Easy to Say
The “lightest” command is heavier than it looks.
There’s a law in the Bible that the ancient teachers have long regarded as “the lightest command”.
“If you come across a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground … you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.” — Deuteronomy 22:6–7, ESV
Huh?! This law says that if we’re hungry and see a bird nest, we must let the mother escape before we feed ourselves.
Obviously, that’s quite easy to obey. A wild mother bird is likely to fly away before we reach her nest.
Why is this even a law? And more surprisingly, why does a law which would be hard to disobey, carry such a strong promise of blessing? — “…that it may go well with you, that you may live long.”
Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg weighs in:
“The reward of long life for the seemingly simple commandment of shooing away a mother bird before taking her young teaches us that no act is trivial….Every act is significant.”
Everything we do matters. No act is trivial.
The Damage of our “Trivial” Habits
Every year, people around the world eat 340 million metric tonnes of meat. There’s eight billion of us, now. And we eat seventy billion animals every year. I love animal meat as much as the next guy, but 69 billion chickens and 302 million beef cattle are not trivial.
Here are some facts about the American appetite for beef:
Today’s average American eats just over fifty-five pounds of beef per year. Roughly a pound a week.
So our 330 million people consume 18 billion pounds of beef yearly. We are four percent of the world’s population, but we’re responsible for a quarter of world consumption.
Burning the Amazon
Every choice of a Quarter Pounder or a Wendy’s Single (or a 5 Guys Hamburger or a Big Boy) by one American might seem trivial. But each of us, on average, is eating beef at about 220 of our meals each year.
Suppose we skipped beef twice every month. Every other week, we forego a quarter pound of beef. How might our world change?
By passing up one burger every two weeks, we would eat 6.5 fewer pounds of it every year. That’s a 12% reduction. Those few “trivial” decisions would add up to annual savings of over two billion pounds of red meat. Ten million cattle.
How much land does it take to raise 10 million cattle? 10 million acres for them to roam, and another 10 million acres to raise the 4000 pounds of grain they will need to “finish” them at 1300 pounds. So, twenty million acres. That’s 31,250 square miles.
How many square miles of the Amazon rainforest do you suppose have been burned in the last 10 years to make room for beef cattle farming? 24,000 square miles. The amount of land needed for those “extra” two hamburgers we Americans eat every month require more than the amount of Amazon rainforest burned in the last ten years.
If each American gave up one hamburger every other week, the engine that drives that global demand for grain farming and beef eating would lose a little steam. Imagine! A world that doesn’t “need” to burn its rainforests!
Nothing is Trivial
The scope of this thought experiment runs much wider than partridge eggs or beef feedlots. All human decisions impact planet Earth. That’s the important fact we need to learn. What we do matters.
Wherever we look, we find travesties caused by “trivial” individual choices:
- the use of fresh water from the Olgallala Aquifer to grow corn for beef feed, gasohol or high fructose corn syrup
- spilling of fluorocarbons into rivers to make spills bead up on our carpets
- wrecking the lives of children to get cobalt for our batteries
- agricultural methods and habitat reductions, among other “trivial” impacts, have now killed 90 percent of Earth’s insects and songbirds, and threaten the future of every species — including us
Our actions and omissions have impact, whether we like it or not.
Honor Our Mothers
If we do things that bring a benefit to our own health, it could be called “wise”. If it lightens the load of the next generation, it might be called “philanthropic”. And if a “trivial” decision is multiplied by many other people, we can make a positive difference.
The writers of the Bible had a word for each tiny movement of mind and body that has a “good” result. They dubbed it tzedakah — a good deed or mitzvah. To be worthy of being called “righteous”, it did not imply heroism. Goodness gets its oxygen from quiet cooperation with simple principles. Equity. Appropriateness. Restraint.
The real gravity of self interest comes from common interest. Self-love embraces community: we wait for each other, we listen to each other, we share, we profit.
No wonder the ancient sages agreed that a deed as simple as allowing a mother bird to sustain its own future generations would “make things go well” for every One who embraced the Other.
Including other species. We have that bird, pedestrian, citizen, or refugee in our power. Our actions matter. Restraint brings a double-blessing. Empowering others brings a surprising, uplifting power for mutual good back in our direction.
The Torah says that if we follow this good practice, this mitzvah, it will go well with us. Rabbi Joseph Hirsch’s commentary provides inspirational insight:
The ground of sympathy here is the sacredness of the parental relationship. The mother-bird is sacred as a mother; and length of days is promised to those who regard the sanctity of motherhood in this sphere, as it is promised to those who observe the Fifth Commandment.“
The Heaviest Commandment
What is the Fifth Commandment?
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land...
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg observes:
…one Talmudic commentator points out that the same reward is specified in the Torah for honoring parents. Yet fulfilling that commandment takes a lifetime and often involves money, emotion and effort without limit. He concludes that the equality of reward is the point. The “lightest” of commandments rewarded as much as the “weightiest” to teach us to treasure and observe all commandments equally — for the reward of any mitzvah is incalculable.
Saul of Tarsus, known to Christians as the Apostle Paul, who grew up as an active participant in first-century Jewish culture, pointed out that the Fifth Commandment was “the first commandment with promise.” He must have had this Deuteronomy text in mind. These two commandments — the easiest command of all 613, and the hardest, tell us that every action we take in harmony with ethical principles will go well with us.
Life and health will be fostered every time we protect the powerless, speak our mind with kind integrity, respect the elderly, show generosity to the poor, tell the truth, respect our political opponent, release the slave, pay our workers promptly, keep the sabbath, pay punitive damages for our encroachments, enforce rational consequences against the selfish and repressive.
Each of us CAN govern himself
Each of us CAN observe our world, and pay attention to the principle taught in Deuteronomy: No action we personally take is non-trivial.
Fellow human: think, learn and act — before the planet itself imposes more consequences than we can bear. Do all in your own power to limit your personal impact on wildlife, water supplies … the quality of life for all species in the planet we share.
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Owen Richard Kindig is a retired video producer. He tries to keep a small footprint in Sitka, Alaska, and has a podcast about our pivotal time in history — itisnear.com
