Bad Choice Warning System (Balak)

I had a not very profound thought as I was reading this week’s parsha, Parashat Balak. Here it is: I want a donkey like Balaam’s donkey!

Ok I don’t really want a donkey – I don’t think Outremont, my municipality within Montreal, would allow that sort of pet. But I would certainly love an app like Balaam’s donkey. It could be known as a bad choice early warning detection system. Let’s be honest, most of us spend at least some time in our lives thinking about whether certain events are meant to be a message. Late for that flight that seemed critical ... maybe it's a message that God doesn’t want me at that meeting or maybe it’s a sign that I need to learn better time management…hmmm. But really, what most people want is for a direct sign, something obvious and in-your-face. Like Balaam’s talking donkey.

It is easy to read the parsha and wonder why Balaam was so oblivious? (It’s so good to be the reader and know things he doesn’t know!) God had made it pretty clear that He wasn’t terribly supportive of Balaam’s new employer and the job for which he was hired. When the donkey strayed from her path not once, but multiple times, perhaps something should have clicked in Balaam’s mind. But really, it is human nature to ignore things we don’t want to be true, to turn away from things that appear to be leading us away from our self-defined goals.

Balaam’s talking donkey has always been a rather perplexing set of verses. Blasphemous as it may sound, it reads like a children’s story since, duh, animals don’t talk. The snake in Bereishis ... ok, that was way back at the beginning of the world, but by Balaam’s time the distinction between talking humans and animals was pretty clear. And since God is omniscient, why would He want this little section recorded in this way, knowing, as He must, that such fable-like verses could be used to scorn the Torah in an age where faith is often under fire?

Since there must be a lesson to take from the inclusion of Balaam’s talking donkey, perhaps what we can learn here are two sides of the same coin. Don’t be a Balaam and get angry at the messenger rather than absorb the message. And, at the same time, be a donkey and try to say something if you worry that a friend is involved in something that is certain to lead to their inevitable downfall.

For all that Balaam refused to turn away from the task of cursing Bnei Yisrael, even when Divine deterants were thrown at him, he failed in his mission. The path that God wants will always prevail, it just becomes a question of the cost to those who go with His flow or those who go with their own.