Today we begin the final chapter of Tractate Chullin with a mishnah that expands on a mitzvah found in Deuteronomy 22:6–7: “If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life.”
It is an act of mercy to shoo away the mother bird before collecting her eggs from the nest. The Talmud has explored this mitzvah elsewhere, most notably on Kiddushin 39, in which a heartbreaking story is told of a parent who sent a child to fulfill this mitzvah, but rather than, “faring well and having a long life,” the child fell from the ladder and died. Seeing this tragedy led one rabbi to abandon Judaism altogether.
Today, the topic is much less fraught, with the mishnah sharing specific details of how to perform the mitzvah which will likely sound familiar:
The mitzvah of sending away the mother bird from the nest applies both in the land of Israel and outside the land of Israel, and in the presence of the Temple and not in the presence of the Temple.
The mishnah rules that the mitzvah of sending away the mother bird is always relevant, incumbent upon Jews wherever they live (both inside and outside the land of Israel) and in all times (when the Temple stands and when it does not). Chapters five, six, seven, 10 and 11 of this tractate all begin with the exact same kind of phrasing, essentially noting that a particular commandment is incumbent upon Jews in all times and places. In fact, the end of Tractate Chullin functions as something of a collection of such mitzvot, which is why we keep wandering so far from our original subject matter, slaughtering animals for food.
On today’s daf, the Gemara says little specific about the mitzvah of dismissing the mother bird, but later commentators give it considerable attention. Many extrapolate that the reason we send away the mother bird isn’t so much to spare her anguish as to condition us to behave mercifully toward people. In his Guide for the Perplexed 3:48, Maimonides notes: “If the Law provides that such grief should not be caused to cattle or birds, how much more careful must we be that we should not cause grief to our fellow men.”
Rabbenu Bachya ben Asher, writing in 13th-century Spain, affirms Maimonides’ rationale and adds to it, writing: “There is no commandment which is easier to fulfill than sending away the mother bird… It does not require financial cost in order for us to fulfill it and yet the reward is great. We may extrapolate from that what kind of reward God will grant us for the fulfillment of commandments which require the spending of a lot of money, physical exertion, and possibly involve saving someone’s life. The reason that God spelled out the reward for only a few of the commandments is to encourage us to fulfill all of them.”
When my kids were small, someone gave us a soft wall hanging with an image of a colorful train with many cars. Written in Hebrew was the phrase mitzvah goreret mitzvah, meaning one mitzvah leads to another. The classical commentators lift up the mitzvah of sending away the mother bird as both easy to fulfill and one that trains us to be compassionate to others. What a perfect entry point for doing even more good in the world.
Read all of Chullin 138 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on September 15, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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