“Mercy’s For the Birds”
By Hillel Smith & Jill Zimmerman
This beautiful poster is an original by the artist Hillel Smith of the Parsha Poster project*. He has created a series of posters for each weekly Torah portion (Parshat Ha’shavua.)
Each week, Hillel asks a rabbi or Jewish scholar to contribute some words to accompany his artwork and the verse he has chosen to highlight.
This week, the portion is Ki Tetze and Hillel selected a famous verse and asked me to write about the compassion the Torah implores us to hold in these unusual circumstances:
The verse:
When you encounter the nest of a bird before you in the way, in any tree or on the ground, whether fledglings or eggs, with the mother crouching upon the fledgelings or upon the eggs, you are not to take away the mother along with the children. Send-free, send-free the mother, but the children you make take for yourself, in order that it may go-well with you and you may prolong (your) days.
— Deut. 22:6–7 (translation Everett Fox, Schocken Bible)
And here’s what I wrote:
Acting With Compassion
When we allow the “other” — any living being — to penetrate our heart, and we act with compassion, the results are never-ending. For a moment, we operate as if we are indeed one with all. Divisions disappear. There is only love. Very often, even simple acts of kindness, can profoundly alter the course of the recipient’s life. And we may not even know!
My husband Ely recently received a letter from a classmate on the occasion of their 50th high school reunion. His classmate, from PRESCHOOL had come into the class as a new student. His parents had just moved to New York from another country. Ely reached out to the new boy and reassured him, “All will be well and we will include you in our group of friends.”
Sixty-five years later, this man wrote my husband to say that he never forgot that kindness. He told him that it completely altered his experience of moving to new country and school. Ely had no idea that his simple welcome had made such a huge difference in that boy’s life.
Every act of compassion is significant, whether we can see its consequences or not. Our thoughtfulness and kind actions matter.
Every time we act as if we are one, a ripple effect resounds in the universe.
- ABOUT Hillel Smith’s PARSHA POSTERS: *Buy this poster here. Subscribe to get the parsha in your email weekly. All posters are online at bit.ly/parshaposter and can be purchased at hillelsmith.storenvy.com. If you’d like to subscribe to this series, sign up at eepurl.com/bdqZIT.
Rabbi Jill Zimmerman is the founder of The Jewish Mindfulness Network. Her work blends the sacred teachings of Judaism with mindfulness practice. Rabbi Zimmerman created Hineni: The Mindful Heart Community, which is a virtual ongoing community welcome to anyone interested in becoming more mindful through the lens of Judaism.You can find her at ravjill.com and twitter @RabbiJill and on Facebook and Instagram!
