RE'IYAH

This week's Torah portion, Chukat-Balak, contains one of the Torah's most curious scenes.

Three times Balaam's donkey refuses to move because she sees an angel standing in the road. Three times Balaam grows frustrated and strikes her. From Balaam's perspective, the donkey is the obstacle.

Only afterward does God open Balaam's eyes, and he realizes that the donkey had seen the truth all along.

This story has always seemed a little unsettling.

Balaam isn't blind because he lacks intelligence. He isn't blind because he lacks experience or status. In fact, he possesses all of those things. Yet he still fails to see what is standing directly in front of him.

Perhaps that's why this story has endured for so many generations. It isn't really about a prophet and a donkey. It's about us.

Our tradition has a beautiful word for this kind of seeing: re'iyah (רְאִיָּה). It is more than eyesight. It is the ability to perceive, to notice, to recognize another person as they truly are.

That kind of seeing is harder than we imagine.

The people we know best are often the people we see least clearly.

We assume we know our spouse because we've shared years together. We assume we know our children because we watched them grow up. We assume we know our friends because we've heard their stories before. We assume we know the people who sit across the sanctuary from us every Shabbat because we've worshipped beside them for years.

Without realizing it, we begin relating not to the person standing before us today, but to the story we have carried about them.

Hillel understood this temptation. He taught:

"Do not judge your fellow until you have reached their place." (Pirkei Avot 2:4)

We usually understand those words to mean, "Don't judge someone until you've walked in their shoes." That is certainly true.

But perhaps they also invite us to do something wonderfully concrete.

Go to their place. Sit at their kitchen table. Share a meal. Have a cup of coffee. Take a walk. Ask one more question than you normally would.

You may discover that the person you thought you knew has become someone new.

Before Balaam could continue on his journey, God had to open his eyes to what had been standing before him all along.

Perhaps that is the Torah's invitation this week. To practice re'iyah. To become curious again. To resist the temptation to believe we already know one another.

And to remember that every person we meet is more than the story we have already written about them.

May God open our eyes—not only to the extraordinary moments that appear in our lives, but also to the extraordinary people who have been walking beside us all along.

,שבת שלום

Student Rabbi Ben