is to care for the environment so that in the future there will be more eggs to feed us. This is to see our responsibility toward mainaining a balance in nature in human terms. Our life will be extended in the sense that if we don’t take the mother bird then we will have the resources to continue to feed ourselves as the bird lays more eggs (See Abravanel).

(ii) Out of a responsibility toward the environment for its own sake. This is to say that we should not take the mother bird because we have a moral obligation toward nature itself (See Tigay Jeffrey and Sefer Hachinuch). This might be understood on theological or naturalistic grounds. We might feel a moral responsibility for looking after God’s creation, or we might feel a moral responsibility for the diversity and richness of nature in itself. Both might count as reasons for ‘not taking the mother bird with the eggs’, in that to do so would be to jeopardize the continuation of the species.

(iii) Out of compassion for the life of other species.  Here we have a moral responsibility to make sure other animals are not stressed or experience pain because of our own needs (See Maimonides),

(iv) Out of recognition of who we are and might become –  to realize our own humanity by becoming more fully human ourselves. In this case we might say that showing compassion to animals is important because, in doing so, we develop traits that are important to who we are as human beings (that is, we will become the kind of person who is compassionate by doing compassionate acts). These traits might be compassion (See Nahmanides), or humility and kinship with nature (see Ibn Kaspi)

Exercise: Desecrating ‘human ground’- hs

Exercise: Desecrating human ground

Which of these would desecrate human ground? give your reasons.

  • Building a museum on the site of an old cemetery
  • Constructing a road through a national park
  • Putting up an ice-cream stand for tourists at Auschwitz
  • Building a dam (changing nature) to give a city drinking water
  • Building a fighting ring as part of a sports hall.
  • Having a zoo where animals are kept in cages
  • Punishing people by putting them in prison
  • Cutting down native rainforest to plant sustainable growth trees
  • Making a campfire to sing songs around in the evening
  • Organizing an office space so that people don’t have common space to talk to one another

Exercise: For the sake of people or land?

Exercise: For the sake of people or land?

Which of these things do you think we do for the sake of our fellow human beings and which do we do for the sake of the environment? (or both/neither)

  • Keeping the school yard free of litter
  • Keeping our room at home tidy
  • Saying thank you when someone gives us a present.
  • Picking up bottles and place them in a recycling bin
  • Taking the rubbish out
  • Avoiding stepping on a grave if we are at a cemetery

Cleaning out the fish tank (if we have one)

Discussion Plan: What is disrespect?

Discussion Plan: What is disrespect?

  1. If you talk in a movie theatre when the film is showing, are you being disrespectful? – if so what is it you are disrespecting?
  2. If you put gum you have been chewing on the underneath of the desk, is this disrespectful? If so, what is it you are disrespecting?
  3. If someone gives you a present and you treat it badly, is this being disrespectful of the person who gave it to you? Why or why not?
  4. If someone gives you a present and you put it away at the back of cupboard and forget about it, is this being disrespectful of the person who gave it to you? Why or why not?
  5. Do you think writing in a book is disrespectful? Why/Why not? Does it matter what kind of book it is? If so, why should this matter?
  6. Is it disrespectful to spit on the ground – if so, what are you disrespecting?
  7. When might brushing someone off be a way of showing them disrespect?
  8. Could ignoring someone be a way of disrespecting them?
  9. Could ignoring someone be a way of showing them respect?
  10. Can you disrespect someone and still like them?
  11. Can you disrespect someone and still consider them a friend?
  12. Is there a difference between disrespecting things and disrespecting people? If so, what is the difference?
  13. Is there a difference between disrespecting people and disrespecting God? If so, what is the difference?
  14. Who decides what actions count as being disrespectful?