Rabbi's Chayva's Chat

Note: There will be no Dispatch Message from Rabbi Chayva next week.

What do Mah Tovu and talking donkeys have in common? They both appear in Parshat Balak!

Balak is a Torah portion made for Pixar. An evil king (the eponymous Balak) summons a good-hearted wizard, Bilam, from his home to curse the Israelite people as they try to cross his land. Bilam is reluctant, but after significant pressure, he acquiesces and hops on his donkey to ride to Balak’s side overlooking the Israelite camp.

Not long into the ride, Bilam’s donkey suddenly starts veering toward the wall and crushes his leg into the fence. Furious, Bilam hits his donkey, trying to correct the course and free his leg. She turns her head to look at him in the saddle and says, “What have I done to you? Haven’t I been good all this time? Why are you punishing me?” Suddenly, Bilam can see what the donkey has already seen: an angel with a flaming sword blocking the way! (I imagine a scene as in Lord of the Rings when Gandalf bellows, “None shall pass!”)

The angel lets Bilam go after chastising him for beating his donkey, and eventually Bilam makes it to King Balak, who is practically tapping his foot in impatience. Bilam, ready for the gig, makes a set of altars for sacrifices so that God will curse the Israelites. Each time he starts to utter the curses, though, he can only speak words of blessings about them. Finally, on the third attempt, he gives us those words that we sing so often: Mah tovu ohalecha, Ya’akov; mishkenotecha, Yisrael. “How good are your tents, Nation of Jacob; your dwelling places, Nation of Israel.” (Numbers 24:5)

The 16th-century Italian rabbi and physician Ovadia Sforno says that “ohalecha” refers to the people’s homes, and “mishkenotecha” encompasses all the synagogues of the Diaspora. But he doesn’t say (and neither do many of the major commentators) what it means that our homes and synagogues be good.

I have been thinking about what makes a building good for all those who enter it this month, because July is Disability Pride Month, in honor of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law on July 26, 1990. Disability Pride Month helps us remember that one in four American adults live with a disability, whether or not they identify as disabled. After all, who counts as disabled is a social construct. In an episode I recommend of the podcast “Ologies,” Sociologist Guinevere Chambers points out, “Many folks wearing hearing aids might be considered to have a sensory disability, but so many of us are out wearing glasses for correcting our vision [and that’s] not received the same way socially.”

There’s a common trope in the disability community: everyone is only temporarily abled. We can affect change, whether for ourselves or others, and whether physical challenges are temporary or long-lasting. We can advocate that buildings be installed with elevators, which is an increasingly rare practice. We can study the new terrain of the field of disability and accessibility research. We can make our synagogues and dwelling places easier to enter and navigate, both physically and emotionally.

Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, Ph.D., published a book last year that we need to read. It’s called Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. I’ll conclude with excerpts from her final chapter:

Several years ago, I was sitting in synagogue one Shavuot morning, listening to the reader chant the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was part of the ragged group of elites and aristocrats the Babylonian general forced into exile. I imagine Ezekiel walking beside the other captives, the memory of that smoke stinging his face like shame. Zeke is twenty-five years old, his world turned to ash. By the banks of the Kebar River, in the land now called Iraq, he opens up to prophecy. 

Ezekiel sees his God. He sees God as a radiant fire, borne on a vast chariot, lifted up by four angelic creatures. The chariot itself is barely described, save for one extraordinary feature: its vast, vibrant wheels. I felt the recognition shiver down my bones. God has wheels.

God on Wheels puts a striking twist on a familiar religious claim, the claim that humans are all created in the image of God, b’tselem Elohim.

And God blessed them. And God saw all of God’s creation, and how truly good they all were.

May we fulfill Bilam’s blessing that our tents, our synagogues, our homes, and our cities be good to all who enter them.