Netvort Parshas Balak 5770: Speak Up
By Rabbi Joshua (audibly known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

Bilaam rides on his 'ason,' or she-donkey, preparing to curse the Jewish people and then sees a sword-bearing angel of God blocking its way, and veers off the road. Bilaam then strikes it and continues on his way. This happens a second time, and Bilaam again hits his animal and continues on. The third time the she-donkey sees the angel; she crouches beneath Bilaam, who again hits her. God then gives her the ability to speak, and she asks Bilaam why he hit her three times. Bilaam explains his actions, and the she-donkey protests that she has always been loyal to him, and he should have realized that something was wrong, and not taken out his frustrations on her. Suddenly, the angel of God appears to Bilaam, explains what had happened, and tells him that had the animal not veered from the road, he would have killed Bilaam and let the animal stay alive. Bilaam responds that if what he was on his way to do was wrong, he would go back home. The angel tells him to continue on his way, but to take care and only say that which is placed in his mouth to say.

The Mishnah in Avos says that the ability of the she-donkey to speak was one of the ten miracles created by God during the six days of creation. The Ralbag and other Jewish philosophers point out that God only creates a miracle if there is a need for it, to teach an important lesson. What, then, was the lesson taught by this particular miracle? The Ramban says that the message to Bilaam was that it is God who enables man to speak, and He can just as well enable a dumb animal to speak. This was the same message that God gave to Moshe when he initially turned down God's charge to lead the Jews out of Egypt, saying that he was not a man of words. Perhaps this is why the Talmud in Bava Basra (14b) tells us that Moshe wrote his own book, and the section of Bilaam. Why is the section of Bilaam singled out as being written by Moshe? Didn't the Talmud just tell us that Moshe wrote his book, meaning, the five books of the Torah, which include the book of Bilaam? Many answers have been given to this question (see the commentary of Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin to the Torah for an important halachic explanation) but perhaps we can suggest that this section of the Torah had an important message for Moshe, as well, and so he had a special connection with it.

Perhaps we can suggest another explanation of the need for the miracle of the speaking she-donkey. The rabbis tell us that the 'ason' was able to perceive the angel when Bilaam was not. The idea here may be that sometimes a human being can be so morally degraded that he has a lower sense of morality than an animal. This idea is starkly brought out by a chilling story related by Martin Gilbert in his book The Holocaust. He writes that the Nazis would station soldiers with sniffing dogs at the disembarking point of the trains bringing Jews to Auschwitz in case some people tried to escape after getting off the train. Once a couple left their baby near a tree, hoping someone would see him, have mercy and save him. One dog saw the baby, and went over and started licking it. When its master saw this, he started to brutally kick the dog for having mercy on a Jew. The dog, thus, was more human, from a moral standpoint, then its master.

Rabbi Yehudah Amital, in his book Commitment and Complexity, writes that there was a popular saying among Jews in Eastern Europe, based on a prayer that is said each morning before the beginning of shacharis, or the morning service. The prayer begins with the statement, 'a person should always fear God in private and in public.' The opening words of this prayer, 'leolam yehei adam,' translate literally as 'a person should always be a man.' The popular saying was that a person should always be a 'mensch,' a human being, first, and then worry about his fear of God. This was, in essence, the message that the miracle of the talking she-donkey was meant to convey to Bilaam. By trying to curse the Jewish people and thereby get God to destroy an entire nation of men, women and children, was ignoring this lesson, and showing that he had sunk below the level of an animal.

Rabbi Avraham Aharon Yudelevitch, in his work Darash Av to parshas Shemos, notes that one of Moshe's names was Tuviah, which consists of the  word tov, meaning 'good,' and a two letter name of God. The composite nature of this name implies that Moshe first demonstrated his commitment to basic morality, when he saved, among others, the daughters of Yisro from persecution, and later developed as a prophet. Perhaps it is in this sense that the Talmud tells us that Moshe wrote the section on Bilaam, since his own life reflected the lesson that the miracle of the she-donkey's speech, as recorded in this section, was meant to teach.


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