(Bar Tzabary sings Yonanti, “my dove.” In the opening stanza, he sings, “teach me your ways, and please don’t go away.” In the Jewish tradition, the dove is not only a symbol of peace, but also the representation of the Jewish people in the Song of Songs.)
“If you leave her alone, she will ultimately come to you!” I say these words multiple times a day to my daughters who cannot seem to just leave our pet bird alone. “Just get out of her face!” I’ll exclaim after our little blue bird issues her “angry chirp,” and lightly bites their fingers so that she can get a little space.
In February we bought a parakeet, Aqua, at the Bangor Airport Mall. I anticipated that she would satiate the girls’ desire for a pet, but I did not fully know the extent to which she would be a teacher of Torah living. One of the first lessons she has taught them is that if you want to draw someone truly close in love, you need to respect their stated boundaries. That is a lesson that cannot be taught early or often enough. Whether they learn this lesson from the story of of Nadav and Avihu violating God’s stated boundaries in Leviticus, or it is from a 2 ounce parakeet, it is all good Torah.
In this week’s Torah portion, Chukat-Balak, animals serve as teachers of Torah in a variety of contexts. When the Israelites continue to rebel against the leadership of Moses and Aaron (even after they all witnessed the earth swallow up Korach’s co-conspirators), God sends venomous snakes to bite them. In parashat Balak, we encounter a talking donkey, who tries to prevent the pagan prophet Balaam from cursing the people Israel. After Balaam beats the donkey three times, the donkey cries out in protest, “What I have I done to deserve this?!” She wasn’t being a nuisance, she was serving as an agent of God’s will, trying to protect her master from sinning against the Divine.
The Jewish novelist, Dara Horn, wrote a beautiful piece on all of the ways in which talking animals serve as teachers of Torah, and also as characters that evoke the complexities of Jewish identity. The ways in which animals are used as characters to tell the stories of the Jewish people, she writes, are complex. There can be something grotesque, Horn argues, when we embody the Jewish story in animals. At the same time, from the Bible to Aesops Fables to Animal Farm, animals serve as effective medium to tell difficult human stories. The humor, cuteness, and narrative distance provided by animal characters allow us to engage with what is absurd, ugly, or difficult in our own nature. Animal characters not only soften the blow of confronting difficult truths, they also provide an element of surprise that calls us to attention. Whether it is the giant fish that swallows Jonah, or a serpent that tempts Eve, the seeming absurdity of animal messengers draws us into stories about human frailty we would rather avoid.
When reading Horn’s essay, I was intrigued by one such story called, “The Bird,” told in the form of a poem by Yiddish writer Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886-1932). It opens setting the scene:
So this bird comes, and under his wing is a crutch,
And he asks why I keep my door on the latch;
So I tell him that right outside the gate
Many robbers watch and wait
To get at the hidden bit of cheese,
Under my butt, behind my knees.
Through the story of this bird, Halpern tells the story of a Jew who had come to America and is approached by a “bird,” who in fact is a new immigrant from Europe who is asking for aid from his fellow Jew. As the poem progresses, the American Jew in the apartment becomes a prisoner of sorts, unwilling to open the door lest his fellow Jew gets a taste of his cheese. The poem concludes:
But I know what he wants. So I bide
My time and let him wait outside.
He inquires about the bit of cheese
Under my butt, behind my knees;
Scared, I reach down, but, yes, it's still here.
I haven't the slightest thing to fear.
For those who know the liturgy, the final line of Adon Olam is, Adonai Li v’lo irah, “God is with me, I shall not fear.” While our shared Jewish faith instructs us to find comfort and courage in God, in America, “cheese,” (and our exclusive ownership of it) is what brings us a sense of security. Halpern uses the bird — somewhat free, somewhat hobbled, and a representative of the Jewish spirit — to expose the failure of the American Jewish community to share its fortunes adequately with new arrivals, in accordance with the dictates of our shared faith. At its core, it is an ugly story made bearable and engaging through a funny and cute image of a little bird on a crutch trying to get past a locked New York City Apartment door.
Beyond metaphor, I also think that animals carry within them a divine spirit that is shared with all of God’s creations. I think we can sense it. In the prayer Nishmat Kol Hai, we affirm that all of God’s creations are connected through shared breath and spirit, and that we should use that shared breath to praise our common Creator. There is something in the eyes of animals, and in their touch, that we recognize. In our connection with other forms of life, we are connected to the transcendent presence of God. Perhaps our relationships with animals can be all the more powerful than those we have with humans because they don’t carry the same kind of self-consciousness or shame that can come with human interaction.
On this Shabbat, let us remember that teachers of Torah can come in all forms, even among our animal friends (and enemies, as is the case in this week’s portion.) As my daughters learn how establish a healthy relationship with Aqua, they will gain the skills to develop holier relationships with those around them. That relationship will probably be more instructive than any freshman orientation session on healthy boundaries, or even the most masterfully delivered sermon by their mom. If and when they listen and heed her “stay away” chirp, they will gain the ability to create space for loving encounter — which, for what it’s worth, is probably the most important lesson they will ever need to learn.
Shabbat Shalom!