Our Gemara on this daf continues the discussion of the mitzvah of sending away the mother bird. We saw in yesterday’s and the previous day’s blog posts on dappim 139 and 140 that there are various symbolic meanings attached to this ritual. On the surface, it is about compassion for the mother bird, because she represents motherhood itself and the anguish of lost offspring. Zohar Chadash (Midrash Rus 94a–b) sees it as a theurgical act that arouses divine mercy; the bird’s cries remind the Shekhinah of its lost children in exile, the Jewish people. We also saw in the blog post on Chulin 139 that the bird, which hovers over the nest, resembles the soul that hovers over the body.

Rav Dovid Berkowitz (published in the Shabbat supplement of Makor Rishon) suggests a different kind of symbolism between the bird and the soul. The Torah has an ambivalent attitude toward eating meat. It is a concession to human desires (Chulin 84a), and as such, contained within the rituals is an effort to minimize gluttony and cruel indulgence. The Rambam (Moreh Nevuchim III:48) sees the ritual of not slaughtering the mother and the child animal on the same day as a reining in of lust to eat and kill a species to the point of extinction. The covering of the blood of certain animals also shows deference for the loss of life and mutes savage instincts (Sefer HaChinuch 187). Rav Berkowitz suggests that within shiluach haken is also a hint at the relation between the body, lust, and the soul. The nest is the body, and the hovering bird is the soul. We must feed the body and grant it its due; however, we recognize that the soul cannot be entrapped in lust, and we allow it to go free—we don’t take it all. Still the bird hovers, because the body and soul must remain connected.

It seems to me that the rituals which involve birds as the first choice instead of an animal (unlike a poor person’s sacrifice) all involve a letting go of a sort, symbolized in the bird’s flight. The woman who gave birth brings a bird for the chattas, rich or poor, and the metzora purification ritual involves birds as well. The metzora has to shed selfish attitudes that estranged him from society, which necessitated isolation (Arachin 16a). He has to let go of his resentments and his entitlements and start anew. 

The yoledes brings a sin offering after the harrowing experience of labor pains. Chazal say (Niddah 31b) she impulsively swears off ever being intimate. Chazal intuitively knew psychology but did not necessarily use modern terms to describe it, and often psychological insights, like many aspects of the Oral Torah, are encoded in shorthand, with hints and small indicators of larger processes that are difficult to describe verbally. This description of the woman’s state of mind is not absolute nor monolithic. It represents a variety of similar forms of trauma and disengagement that come from the ruptures and stresses of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. In religion, rituals serve the function of holding a person through transitional events. Brissos, childbirth, mourning, marriage, bar mitzvah, and many other liminal events are linked to communal and spiritual processes that ground the person within the broader context of the community and the collective experience. You don’t go through it alone. After a child, before the resumption of intimacy, a woman and her husband need to process what got them to this point, the changes in their lives, and the new ways that they want to engage beyond the immediate and reactive feelings. A bird is brought to signify the need to let go of something and transition to a new phase. Even smaller transitions, such as the niddah and zivah cycle, which involve seven days and signify mourning to some degree, are about processing loss and transition. For many women, a period represents the loss of a potential child. Even in an older woman, or someone who does not want to have children, it marks one more month, and the separation and resumption of intimacy serve as a reset and marker of time. They need to reset and start fresh, and this time, hopefully, to address and change negative patterns.

Humans stay the same, repeat patterns, but also gradually shift. Our cyclical rituals confront us and invite us to reflect on what is the same, what we get stuck repeating, and what we would like to change.