Mouth of the Donkey: Re-imagining Biblical Animals

Mouth of the Donkey Re-imagining Biblical Animals Laura Duhan-Kaplan MOUTH OF THE DONKEY Re-imagining Biblical Animals Copyright © 2021 Laura Duhan-Kaplan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401. Cascade Books An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3 Eugene, OR 97401 www.wipfandstock.com paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-5905-8 hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-5906-5 ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-5907-2 Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Names: Kaplan, Laura Duhan, author. Title: Mouth of the donkey : re-imagining biblical animals / Laura DuhanKaplan. Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021 | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: isbn 978-1-7252-5905-8 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-7252-5906-5 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-7252-5907-2 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Animals in the Bible | Nature in the Bible | Spiritual life—Judaism | Jewish way of life | Natural history in the Bible | Zoology—Palestine Classification: BS663 K284 2021 (paperback) | BS663 (ebook) 04/06/21 “Magic Words” reprinted courtesy of Edward Field. Images: “The Peaceable Kingdom” reprinted courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Contents Acknowledgements | ix Humans: Imagining Consciousness, Interpreting Bible | 1 Sheep: Living Well on the Land | 12 Donkey: Spiritual Guide | 23 Corvid: Friend and Scout | 32 Snake: A Different Way of Life | 39 Eagle: Metaphor and Spiritual Perception | 49 Locust: Warning in the Mirror | 59 Wolf and Lamb Together: Peace Is Possible | 67 Bibliography | 77 Humans Imagining Consciousness, Interpreting Bible We’re high above the forest on the Skyline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. The trail’s name makes it sound like a route for advanced tundra hikers. But it’s actually an easy trail through the woods. A popular, family-friendly walk to a clearing with a spectacular view. The resident moose are quite used to families. The moose lounge in little meadows near the trail and don’t seem to mind posing for photos. Most people walk by them respectfully, gawking but talking in whispers. Except, of course, young children. They’re pretty loud. And thus, I get to overhear an extraordinary conversation between a thoughtful six-year-old and his mother. “Mom,” the little boy says, “What are deer good for?” “Well,” Mom replies, “They eat leaves and bark in the forest, and . . . um . . . they eat, and that . . . um . . . helps keep the forest healthy. And they . . . um . . . provide food for hunters. And they . . . um . . . live in groups and they’re good to each other.” “Do deer know that they’re good?” “No,” says Mom. “They don’t know they’re good. They don’t have higher intelligence like human intelligence. They don’t have higher judgment like we do. They have a different kind of judgment, like . . . um . . . judgment about when there’s danger. It’s . . . um . . . like the book of . . . um . . . Genesis says. It says, ‘God saw that it was . . . .’” She waits for her child to fill in the blank. 1 Mouth of the Donkey He says, “Um . . .” “It was good,” she says. “Everything God created is good.” Technically, I’ve dedicated this book to my own mom. But I also dedicate it to this mom. Because look how awesome she is! Her child is asking questions with the persistence of a two-yearold. But they’re big, metaphysical questions. Yet she takes each question seriously, answering it exactly as the child asks it. She considers her answers carefully, pausing to think as she speaks. Clearly she wants to teach about ecosystems, how each plant and animal has an important place. Deer, she believes, have an intelligence well-suited to their way of life. Because they live in families, they even love one another. They don’t have “higher” human intelligence—abstract thought and self-awareness—but that doesn’t make them unimportant. Because everything God created is good. And she wants her child to share her wonder at the beauty of creation. And yet. She hasn’t a clue what deer know about themselves.1 But she papers it over with platitudes about human superiority. And when she realizes she is out of her depth, she quotes the Bible. As if it’s the ultimate clear answer that resolves all ambiguity. So, this book is a bit of a response to her. A counterpoint, so to speak, with some different views on animal intelligence, God’s creation, and the clarity of the Bible. A new trail through the old woods, that, in the words of William J. J. Gordon, “makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar.”2 We won’t see moose lounging by this trail. But we will see humans who want to shed their skin, like snake does. A crow who reports to Noah. Sheep who are indistinguishable from our ancestors. Locusts who are very much like the humans they terrorize. Donkeys who lead their riders in spiritual practice. Birds who bring us closer to the image of God. And, finally, cows and bears who understand social justice. But before we walk the trail, I’ll tell you about the roads not taken. And then, I’ll lay out some stepping-stones for the journey. 