Mother in law jokes abound. 

We may make many of them ourselves, but beware,  one day those jokes may come back to haunt us!

There is one joke my Dad obm always used to repeat. 

“Why was Adam the luckiest man in the world? 

Because he didn’t have a mother in law.”

I never had a mother in law. 

This coming Sunday will be the 40th yahrzeit of my husband’s mother. 

I never met her. 

She passed away three years before I was introduced to my husband. 

So I never had a mother in law. 

I have come to know her through stories and remembrances, through her children and even through my own children as they begin to exhibit some of her character traits. 

Sonya Silverman obm never knew a stranger. 

Her home was open to one and all and she loved to host for Shabbat and holidays. Anyone who ever needed a bed was welcome in her home.

She once hosted a group of musicians who were traveling in California and were down on their luck and needed a place to stay. After they left she told her kids about this ragtag bunch and when they asked what was the name of the band she said “I don’t know, something like the dead grapefruits.”

Yes, the Grateful Dead were hosted by mother in law!

But on a more profound note she was a lifelong Jewish learner, passionate about her heritage and eager to share all she learned with one and all. 

When some of her children began to follow a path of Jewish observance which differed from hers, she embraced them and allowed them to fly. 

She did not clip their wings and  respected their choices. 

She was a loving and protective mother above all else. 

This week’s Torah portion is 

Ki Teitzei which contains within it many, many mitzvot.

One of the mitzvot enumerated is the commandment to send away the mother bird. The context is, if you find a nest with chicks or eggs in it and on top of the nest there is a mother bird hovering, the mitzva is to send the mother bird away and then you can collect the chicks or the eggs for yourself. 

Maimonides explains the idea here is that watching a child die is the worst thing that can happen to a parent (last week’s heroine still shines brightly before my eyes) and he posits that this is not only true fir humans, it’s the same for animals, so don’t do such a cruel thing to the bird and make her watch helplessly as we take away her young. 

Rabbi David Fohrman asks why do we specifically talk about birds, this kind of cruelty should not be inflicted on any species?

He also notes the unusual context of the verse which continues with the words 

“Do not take the mother upon the children”

What is that supposed to mean? 

The mitzva is about shooing away the mother to take the eggs, we are not taking the mother?

Furthermore, the accomplishment of this mitzva comes with a reward of long life. 

There is only one other mitzva in the Torah that carries a similar promise of reward,  and that is the mitzva to honor one’s  mother and father. 

Rabbi Fohrman asks, what links these two mitzvot?

The common denominator seems to be honoring motherhood. 

He explains that catching a bird is no easy task. It’s actually very difficult as the bird takes flight as soon as you draw near. 

There is only one time that a bird becomes easy prey. When a mother bird is hovering over her babies you she can be caught quite easily because she won’t fly away, she will stay to ferociously protect her chicks. 

So the person collecting eggs might think they can not only reap the bounty of the nest, this is an easy time to catch the bird as well. 

But we may not, because it is, as Rabbi Fohrman says,  “a desecration of motherhood”. Yes, it may be the easiest way to catch that bird but you are only able to do it because she is putting her maternal instincts before her own survival. So you may not catch her then, you may not take the mother upon her children because she will allow herself to die if she can save her young. 

That’s what a mama is too.

A mother will do anything for her child, and even when the child does not fly in the flight pattern the mother had laid out, she will still love her child-no matter what. 

So, concludes Rabbi Fohrman, we need to be careful not to take advantage of that love or desecrate it.  That love is there to nurture the child, and the child in turn shouldn’t take all that love and give nothing in return. 

We are taught to honor our parents. Because when we send away the mother bird and don’t trap her in a vulnerable moment and when we honor our own mothers who are the source of life, we will be strengthened and that will in turn ensure a long and healthy life for us as well. 

I will always be sorry that I did not have the opportunity to know the very special Mom who is the matriarch of my husband’s family, but I am comforted that we continue to live her ideals and dreams and give her Neshama the ability to take flight higher and higher in the merit of the mitzvot we do in her merit. 

May the Neshama of Sarah Leah bat Hessel be uplifted. 

Shabbat Shalom and so much love!