Torah For Donkeys

While the founding and associate rabbis are afar, R'Ari and Eli Newell will d'var — and donkeys will preach, too! What wisdom can we glean from looking at the Torah through a multitude of unlikely lenses, even that of a donkey?

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

As many commentators have written, There is no doubt that the donkey is really the star of this Torah portion for this week, the ancient rabbis wrote that the donkey speaking mouth was an exception in nature, having been created in the final moments of the first week of creation, they said 10 Things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight during the creation week. One was the rainbow that would be featured in Noah's Ark. One was Moses, his staff, the 10 commandments, the RAM for the binding of Isaac, and the mouth of the donkey, among other supernatural things that would appear in the Torah. Rabbi Lisa grashow, a Canadian reformed Rabbi wrote for the donkey to have a voice transforms power dynamics, as much as when God turns curses into blessings. A Barbanell, a Portuguese 15th century commentator suggests that the donkey was elevated after this episode. He wrote, in fact, her animal nature died, and she was recreated as a human being and did not remain a donkey. B'nai Lappi, the Rocha, Shiva founder of spara, whose mission is to empower queer and trans people to expand Torah and tradition through spiritual through the spiritual practice of Talmud, who many people know and study with in, in the Mishkan community has posed the question, what if donkeys read the Torah? If you think about it, if donkeys read the Torah, they would look at all of the donkey stories. They would remember those stories. They would love the donkey stories because we remember and resonate with stories about us or related to us. And there are surprisingly lots of mentions of donkeys in the Bible. Jewish educator in Hillel professional Daniel Epstein wrote in a DEVAR Torah. Avraham, Abraham writes a donkey, David rides a donkey, the Messiah is going to come in on a donkey. It's very fascinating to think about the role that the donkey plays, we see a lesson that leaders are supposed to be humble. Rabbi Epstein writes that another deep lesson from the donkey stories is that we need to read Torah, from the view of the donkey, or from the view of an archer, or from a feminist view, or from the view of the streams, or from the view of the mountains. Through all of these different views, we are able to get a larger picture of Torah. And that's what Emma did. When we talked about how cinematic this ancient donkey story is, she immediately thought about turning it into this little scene. And her mind went to a modern setting school. Because that's what they're focused on. And that's what B mitzvah students are thinking about. It makes sense. She found herself in Torah and went from there. And that's our sacred responsibility with our with this next generation with our be mitzvah students to try to share Torah in a way that speaks to their sensibilities, their interests, their proclivities. The Midrash tells us that the layers of Torah are so profound, and multifaceted that there are seven D valid ways or perspectives of understanding our sacred scroll, and 70 was the number of infinity for our rabbis. We call this the seven D faces of Torah. There are layers upon layers in each verse, we can look at the white space between the letters in our scroll, we can look at the shape of each letter, and form our own ideas, we can look at the literal meaning of the words, we can look for metaphor and spiritual lessons, we could add up the numerical value of each Hebrew letter in each word and make connections. My prayer for all of us is that as we make time in our schedules for Torah study, that we look for the donkeys look for what stands out to you wonder, look stuff up. read lots of interpretations and commentaries, use the apps of faria which is absolutely amazing. Start with yourself, and then take all of the other lenses to the text, take a queer lens and use Torah queries, take a feminist lens and use the women's Torah commentary. Take a historical view. As Ben Bach Bach said, impure k a vote, keep turning it and turning it for everything is in it. Shabbat shalom.

Thank you for sharing Torah with us Rabbi era. We are just entering the homestretch of our service. And we want to turn to page 108. Where we're going to do the only new in just a moment. But I want to share a little bit of resonance around. One of the things that our RB mitzvah Emma taught us today, which is this idea of turning something corseted into something worth blessing and something beautiful. And I think it's really a story about what happens when you remove the blinders and the tunnel vision that might put us psychologically into meets regime into a narrow place, a narrow mindset, and what's possible when you get out of that narrowness. In the liturgy for all Ainu there is just a line that we say every day, sometimes multiple times a day if you're if you're diverting the you know, the traditional kava and the structure of our service, little cane Olam, them all hoots Shaddai you might recognize the root or the shortish Latakia Tikun tikun olam has a value and an idea that many of us grew up with and the Jewish community. And it translates loosely to repair or fix or mend or heal. And I think sometimes when you think about the mandate of tikun olam of repairing the world, especially when the world feels really in need of repair, it can be a little overwhelming, and sometimes can have the opposite effect of almost numbing us into inaction. And there's actually a rabbinic teaching by the mystics, about the translation of the world the word Lytec Kane, that it doesn't just mean to heal or to repair to fix, but it actually means to beautify, to beautify and to adorn. And it takes this really amazing concept that the aesthetic of repair is something that we can be attuned to. And so I really, just personally, as a lifelong artist, really identify with what Emma has done in taking the story, and finding a creative channel and a creative outlet to share it with the group because in effect, art is that beautification of the world and the healing of the world, through through beauty and through poetry. And that's just an intention that I want to offer us. That we actually can heal the world through, beautifying it and Adorning it. And we do that through our teaching and through art and through our wisdom that we share, and really, really proud to be part of a collective and a community that shares that so willingly and with so much celebration