1. For a sense of the subjective lives of deer, see Thomas, The Hidden Life of Deer. 2. Gordon, Metaphorical Way of Learning and Knowing, 4. 2 Humans If you are an avid reader of books about animals, religion, and spirituality, you will want to know where in the field this one sits. (If you don’t, then skip ahead to the next paragraph.) Here, I don’t always walk in the wilderness, like author Gerald May does;3 dwell in a house of science, like Alexandra Horowitz does;4 see animals primarily as spiritual or psychological symbols, like Ted Andrews5 and James Hillman do;6 offer a comprehensive scholarly analysis like Ellen Davis7 and David Seidenberg8 do, or catalog every biblical animal, as Henry Baker Tristram does.9 Instead, I study more in the style of Ken Stone10 and Debbie Blue,11 reading selected animal stories carefully and creatively. Lived experience of the animals colors the reading, of course, though I don’t pursue it systematically like Elizabeth Marshall Thomas does.12 But I do bring and also glean philosophical and spiritual views, like David Abram,13 Annie Dillard,14 Vicki Hearne,15 and Robin Wall Kimmerer do.16 Of course, biblical stories about animals are not written by the animals themselves. Still, I try to listen carefully as the animals speak, and then apply their wisdom. I cannot promise you will find this book wise. But I do promise that you will find some genuinely new interpretations of the Bible’s animal stories. So, let’s walk together. 3. May, Wisdom of Wilderness. 4. Horowitz, Inside of a Dog. 5. Andrews, Animal-Wise. 6. Hillman, Animal Presences. 7. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture. 8. Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology. 9. Tristram, Natural History of the Bible. 10. Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies. 11. Blue, Consider the Birds. 12. Thomas, Hidden Life of Deer; Hidden Life of Dogs; Tribe of Tiger. 13. Abram, Spell of the Sensuous; Becoming Animal. 14. Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 15. Hearne, Adam’s Task. 16. Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass. 3 Mouth of the Donkey A Theology of Consciousness My late mother Ruthie started me on this path. When my brother and I were about ten years old, we wanted a dog. But Mom was dead-set against it. She worried that all the work would fall to her. We disagreed, of course. So, Dad settled the dispute. One morning he secretly took us to a pet store. We came home with a wire-haired fox terrier named Kellie. Mom, of course, fell deeply in love with Kellie. So, for the next forty years, she was never without a dog— or, more precisely, four or five of them. She developed a specialty in helping lost dogs, and ran an informal animal shelter in her tiny urban backyard. No neighbor ever complained, because Mom befriended all of them. She became a strong supporter of animal assistance organizations. She was not in favor of euthanizing pets, and she cared for every dog herself at home until its last breath. Mom liked to say that dogs have “humanity.” Dogs, too, have thoughts, feelings, plans, and hopes. So, we must treat them with respect. And, Mom believed, once you see this, you can’t unsee it. You’ll realize it’s true of all creatures. Mom handed this philosophy down to me. Because it seemed self-evident, I wondered why it wasn’t common knowledge. So, as I gradually became a philosopher, I wrestled with the question. When I was sixteen, I wrote about a logical contradiction. Humans believe they are animals. Many humans believe animals operate on mindless instinct. But they don’t believe they themselves operate on mindless instinct. There’s a contradiction here. But soon I realized there was no contradiction. Only a few false beliefs. A few overgeneralizations. Sometimes creatures, both human and non-human, act on instinct. And sometimes they pause to think things through. But what does that thinking look like? At university, I learned about Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. He said that language reflects a “form of life.” We notice things important to our survival. And speak about things 4 Humans important to our shared projects.17 Wittgenstein was talking about human society and language, but he helped me think about nonhumans, too. Other species also focus on what matters to them. Sometimes they notice things humans don’t. They think, feel, and communicate about things we don’t even know exist. In fact, they have senses we cannot even imagine. For example, humans have a sense of smell. But dogs have a