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July 11, 2025 - 16 Tamuz 5785
Dear Friends, Tomorrow morning, we will hold our rescheduled Holocaust remembrance with Dr. Victor Borden, the son of Holocaust survivors. Dr. Borden will join me for a Torah-side chat and we will hear about his parent's story of surviving Jewish persecution in Poland under Nazi occupation and in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Beth Gerson & David Isaak will also tell us about the virtual museum tour they have created and how it will extend the Fort Lee Holocaust Museum beyond the walls of the synagogue. We would also like to thank Bruce Minkoff for sponsoring tomorrow’s Kiddush luncheon in honor & memory of his late father. Please join us tomorrow morning for our Shabbat services and Holocaust remembrance, but stick around for a lovely and meaningful Kiddush! The Sages in Pirke Avot ask rhetorically, "Who is wise?" They answer that the wise person is one Ha-lomed Mikol Adam, "who learns something from every person." The concept, of course, is of having open eyes, ears, minds, and hearts to glean knowledge from everyone with whom you have an encounter, not just in our books and classroom learning, but in our daily happenings: in people we pass on the street, the barista at the coffee shop or register clerk at the supermarket. Everywhere we go, no matter who is there, we have an opportunity to connect, and to learn something. But what about learning from animals? While the passage above specifically mentions only human beings, perhaps we can learn something even from our encounters with God's animals. This week's portion, Parashat Balak, gives us a cartoonish and humorous, yet potentially profound, exchange between a man and his donkey. Balak, for whom the portion is named, is the King of Moab, who is jealous of and threatened by the burgeoning Israelite nation. Balak seeks to hire Balaam to pronounce curses on the Israelites, as Balaam is known for the effect of his words - for good and for bad - on whomever is their intended target. At first, God warns Balaam not to go with Balak's dignitaries, sent to woo him to their cause of cursing Israel. When Balak brings the full-court press, and sends even more impressive dignitaries with even more lavish gifts, God says, "If these personages have come to invite you, you may go with them. But whatever I command you, that you shall do." While God seems to allow Balaam's passage, God is still upset the next morning when Balaam saddles his trusted donkey and sets off on this journey to curse Israel. In God's anger, we read, "An angel of the Eternal stood planted in [Balaam's] way as an adversary." The first problem is Balaam doesn't see the angel. The second problem is that the donkey does. In the donkey's efforts to evade the mysterious angel, Balaam becomes increasingly frustrated, and in fact beats the donkey multiple times. Finally, the donkey speaks to Balaam: '"What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times?" Balaam said to the ass, "You have made a mockery of me! If I had a sword with me, I'd kill you!" The ass said to Balaam, "Look, I am the ass that you have been riding all along until this day! Have I been in the habit of doing thus to you?" “Then the Eternal uncovered Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the Eternal standing in the way, his drawn sword in his hand; thereupon he bowed right down to the ground.” Sometimes, it seems, even learning from our fellow human beings isn't enough. Sometimes, we can learn to open our eyes and minds even more than usual, through encounters with other living creatures, or even inanimate objects! Learning, our tradition says, is about the person walking through the world and how they do so, even more than the potential material surrounding them. We tend to see what we expect to see, what our mind perceives as reality, often at the expense of what's actually in front of us. As Del the Funky Homosapien once rapped, "You don't see with your eyes. You perceive with your mind." But our eyes are there, along with all of our senses, as gifts to us, to use and gather and learn and grow. In this portion, we learn this important lesson through humor and irony. Balaam ridicules his donkey for seeing what he is unable to. Essentially, despite appearances otherwise, Balaam is the donkey, and the donkey is the visionary. As Jewish Study Bible, the Torah commentary and annotated edition, points out, "It is the ass that sees what the seer cannot." May we learn to not be so arrogant as Balaam, thinking that what we see is all there is to see. May we learn that knowledge and wisdom are always around us, ready to be taken in by all who seek and are open to them. And may we remember the power of language and the ability of our words to create worlds, sustain them, or destroy them. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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