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Birds of Pray The Torah teaches that rooting for Southern Miss is a sin. In the book of Exodus, the Israelites lose patience at the base of Mount Sinai while Moses is upstairs taking dictation. They construct what the Torah calls an “Egel haZahav” — commonly translated as “The Golden Calf.” Zahav means gold, so Egel is the animal in question. Southern Miss is The Golden Egels. Case closed. On Thanksgiving weekend this year, when Southern Miss plays the once similarly directional Louisiana-Monroe, the fact that turkeys aren’t birds of prey — lest they be not kosher — will make Jews everywhere grateful. Except for Jewish vegetarians. Or vegans. Or last-minute shoppers after the turkeys ran out. But are there other birds for which Jews can be thankful, regardless of their eating habits? (The Jews’ eating habits; not the birds’, because their eating habits can dictate their kosherness. The birds’ kosherness, not the Jews’.) Are any of humanity’s feathered friends featured in Judaism, or even fleetingly present just on a wing and a prayer? Of course, they are. And not just because some people think that services are for the birds. Speaking of services — where people pray for short sermons and other essentials in life — people wear a tallis there. A tallis has four corners. The Shema refers to the blue thread that some people still put there as “kanaf p’til t’cheilet” — basically, the corner with the blue thread. Kanaf means corner, but also means wing. So, while the commercials say that drinking a Red Bull gives you wings — a pair, according to the ad agency’s animator — putting on a tallis at services gives you twice as many. There are various references in mostly obscure prayers to birds, eagles, ravens, doves, and such. But perhaps the main influence birds have had on worship is that, starting in the 20th century, a significant number of congregations shifted their practices away from separating men and women, to become more eagleiterian. The most noticeable mentions of birds at services are actually their periodic appearances in the Torah and Haftarah readings. Of course, birds play famously in the biblical tale of Noah and his maritime menagerie. Arkeologists still seek physical evidence of the story, but long after the rains stopped, Noah sent out a raven which returned nevermore because it was captured in a poem by Edgar Allen Poe. He then sent out a dove which came back rather soon, to Noah’s great chagrin, so on its second flight the dove returned with an olive branch to make peace with him. Another rather famous bit from the Bible is from chapter three of Ecclesiastes, famously translated as, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.” While it doesn’t mention any feathered fliers overtly, its ornithological origins are obvious because this verse got its turn — and another turn, and another turn — in a 1965 hit song by The Byrds. The Torah also is the source of the rules of what birds are kosher, primarily in saying that birds of prey are not kosher. This is perhaps the only time in Judaism that doctrine or tradition says anything bad about any form of praying. The inevitable question is whether it’s better for someone to not have a prayer, or to not have a preyer. Over the centuries, many rabbis have failed to sufficiently answer this puzzler, in part because none of them
Sometimes, Torah study is for the birds
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November 2022 • Southern Jewish Life