Flight has often captured our imagination. There is something about breaking free from the earth, soaring through the sky like a bird, and seeing the world from a more elevated perspective.
The dominant metaphor for flight has always been wings, enabling birds to leave the ground and fly, to even seemingly hang in the air, gliding without apparent effort. Thus, even though the people physically walked out of Egypt, the Torah evokes imagery: I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me. (E. 19:4, also D. 32:11). We were divinely protected by being above the plane of the physical, saved through forces that transcended nature.
Indeed, the Torah emphasizes that wings are meant to be valued only as metaphors – winged creatures are not to be understood as being in some way superior or holy. Thus we are forbidden from crafting the form of any winged bird that flies in the sky. (D. 4:17). Winged animals are not special because they fly: the value of wings, of the ability to move upward, is valued only because it is symbolically suggestive of the pursuit of spiritual elevation and holiness.
The Torah makes this clear: The priest shall tear [the bird] open by its wings, without severing it, and turn it into smoke on the altar … It is an elevation offering. (L. 1:17)
The offering illustrates the transformation: from an animal that can fly in the physical realm into wings that transcend physicality, and into the spiritual world. The wings symbolically elevate, and help us understand the value of breaking away from our earthly limits and getting closer to G-d.
This might explain why, when the text tells us to wear blue fringes on our garments to remind us of the commandments (and not to follow our eyes and heart), it does not use the word elsewhere used in the Torah for “corner.” Instead, it uses the same word for “wings,” kanaf:
Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the wings of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each wing. (N. 15:38)
You shall make tassels on the four wings of the garment with which you cover yourself. (D. 22:12)
The Torah is not merely telling us to put the fringes on each corner: it is telling us that fringed garments symbolically give us wings! If we are clothed and focused and productive (thanks to the fringes which remind us of our mission to elevate the world toward the blue sky/heaven), then we are capable of spiritually flying upward, away from our limited physicality. The blue fringes help us soar.
Using wings as metaphors is brought home when we consider the kiruvim, the angels on top of the Aron, the ark:
The cherubim shall have their wings spread out above, shielding the cover with their wings. (Ex. 25:20 and 37:9)
These angels, made by mankind, have wings. But the wings are not physically functional in any way. They are there to illustrate the metaphor of spiritual flight. Wings are really meant to help us understand how we are meant to connect to heaven. These are celestial wings, solely for a holy purpose.
The ark and the angels were not visible to the outside world (though images of the angels were visible on the surrounding curtains). The ark represented privacy and intimacy and love. And the wings of the angels shielded that enclosure, in the same way that the wings of a bird wrap around the bird, shielding it from view. Wings are there to keep the intimate where it belongs, out of sight to all – except for those inside the relationship. The wings protect and nurture the life within.
The Torah reinforces this point when it speaks of revealing intimacies:
No man shall take his father’s former wife, so as to exposed his father’s wings. (D. 23:1)
Cursed be the one who lies with his father’s wife, for he has exposed his father’s wings. (D. 27:20)
How does a married man have wings? Because intimacy is also a way to spiritually elevate, to take a physical act and give it deep meaning within holy matrimony. The wings of a marriage are, like those of the angels, two-fold: for both privacy and for elevation. In order for intimate relations to be able to be spiritually uplifting, they must be zealously guarded and shielded.
The Torah frequently connects spousal marriage to a spouse and to G-d, just as adultery and idolatry are frequently linked. Just as we have public and private aspects to our marriage with our spouse, we have the same kind of relationships with G-d.
A son who has intercourse with his father’s wife is indeed uncovering the wings of his father, adulterating the way in which his father used intimacy to spiritually elevate. That kind of intimacy is, of course, meant to remain private and confidential, like the wings of the angels on the Ark in the Holy of Holies. Open intimacy is profaned intercourse.
It is evident through these verses, which are all uses of the word for wings, kanaf in the text (after Creation), that wings in the Torah are symbolic, and help us conceive and internalize the concept of spiritually flying upward. We can do this through offering a bird as an elevation-offering, through the imagery of the wings of the angelic kiruvim, through the blue fringes on our garments, and in our marriages to both our spouse and to G-d.
P.S. Flight allows a person to ignore the limitations of the beaten path – just as splitting the sea created a new pathway through the water. Jews are called “Hebrews” for ivri, for crossing over or transgressing the borders and boundaries (both social/political as well as terrestrial/topographical) that are respected by ordinary (non-Jewish) people. This is at least as true in a spiritual sense as in a physical one. Metaphorical flight, enabled by symbolic wings, enable a person to soar.
P.P.S. The Torah employs a great many metaphors that link the perceptible physical world to the spiritual realm. For example, the earth represents physicality, while the sky corresponds to heaven. Similarly, physical breath is linked to spiritual life, and so on. In a sense, everything physical might have some kind of spiritual analogue, in the same way that love of fellow human beings is parallel to love of G-d.