Shiluach haken ( he, שילוח הקן, "sending-away the nest") is the
Jewish law
''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also Romanization of Hebrew, transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Judaism, Jewish religious laws which is derived from the Torah, written and Oral Tora ...
derived from the
Torah
The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...
that enjoins one to scare away the mother bird before taking her young or her eggs. This only applies to
Kosher
(also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, yi, כּשר), fro ...
birds in the wild. The Torah promises
longevity
The word " longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography. However, the term ''longevity'' is sometimes meant to refer only to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas ''life expectancy'' is always d ...
to someone who performs this commandment.
Sources
The commandment is found in :
:Should a bird's nest appear before you on the way, on any tree or on the earth, chicks or eggs, and the mother resting on the chicks or the eggs: You shall not take the mother with the offspring. You shall send away the mother, and take the offspring for yourself, so that it be good for you, and your days be long.
Theological ramifications
Compassion or cruelty?
Rabbi
Natan Slifkin
Natan Slifkin (also Nosson Slifkin) ( he, נתן סליפקין; born 25 June 1975 in Manchester, England), popularly known as the "Zoo Rabbi," is a British-born Israeli Modern Orthodox community rabbi and the director of the Biblical Museum of N ...
has described two different approaches which Jewish thinkers have historically taken to this commandment. According to the "rationalist" approach, the purpose of the commandment is compassion: either to spare the mother bird the distress of seeing its eggs taken, or to limit the greed inherent in killing animals for one's use, or a similar reason. Whereas the "mystical" approach sees the commandment as an act of cruelty to the bird rather than compassion: in fact, the bird's suffering causes God to consider Israel's suffering at the hands of its enemies, and thus leads God to rescue Israel.
[Shiluach haKein: The Transformation of a Mitzvah]
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This dispute has practical ramifications, as the "rationalist" approach rules the commandment can only be done when one plans to eat the eggs (thus minimizing the birds' pain when pain is unavoidable), while the "mystical" approach calls on Jews to shoo away any mother bird even if they do not plan to take the eggs (thus maximizing the birds' pain).[
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Theodicy
As this is one of the few individual commandments for which a specific reward is promised in the text, it became a ''