Parsha Balak - Delivered 17 Tammuz 5776/July 23, 2016 at Congregation Netivot Shalom, in Berkeley, California
Who here has been riding their donkey, when suddenly, the donkey stops dead in the road. You give the donkey a kick, and she won’t walk forward. You get a little agitated, and start yelling at her to move. You have somewhere to go! You start beating her with a crop, and she still won’t move. Finally, as you’re beating and beating your donkey, she opens her mouth and says “Don’t you see the angel of G!d standing with a flaming sword in front of me?” Come on, raise your hand.
A few people. I don’t believe the rest of you one bit. Who has had in their eyes a vision of how the world is, and you try to live in this vision, to live this world, and G!d says “No.” And you try to make it work, and G!d says “no.” And you try and you try, and you’re really beating the donkey by now, because this is how the world is, dang it, and you can’t see any other way, and G!d says, “NO”. Then you open your eyes, and you see that the world isn’t at all how you thought, and the way you are going is the path of failure, or misery, or souldeath or destruction, or sin, or death, and you can’t go that way. Until now, though, your eyes haven’t been able to see the world as it is, and you’ve been beating the donkey for a long, long time.
I’m guessing more of you can relate to the story of Balaam and his donkey now. I know I can. In my life, at least, when I’ve been there, beating that donkey, trying to make the world as I expect it to be, I’m Balaam, but I’m also the donkey. It’s usually me that I’m beating into trying to fit an expectation of how the world and who I am, that just isn’t real.
When I say, “the way you think the world is”, I’m not talking about the holy work of dreaming a better world, and working to make it so. That’s the work of prophets, and visionaries, and all of our jobs, to dream a better world. What I’m talking about is the opposite.
Beating the donkey is insisting that we live in a post-race society, thinking “We cured racism already, and I will keep beating this donkey of a post-race society and refuse to open my eyes to the reality of our deeply racist society and how much work there is to do to address it”. Beating the donkey is insisting that diversity in tech is a pipeline problem, that if we just train more girls and kids of color to code, it will be fixed, and ignoring the fact that there are tons of women and genderqueer folks and queer folks and people of color who graduate in Computer Science, but they often don’t get hired, and when they do, they leave the industry at a hugely high rate than straight, cis, white men. Beating the donkey is saying “Well, domestic abuse doesn’t happen here in the Jewish community. That’s only for the goyim”.
For some of us, beating the donkey is more personal. We beat our souls, too convinced that if we just try hard enough, and we beat ourselves into submission enough, we’ll be happy in our job or our relationship or we’ll be straight or cis or really, we don’t have a drinking problem, we’re just fine. When I convinced myself that I didn’t care if the world saw me as straight, that was beating a donkey. (I’m bisexual. Being happily married to a man doesn’t change my queer identity. The closet hurts folks in it, and it hurts kids who are left with no role model. Being out and open and honest is important). When I went to nursing school, that was beating a donkey. (Have you SEEN me turn green when someone discusses the most minor medical thing ever? I was not perceiving reality there.)
There are all sorts of donkeys, and usually, when we’re beating the donkey, we’re beating either ourselves or other people in the delusion that the world is how we think it is, when that has nothing to do with reality.
In Pirkei Avot (5:6), it is said Ten things were created on the eve of the [first] Shabbat at twilight. And these are they: The mouth of the earth that swallowed Korach; and the mouth of the well that accompanied the Israelites in the wilderness and the mouth of the donkey that spoke to Balaam; and the rainbow that served as a covenant after the flood; and the manna; and the staff of Moshe; and the shamir (the worm that helped build the Temple without metal tools); and the letters of the Ten Commandments; and the writing of the Ten Commandments; and the tablets of the Ten Commandments. And some say, also the destructive spirits, and the burial place of Moshe Rabbeinu, and the ram of Avraham Avinu. And some say, also the original tongs, for tongs are made with tongs.
What does it mean, for the donkey to be created at twilight before the first shabbat? First, what does it mean for these things to be created at twilight? What does this list have in common? They are bits of creation that don’t fit the usual rules. They have some aspect of magic to them. How did the well follow the Israelites? What was the manna and where did it come from? And how can the donkey talk? They are outside our usual experience of the world, a mystery, things set aside at the beginning of time for a future moment when they will be badly needed.
What is Balaam’s donkey doing in this list? Pirkei Avot doesn’t actually say that the donkey was created at this first pre-shabbat twilight. It says וּפִי הָאָתוֹן, the MOUTH of the donkey. What about the rest of the donkey? Was there just a talking mouth sitting round in whatever storage closet G!d stored these special creations from the beginning of time until they were needed? How creepy. How did the mouth attach to the donkey? Was it when she was born? Or when G!d opened her mouth, did G!d switch out her mouth for the beginning-of-time mouth?
Sometimes, I wonder whether asking these questions is actually healthy. However, my husband suggested that there was a very good reason just the mouth of the donkey was created at the first shabbat. If we look at the donkey symbolically, she is the quiet voice that opens our eyes to the way the world really is. When we can no longer persist in beating the donkey, in suppressing the part of ourself that knows that the world is not how we want it to be, whether personally or societally, the donkey’s mouth, created at the beginning of time, is ready. It would be rather a feat for G!d to interpose the whole donkey into the scene any time someone needed their eyes opened to reality. Can you imagine? You’re at work, persisting in your beleif that this job is okay, it’s not awful, you don’t need to take a scary leap to something else, and all of the sudden there’s a donkey in your office! However, only the mouth of the donkey were created at the beginning of time, and the donkey’s mouth can always carry the voice. The donkey’s mouth might be the quiet voice within, or perhaps it is the voice of a friend, or of a stranger, or perhaps, a group of people, so many people sharing their experiences that you can no longer persist in drowning out their voices, but it is the voice which opens your eyes. G!d knew that one day, the donkey’s mouth would be needed again to say, “An angel of G!d stands before you with a flaming sword, prepared to kill you if you continue. You cannot go this way that you have been attempting.”
I don’t have advice on how you can realize you’re beating a donkey. I don’t have advice on how to cope when you open your eyes and discover an angel with a flaming sword barring your way. It’s going to hurt. What this parshah has to teach us, however, is that when the donkey’s mouth speaks through time, and tells us the world isn’t how we thought, to open our eyes. That’s the first step. Bilaam opened his eyes, and saw the angel barring his way.
Shabbat shalom.