SHEMOS

Where’s Your Donkey?

There’s always been a tension between the divine and the profane; the spiritual and the material.

Are they meant to be in a state of perennial conflict? Can there – and should there- be harmony between the body and the spirit?

What is the Torah’s fascination with donkeys? Why does the Torah accord such prominence to the donkey, which among animals that carry humans is the slowest and least intelligent? A donkey is meant to bear burdens, not people. Why, then, do important figures travel on a donkey rather than on a more dignified animal such as a horse or a camel? Avraham goes to the Akedah on a donkey; Yosef’s brothers travel on donkeys; Moshe places his wife and sons on a donkey; and, of course, Moshiach is destined to be revealed as “poor and riding on a

donkey.”