sense of scent. Dog noses receive information that our noses don’t. And that information is the basis of all canine knowledge. “For dogs,” trainer Vicki Hearne says, “scenting is believing.”18 Of course! A creature’s body shapes its needs, its organs of perception, and its knowledge. Creatures experience themselves in ways their bodies allow. The old image of a hierarchy of intelligence with humans at the top now seems odd. We are skilled at our life, and other creatures are skilled at theirs. Later, in graduate school, I studied phenomenology. That is a fancy word for research into consciousness—how things seem to us. Philosophers understand that human consciousness isn’t simple. We’ve always got a lot going on. For example, we’re often seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, and remembering all at the same time. Each one of those processes puts a different spin on what’s happening around us. To sort them out, we have to learn new ways to pay attention to our experience. So we begin with a baby step— “bracketing off ” our “natural” attitude.19 Of course, I was intrigued by these ideas: there’s an objective world, but I’m experiencing it six different ways at once! And I’m only one person. What even is going on with other people nearby? Or with other creatures, whose seeing, feeling, and thinking are so different? Could I “bracket off ” my experience and try to receive theirs? Well, yes, I could, and in a very practical sense. I could become familiar with their form of life. And try to glimpse the world as they might see it. I could even do it without a biology degree and without leaving the city. Turns out, there’s a perfectly respectable name for someone who does 17. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 19, 23. 18. Hearne, Adam’s Task, 79–80. 19. Husserl, Ideas, 56–58. See also Duhan-Kaplan, “Edmund Husserl.” 5 Mouth of the Donkey this: urban naturalist.20 That’s me! I’m not a biologist, just a good neighbor. So, I did a little research into communication. Observe a creature’s form of life, discern its form of communication. That was my working hypothesis, anyway. So, I paid attention to my urban companions. And I bracketed off my everyday view of communication. I didn’t look specifically for sound, gesture, or expressions of feeling.21 Instead, I just watched animals interact. And, bit by bit, I began to learn their languages. Since then, I’ve conversed with cats by looking at things and then back at the cat. I’ve given information to wasps and hornets by making gestures. Spoken to crows with vocal clicks and clacks arranged in sentences. (Since I have a limited crow vocabulary, it’s a string of nonsense words, but they give me credit for trying.) And, oddest of all, I’ve befriended flies through telepathy.22 After all, sight, sound, thought, and movement are all wavelengths on which communication happens. Different creatures favor different wavelengths. A good neighbor pays attention and meets others halfway. It may sound a bit fantastical, but it’s really quite basic. In some worldviews, it’s simply a way of relating well to your environment.23 Eventually, I did translate my experience into theological language. In rabbinic seminary, I studied traditions of Jewish biblical interpretation. Also, I began to learn Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. Kabbalah is a diverse tradition, but it has some theological basics. God, it teaches, is like an infinite energy.24 And nothing exists outside of this energy.25 Our bodies are expressions of it. Our feelings, thoughts, and souls are, too. So is every creature’s body, and every 20. Haupt, Crow Planet, 37–62. 21. Expressions of feeling are noted as core to animal communication by Dean, “Theology, Friendship, and the Human Animal”; Schaefer, Religious Affects. 22. As taught in Boone, Kinship with All Life,145–48. 23. See, for example, the Anishnaabek concept of “master of relatedness” in Anderson, Life Stages of Native Women, citing McNally, Honouring Elders, 51–52. 24. Green, Ehyeh: Kabbalah for Tomorrow, Kindle. 25. Margaliot, Tiquney Hazohar, 57, 91b. 6 Humans creature’s consciousness. We just all vibrate at a slightly different frequency.26 So we all express a different facet of divine infinity. Thus, the more we grasp another species’ way of thinking, the more we know about God. Of course, I’m not the first person to imagine that all creatures are, to use biblical language, created in the image of God.27 Early rabbinic interpreters did the same. As they read Genesis, they asked questions. For example, they were puzzled when God said, “Let us create a human in our own image” (Gen 1:26). To whom, they wondered, was God talking? Who was around to receive God’s communication? Why, all of creation so far!28 Light, sky, land, sea, grass, trees, sun, moon, stars, birds, fish, amphibians, and mammals—each a creature in its own right. And each a slightly