Shortly after Pesach, I found a complete bird’s nest on top of the outdoor light of my porch.

The nest was built like it had been rendered by an architect, and there were three tiny eggs inside; I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I kept opening the door to check on it obsessively (I’m now an expert at opening my door without making a sound). I watched the father bird during the day and the mother bird at night, and I couldn’t get enough of the sight. It’s become the first thing I check when I walk downstairs in the morning.

Aside from the beauty and intricacy of Hashem’s world, I’ve been collecting some parenting approaches from this devoted pair and its three unborn children. Yes, my family gets noisy sometimes, and the attendant bird flies away at a peep, but then it hovers, though not too close. It’s not the helicopter parenting of the 21st century, it’s a step ahead. It keeps moving, flying around casually, assuming most people don’t realize it’s the parent of the eggs in the nest. My take: we want our kids to gain independence, but it’s okay to be a nearby support.

We had the opportunity to do shiluach haken (see note), and the mother actually returned afterwards, and is sitting on her eggs as I write. What seems cruel and inhumane in our eyes is actually a mitzvah, which can only have been given to us by Hashem, in His infinite wisdom. In fact, the Zohar reveals that when the mother bird cries for her children, it evokes an unparalleled shefa of rachamim upon the mother bird and on the entire world.

There is so much depth and beauty of the Torah in just this one mitzvah. And what better time to ponder this than Shavuos?

Wishing you a beautiful and uplifting Yom Tov,

CHANIE NAYMAN
Food Editor, Family Table

Not So Cheesy

Enough about birds, let’s talk cheesecake!

A few tips for your pre- and post-cheesecake disasters:

• If your recipe doesn’t specify whipped cream cheese, nine times out of ten, it’s asking for block cream cheese. Whipped cream cheese has air already whipped into it and will affect the texture of your cheesecake, also making the possibility of a crater on top a lot more likely.
• Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. Cold ingredients can result in a lumpy cheesecake.
• Let your cheesecake cool gradually. (Make sure it’s not too set at the end of the cooking time, so it won’t overbake.) First turn off the oven, then open the oven door, and finally remove it from the oven.
• If your cheesecake sank in the middle, run a knife around the edges of the pan as soon as it comes out of the oven so that it doesn’t stay attached to the sides.

(Originally featured in Family Table, Issue 742)