On Birds, Roofs and Public Health – Toward A Better Theology for Elisha ben Abuya

As I was studying the Parashah (Ki Teitzeh), I noticed that the mitzvot of ‘shiluach ha’ken’ (sending away the mother bird before harvesting eggs from the nest) and ‘ma’akeh’ (building a parapet on one’s roof) were adjoined. I decided to pursue an ‘asmakhta’ – a (hermeneutical) interpretative strategy – on the two verses: how could they be connected?

Immediately, my mind was taken to the Talmudic story in Tractate Chullin where the rabbinic sage Elisha ben Abuya witnessed an obedient and pious boy fulfill the mitzvah of sending away the mother bird, as per the Torah’s instructions. He ascended the tree, shooed away the bird, collected the eggs and then fell to his death. A particularly cruel irony is that the mitzvah in Ki Teitzeh states that one who fulfills this commandment will be rewarded with long life.

Elisha ben Abuya is so shaken by this that he loses his faith: ‘there is no justice in the universe’, he proclaims, ‘and there is no Judge!’ He eventually becomes the ‘Acher’, the ‘Other’ – the paradigmatic heretic of our tradition. Elisha had trusted his theology but his theology collapsed under the weight of cruel randomness, as it should. When we witness the death of children, our theology should be shaken to the core. He could not reconcile the theodicy of ‘when bad things happen to good people.’ The boy’s death is the death of God to Elisha. Perhaps every time a child dies, a little part of God dies too.

I was still left pondering what the connection was to both verses. One is about doing what is right; the other is about creating the safety conditions for doing what is right. Both mitzvot are about scaling heights—literal and moral. Both are about compassion for others. (The mother bird should not suffer to see her eggs taken; the home owner should take responsibility for those under – or up upon! – his roof). Both are about public trust and safety. Not only is it a mitzvah for the home owner to care about their own life; they are also liable if they fail to protect the lives of those in their orbit.

Trust and safety.

There’s another story in the Talmud, in Tractate Chagigah, about the four sages (Elisha ben Abuya, ben Zoma, ben Zakkai an Akiva) who entered Pardes, Paradise – or, so to say, had a metaphysical encounter with the Divine. One died, one went mad, one became a heretic and only Akiva ‘came in peace and went in peace.’ Elisha lost his faith then also because the Arch Angel Metatron was sitting on the Throne of Glory rather than God, and Elisha was distressed to find that, again, the hierarchy and structure of his theology did not adequately hold up. His heresy is that he cut God down to his own size.

I don’t know what timeline order is of both events but I find it striking. Elisha is right to be distressed and distrustful. The world and its institutions are not maintaining their moral integrity for him. He walks away.

There is something intense and conspiratorial to the vision of three sages dissociating in one way or another when they glimpse behind the veil and see the world for what it is; it proves to be a deception. I kept on thinking about Metatron; this Gnostic image of the power behind the throne, the shadowy puller of the strings of the cosmos. It feels surprisingly contemporary.

As we are witnessing the collapse of public health and public trust, as our health care system and scientific consensus is being cannibalized by pseudoscience and conspiratorial thinking, I cannot help but think of both the ‘asmahkta’ of these verses from the Torah as well as the connection between these two Talmudic stories centered around Elisha. COVID is raging again and access to life-and-limb-saving vaccines is being restricted because of dangerous pseudoscience taking root in the halls of power. We are witnessing the undoing of the institutions and methods of public health we trusted for decades: the ‘parapets’ on our public health ‘roofs’: vaccines to keep ourselves and others safe. We are seeing conspiratorial thought targeting the most vulnerable: ascribing lesser value to autistic children; claiming false causalities to the origin of autism.

More and more people are losing their trust in public health.

Fewer and fewer of us will be kept safe.

What to do? Collective problems don’t always have individual solutions. This is so much bigger than all of us. But that doesn’t mean individuals can’t play a role that can move the needle of the collective.

First, crafting a theology that allows us to see things for what they are without dissociating into the heresy that a cold, hard universe inspires coldness and hardness in us.

Second, crafting a philosophy that radically rejects the neo-eugenics of our age and affirms the value of all is what it means to place God on the Throne of Glory and not Metatron.

Third, modeling individual responsibility for constructing the ‘parapets’ of our lives to keep ourselves and others safe, helps maintain a moral bar. Get vaccinated. Educate yourself. Improve your scientific literacy and that of your family and community.

And lastly, demand collective action and mutual aid. Our public health system is broken and we deserve better. We are the ones who have to rebuild trust.

These matters are not easy. The task is overwhelming and the battle is uphill.

But we know what is at stake: every child – and adult – should be able to choose life.

Let us all choose life.