This Shabbat, we will read Parashat Balak, which features—among other things—a talking donkey. According to rabbinic legend, that donkey was one of ten magical items created at twilight before the first Shabbat. For some summer fun this week, we’ll explore some of those symbols and what they might teach us today.
Anyone who has spoken to me over the course of this pandemic could probably tell you that I am obsessed with my local Buy Nothing group. Founded on Bainbridge Island, WA (where I did a student pulpit during rabbinical school—though that fact is unrelated), Buy Nothing groups are hyperlocal communities built on the concept of a barter economy. Nothing can be purchased or sold; the gifts offered must be of your own abundance. Participants can offer gifts of time or skill, such as an offer to run an errand for someone who might be homebound, or offer their expertise in interior design. And, most commonly, people offer material gifts—the stuff we accumulate that we no longer need or want.
Truly, the matches I have seen made between seekers and givers have been miraculous; time and again, someone looking for what seems like the most random knick knack or appliance finds someone in the group who is giving away exactly that. Part and parcel of the abundance mentality requires us to have faith that we will have what we need, when we need it.
Professor Aaron Koller writes:
Once the week of creation ended, the world was set, unchangeable. The reality that existed when Sabbath began would have to persist for eternity. So if there was anything that would later need to be changed, God would need to “create” it before Sabbath. At twilight, we find God rapidly creating ten things that need to be in place for later in history.
Among those ten things is the mouth of the donkey who will speak this Shabbat during services, a supernatural being creating a miraculous moment. Here, according to rabbinic tradition, God plans ahead knowing that the story will need this donkey. More so, this rabbinic teaching suggests that God is trying to create a world of abundance, a world we can occupy where everything is ready to go, waiting for us for the moment we need it.
Perhaps that is why I love the Buy Nothing concept, and the group itself, so much. It too creates a world of abundance, but that abundance depends on us—on humanity—and on our willingness to share, to be in relationship, and to create the miraculous for one another.
— Rabbi Sari Laufer