Northern Flicker : Entitlement

This is a Northern Flicker. The bird-astute will immediately notice her prominent bill and clutching talons and recognize she’s a woodpecker. That immediate reaction is correct. It is also insufficient. Our preconception of a woodpecker is a bird working its way up and down a vertical tree, hammering away for insects in the bark. So a bit of dissonance: Why is this woodpecker stalking through the grass? The oh-so-simple answer is that flickers eat ants, and they’re often - very often - on the ground to find them. Simple. Different. Reconciling a flicker on the ground isn’t hard; it simply requires fleshed-out understanding of how they live.

Torah is a story about real estate. From Abram to Joshua, HaShem tells the Jewish people they will go to the Land of Israel, they will be a numerous nation, and they will live there according to the mitzvot that they will be taught along their journey. Obviously I am eliding details and nuances - critical ones - but in a sense the narrative is a simple depiction of rootedness and belonging. Now, millennia later, there are Jews living in a Jewish State. Now, millennia later, our liturgy is inextricably linked to the Land. The Land of Israel is a physical place, and the God of Israel, HaMakom, is a spiritual Place, both of which provide Am Yisrael a sense of rootedness and belonging.

Ask a naively wise child to find a bird, and she’ll look up to the trees and sky. That’s where most birds belong. But not all. Some birds live walking on the ground. We too have the place we belong, sometimes as expected, sometimes creating dissonance in others’ expectations. In Jewish tradition, our place is the Land of Israel. Of course Jews live all around the world and have since earliest history, voluntarily and not. These other way stations notwithstanding, our constitutional narrative defines our natural environment. There we are rooted, and there we belong. The Flicker is entitled to its rightful place, and so are we.