different reflection of the divine image. This is not the only rabbinic reading of the text, of course, but it is a powerful one. It reminds us that, in the biblical worldview, every creature has its own relationship with God. And thus, when we interpret Bible, animals are not just symbols in human morality plays. They are also, sometimes, simply themselves. From my Indigenous colleagues in Canada, I have learned new ways of leaning into these intuitions. We talk often about the creativity of ancient oral cultures; the power of Mother Earth and her protectors; the knowledge involved sustainable living; and the challenge of integrating science with imagination, myth, ritual, and story. All of these, they teach, are also tools for healing from trauma.29 Biblical Interpretation So, by now you’ve realized that you’ll find at least a few unusual interpretations here. But I want to assure you, I found them using strictly traditional methods. I have tried to follow the inquisitive, 26. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Likutey Moharan, 64:5. 27. See, for example, Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 47–49; Cherry, Torah through Time, “The Creation of Humanity,” 40–71. 28. Bereisheet Rabbah, 8:3 on Gen 1:26. 29. Aldred and Kaplan, Spirit of Reconciliation, 14–15. 7 Mouth of the Donkey imaginative spirit of early rabbinic interpreters. Their style of interpretation is called by the simple name midrash, “interpretation.” According to James Kugel, early rabbis read the Tanakh, Hebrew Bible, with four assumptions in mind: it is divine, cryptic, flawless, and always relevant.30 But they understand the assumptions a bit whimsically. Yes, the Bible is divine speech, i.e., the most meaningful speech possible. It’s loaded with so much meaning that humans will never fully map it. We study in groups, learn old interpretations, craft new ones—and we still barely scratch the surface. So, of course, the Bible is and always will be cryptic. And, really, it’s hardly flawless. The stories, poems, and aphorisms were shared, recorded, edited, and re-edited by fallible human beings. Repetitions, inconsistencies, and puzzles show up everywhere. But instead of seeing problems, early rabbinic readers saw opportunities. And so, at every opportunity, they asked a creative question. Then, they came up with an imaginative answer, grounded in the biblical text. And when you’re always engaging that deeply, the text is always relevant. In another way, too, the early rabbinic interpreters saw the text as always relevant. Each section, they said, is relevant to all the others. Storytelling stops and starts, metaphors recur, scenes hint at one another. Sometimes, the Bible gives information in a non-linear way. So, when we have a question about one chapter, we might find a clue in another one. It does not matter which one comes first in the table of contents; no one knows for sure when they were written or edited. Thus, the rabbis often read the Bible as if nothing is definitively earlier or later.31 Occasionally they read historically. For example, they saw Moses and Miriam as historical figures, and they made educated guesses about authors of the later books. But, for the most part, they used a literary style of reading, which I follow. Rarely do I draw on historical criticism, i.e., study of the history of the biblical text itself. This is not because I believe God literally wrote the Bible; obviously, human storytellers, writers, and editors shaped the text over time. 30. Kugel, The Bible As It Was, 18–23. 31. See, for example, Tanchuma, Terumah 8:1. 8 Humans In medieval times, Kabbalistic teachers created a four-leveled method for interpreting Torah. And, in a way, I use all four of those levels here. I look at peshat, plain literal meaning; derash, exposition of recurring ethical themes; remez, hints to allegorical meanings; and sod, secret allusions to God’s true nature. And, like all interpreters, I bring background cultural and religious knowledge to my readings.32 Peshat appears when I bring in information about the animals, as I do, for example, in the donkey chapter. Biblical authors wrote about animals they knew. So, if we want to understand them, we need a taste of their background knowledge. Derash appears when I make inter-textual allusions, noting connections between words and themes in different books. I assume that motifs recur because they express values important in biblical culture. From there, it is a small step to teach about biblical ethics, as I do, for example, in the locust chapter. Remez appears when I articulate a hidden, metaphorical level in the biblical text, as I do in the sheep chapter. And sod appears when I draw on Kabbalah to show how human insight reflects divine movement itself, as I do in the eagle chapter. Of course, as biblical scholar Michael Fishbane points out, “we live in multiple life worlds simultaneously,”33 