Talking Donkeys and Other Violations of Natural Law

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Many times in a movie or television show, when a character has a great idea, a little light bulb is shown going off in their head. We all know there isn’t a real light bulb but showing the light bulb is a way of getting our attention and making sure we notice the character’s great idea.

Hal raised an interesting issue this morning, asking us if we really believe that snakes or donkeys talked in Biblical times. His excellent comments made me think about the Bible as a storyteller, and about how effective the Torah is in creating memorable stories that put forward important teachings.

In the story of the Garden of Eden, the dialogue between the snake and the woman makes very vivid the struggles that we sometimes experience internally as we debate whether to follow our appetites or our values. In a sense the snake is like the light bulb, drawing our attention to our human struggles with temptation.

In this week’s Torah portion the episode with the donkey adds humor to the story and also makes its teaching more memorable. Here is the greatest prophet in the world at the time, someone who was sought out by the King of a neighboring country, a man who is believed to be able to see far into the distant future and he doesn’t even notice what’s in front of his nose half as well as his donkey.

Without the talking donkey, would we pause over this part of the story and consider its message? Would we wonder to what it is that we ourselves are blind? What is it that is right in front of our eyes, but which we don’t see because of our preoccupations with ourselves or the blinders on our eyes formed by our expectations of what we are looking at?

In this Torah portion it was a messenger of God that Bilaam failed to see, but in our lives it may be something else that is escaping our vision.

May our tears of laughter, at the talking donkey, cleanse our eyes, so that they will be open to seeing the important things that are right in front of our eyes.