Parashat Balak

Science can help us to 'see' the majesty of all creation before which we can still stand in spiritual awe.'

Smart-ass talking donkeys may remind us more of the Shrek movie franchise than the Torah, but this week's portion of Balak features the original talking ass! This is the most famous episode found in our parasha named after Balak, king of Moab, who enlists the 'prophet' Balaam (בלעם Bilaam in Hebrew) to curse the Israelites. After much negotiation, Balaam sets off, but an angel of God prevents them from continuing on their journey. The ass sees the angel- while Balaam is blind to what is going on until his eyes are opened by God. This scene is comic -- a professional 'seer' (supposedly the best in the biz) cannot even see what his normally 'dumb' animal can perceive. Although the pun only works in English- by making the ass 'see' and 'speak' it is not 'dumb' in both senses of the word! It is the prophet Balaam who is dumb! A previous column explored the meaning of this story- with the conclusion that much like Aesop's fables are not historically accurate, but certainly true, the details of the Torah's stories may not be true, the eternal message is True with a capital 'T'.

Talking donkeys do belong in the world of fiction, not fact, and traditional commentators struggle with this breach of natural law. Of course, on the one hand, if God created the world, then why can't God create a talking animal? On the other hand, we believe the world operates according to certain principles that cannot be violated on a whim- even by God. The Midrash suggests that the mouth of Balaam's ass (along with the mouth of the well from last week and several other similar miraculous items) were all created before the conclusion of the first seven days of creation. In other words, although it seems that these items violate Nature, they were actually 'built in' to the fabric of the universe, and were part of the original cosmic plan.

The later, rational commentators used another approach: Maimonides suggests this was a dream. As evidence, they point out that Balaam doesn't seem a bit surprised at having a conversation with his donkey, as if this were a regular occurence! Luzzatto believes that Balaam simply understood his donkey's braying as if he were talking. After all, animals do communicate- and we don't have to understand that the donkey actually used human speech. The Hertz chumash concludes, "those who do not deem any of the above interpretations acceptable, should feel too deeply the essential veracity of the story to be troubled overmuch with minute questions about its details." Quoting Josephus, he adds, "in regard to its narrative, readers are free to think what they please." The real miracle was not so much in the ass 'speaking' as it was in the ass 'seeing.'

Of course, fundamentalists (of all religions) are loathe to concede that the Biblical text includes metaphor, or that problematic stories (e.g. Jonah and the Big Fish) are simply visions, dreams, or literary devices. Liberal proponents of religion have no problem reconciling the Creation story with the latest scientific estimates that the universe is around 14 billion years old (give or take a billion). Even many proponents of 'Intelligent Design' who reject Darwinian evolution admit to this age and reject the more fundamentalist position of the vocal religious Young Earth Creationists. But the YECs are not giving up without a fight; a recent, state of the art multimedia museum complex called the Creation Museum uses the latest in interactive technology to deliver the message that humans co-existed with dinosaurs, the world is about 6000 years old and the world created by God (as described in Genesis) is the world today.

However, a slew of recent books like Without God, The God Delusion, God is not Great, and How Religion Poisons Everything have all appeared on best seller lists, and the authors (Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens) attack what they see as irrational religious practices and superstitious beliefs. Their assault can be boiled down to two separate arguments. First, religious bigotry and prejudice is responsible for religious crimes against humanity. The second argument is that religious literalists actually are trying to subvert science and human reason. Liberal religion (not vociferously enough) tries to distance itself from both these accusations. It tries to reconcile science with religion, and when the two clash, liberal religion tends to come down on the side of science.

Unfortunately, we havesn't yet found enough articulate, well-thought out middle ground. Even the head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins, a religious Christian, is not successful in his book The Language of God which does little more than repeat the old attempts to prove the existence of God and render the unscientific bits of the Bible as poetry and allegory, and insist that the beauty and complexity of the universe convinces him of a God (and a Christian one, at that).

Those in the liberal camp trying to harmonize science and religion are fond of quoting Einstein: "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind," but his position was in fact much less positive: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly" and "I don’t try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."
And one more: "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion."

Einstein cautions us that religion without science is blind. Instead, when religion embraces science we can have the message of Balaam without a literal talking donkey. As Carl Sagan has suggested in his book, Pale Blue Dot:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is much better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander more subtle, more elegant? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Are religious followers blind as Balaam? Or are atheists blind to spiritiuality? Balaam is a symbol of not seeing the 'truth' before your eyes. But what is true? Is the angel of Adonai standing before us, and is it the atheist who is 'blind' to God's messenger, or is it the religious believer who is 'blind' to the evidence of science in his/her insistence that the donkey is actually talking?

Too often our religion is hijacked by extremists and zealots. At the other extreme, the secular sciences leave us cold and alone. What Dawkins and his cronies don't appreciate is that humans want to live their lives with meaning, and science is still unable, on its own, to provide a narrative that answers the big questions that in fact, by definition, it cannot ask: 'Why are we here?' or 'How should we live?'

But science can help us to 'see' by revealing the intricacies of the universe and the majesty of all creation before which we can still stand in spiritual awe.

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