so I am not always able to clearly separate the four approaches. When I read with a literary eye, odd patterns and puns catch my eye. So, sometimes my writing here is whimsical. Hebrew Bible is filled with funny, wry observations, and I highlight some of them. But, other times, I’m quite serious. Why, I wonder, did the storyteller use these words? What did they want us to notice about the animals? About ourselves? God? Our ecosystems? What do these details mean in a time of ecological crisis? If we read the Bible for cultural perspective and spiritual guidance, what can we learn? A great deal, it turns out, about hierarchies and webs of life. Interdependence of humans and other animals. Local economies. Waste reduction. Consequences of exploiting land and people. Shifting our consciousness. And, finally, hope. 32. Fishbane, “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,” 425–29. 33. Fishbane, “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,” 429. 9 Mouth of the Donkey Biblical Ethics Ecological activism is not a core theme of this book. But I have written it in a time of ecological crisis. You may even be drawn to read about animals in the Bible because of your own ecological worries. So, please know that some of my thoughts about environmental ethics do thread through the book. Because of climate change, human communities are disrupted.34 Other species are dying off quickly.35 These problems are caused, in part, by human greed. For example, many companies mine regions for resources and leave without a clean-up plan.36 They pay fines rather than clean up, lobby legislators to lift environmental regulations, and pour money into discrediting environmental science.37 In response, activists have issued policy proposals with calls-to-action.38 So, I won’t duplicate or even summarize their ideas here. But, I do want to note that biblical ethics takes the side of environmentalists. Consistently, biblical narratives and teachers oppose greed. They champion small, sustainable communities. In a few of the chapters here, I rely explicitly on this biblical ethic. As I see it, it is rooted in the community of mutual support described in the book of Leviticus. There, communal health is like a delicate force field. Grief, illness, or crime disturb it. But people can help reset it, with rituals of consolation, healing, and restitution (Lev 1:1—5:26).39 And with limits on economic inequality (Lev 26:3–46). Some inequality is inevitable, of course, based simply on environmental luck. But the lucky share their wealth with everyone: native, immigrant, male, female, family, strangers, abled and disabled. Landowners hire all kinds of people and pay them promptly, with a living wage. They run a harvest-time 34. Rush, Rising. 35. Wilson, The Creation, 73–81. 36. Hedges and Sacco, Days of Destruction; Korten, When Corporations Rule, 59–72. 37. Bakan, The Corporation; Lewis, The Fifth Risk; Ivins and Dubose, Bushwhacked; Oreskes and Conway, Merchants of Doubt. 38. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything; Seth Klein, A Good War. 39. See also Milgrom, Leviticus: A Continental Commentary. 10 Humans fresh-food bank and pay taxes to support the poorest. Also, they offer interest-free loans because, without them, borrowers fall deeper and deeper into debt. Along with these consistent ethical practices, Leviticus recommends regular economic and ecosystem resets. Every seventh year, agricultural landowners should let their fields lie fallow. They should forego profit, welcome foraging humans and animals, and let the land rest. Every fiftieth year, creditors should forgive loans, and free indentured servants.40 Without these resets, Moses says, society’s energy field would fail. Social safety nets would be overstressed. People would lose hope in a healthy life. Their anxiety and depression would grow, too. They would blame each other, become paranoid, and invent imaginary enemies. The community would fracture. Unable to unite in self-defence, it would be vulnerable to invasion. People would pray for rescue. But without social action, their prayers would be useless. Finally, after many deaths, their arrogance would be broken. And, together they would find their way back to right living (Lev 25:1–55). Thus, the Bible insists, there is hope. True, the challenges of human community will never be solved once and for all. But that’s why we keep working and learning, thinking and re-thinking. The Tanakh gives us great tools, opening our eyes to different ways of living in the world. And, if we interpret it with it a midrashic eye, it also invites us to critical and creative thinking. So, maybe we can take another look at the moose lounging by the Skyline Trail. Or, rather—since moose don’t show up again in this book—at what it means to say, “everything God created is good.” 40. Morrison, Reconciliation.” Gold from the Land, “Behar: Jubilee—National 11