The Donkey You’ve Been Riding

by Elizabeth Kopin

In parasha Chukat-Balak we find one of the strangest stories in the Torah. This one includes magic, sorcerers and talking donkeys. It is curious to me that these passages have been preserved in all the redactions performed through the ages. They were left unchanged, even by the priestly writers. (Berlin, Adele, and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Study Bible. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014., pp. 281-284) It is as though the biblical authors have included this fantastical story to stop us in our tracks, reminding us that things are not as they seem. At the time of this story’s writing, the donkey and all animals were considered lower forms of life. Here we have a lower form of life able to see a divine messenger and speak to a human. The human reacts with anger and beats the donkey he rides. It is only after the donkey speaks out to stop the beating that the man can see the angel from God and hear God’s message. How strange, how subversive this message is. 

One way of seeing this story is as a parable about the opening of the eyes of the seer. The donkey can see what the powerful magician cannot. A “lowly and dumb” animal can see God! As suggested by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner in his d’var “Balaam’s Talking Ass,” (Kushner, Lawrence. Balaam’s Talking Ass, 2007. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/balaams-talking-ass), one of the many interpretations the story is to see it as a tale of the folly of human ego, self destructively preoccupied with its own agenda instead of discerning God’s. The person is rerouted, squeezed and finally stopped before seeing the reality in front of their own eyes. The original plan and purpose of the rider is now in question.

Like most of us, my concept of self formed at a very early age: the locus of my identity was my mind, and my body was just a vehicle that I needed to exist within and be carried by. This body had certain requirements like eating, washing, etc. but I pretty much took it for granted. Early on I internalized a world that privileged classic good looks and physical ability. To be different from that implied that you were less than. It is hard for me to admit this now, especially as I pursued my interest in science and medicine. I wanted to learn about the human body. My goal was to learn how to heal the human body when it was unwell and to support the natural processes required to sustain life. What I wanted to learn was how to bring the body back to it’s original “perfection.”

In medical training, a premium was put on stamina and willingness to work through fatigue and physical discomfort. Those who could stand for hours in the operating room without going to the bathroom were considered heroes. It seemed that those who could work like this and without complaint had an edge on everyone else. Worse yet, it seemed as though weakness of the body or disability of any kind, even those from a temporary illness, became a sign of failing! 

My medical training did not include awareness and understanding about Disability. The emphasis was to fix, to mend back the body towards “normalcy”. If one could not do this, it was a point of shame. Little time was spent teaching us how to support our patients with anything less than the acceptable standard of ability. Little time was spent teaching about the essential need for empathy or compassion in medical care. Whatever amount of empathy we came with into our training was what enabled us to practice that way at all.

I was confused. Here I was, entering a healing profession, having an intense sense of empathy for those I wanted to care for, without any reinforcement on how to best apply it. And worst of all with a prejudice against disability and devoid of any compassion for my own inevitable frailty. I was by no means alone. A study published in 2021 surveyed 714 practicing physicians nationwide and found that 82%  believed  that people with significant Disability have a worse quality of life than non-disabled people. Only 40% of physicians were very confident about their ability to provide the same quality of care to patients with Disability. Clinical training emphasizes problem solving, risk reduction “doing everything” to fix a person. Success can only be measured by having a standard of what normalcy is. This leaves the physician in a very uncomfortable role of having to potentially sit with “failure”. Our training did not provide strategies to support that person and their disability or to find ways for them to best live in an ableist world. (Footnote: Physicians’ Perceptions Of People With Disability And Their Health Care. Lisa I. Iezzoni, Sowmya R. Rao, Julie Ressalam, Dragana Bolcic-Jankovic, Nicole D. Agaronnik, Karen Donelan, Tara Lagu, and Eric G. Campbell. Health Affairs 2021 40:2, 297-306 10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01452)

I first had symptoms of multiple sclerosis when I was taking a biochem exam in my first year of college. I couldn't focus on the page. There seemed to be something in my vision that I couldn't clear. Around the same time my feet became numb and felt like rubber as I tried to finish a run. The physicians I saw for my complaints so many years ago would just shrug. The testing that was available then found nothing. I felt foolish. Since I was determined to be well I went on my way, planning to "just deal with it". And so I did, for decades. Symptoms of pain and the limitations of strength would come and go then gradually accumulate.

I was blessed to be able to finish medical school, to finish a residency in OB/GYN. I loved what I was doing. Taking care of women through profound transitions in their lives, performing surgeries, delivering babies and giving guidance as my patients aged was a joy. But it was in the relationships my patients and I formed, and the deep conversations that often ensued as we sat with their challenges, that some of my deepest learning took place. I felt so blessed. It was after I had established my practice and my second son was born that I was literally stopped in my tracks by a transient paresis. A transient paresis is temporary paralysis: I couldn't move my leg. I was standing, speaking to a patient, having finished our time together, when I turned to leave and found that I could not move. This happened twice more that day before I was willing to admit to myself that I needed to leave and go to the hospital. After an evaluation was essentially negative and the doctor I had seen mumbled something about stress and atypical migraine, I was back to work as quickly as I could drive.

Four years later, the pain and fatigue became extreme, and I began to fall. Fatigue plagued me every day. I could no longer avoid it. It was then I received the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Despite all my years of denying and avoiding my body’s frailty there it was, standing in my way.

It wasn’t until I began to stumble and fall that I finally sat still long enough to see life in a different way. I felt ashamed. But from the vantage point of my wheelchair I began to honor and deeply value something in my world that had remained hidden until then. I was no longer the physically competent fixer, and now, finding myself “unfixable,” the concept of who I was in the world and where I was headed had gone topsy turvy. At risk of taking the metaphor too far: I was Balaam and his donkey as one unit. My body had seen things I could not. It had forced me to go a different direction and to see the different way I needed to go.

In the deep conversations I had with my patients and the experiences we shared at times of births and times of physical vulnerability, I saw the deep well of potential healing that had to do with the spirit not just the body. I began to see myself through my patients eyes, which had, I now realized, showed acceptance and a loving expectation for me to continue being a caregiver for them even when I showed up with a cane, using crutches, and finally my wheelchair. I had been beating my own donkey, my body. I thought I knew which way I needed to go but my body was seeing things I could not see.

I had to retire 13 years ago because the pain and fatigue were just too much for me. Fortunately I had begun my Jewish journey many years before, and as a parallel thread of my life I had been growing my Jewish learning and practice. After my retirement I embraced study and contemplative practice much more deeply. There, within the core teachings of Judaism, I found resonance with the concept that we are each created B’tzelem Elohim: that we each contain a divine essence. Every one of us is here with a distinct potential and purpose. We are all worthy because of our innate differences and each of us are essential to humanity. (Buber, Martin. The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching. Translated by Bernard H. Mehlman and Gabriel E. Padawer. New York: CCAR Press, 2023.)

Hasidic sources remind us not to deny or denigrate our bodily needs. In fact in every act we do to provide for our physical needs is an opportunity to express gratitude for the divine miracle of being alive. In the beautiful words of Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, as he translates Reb Noson, a disciple of Reb Nachman of Breslov (Feinsmith, Sam. “Week 30 – Behar–Bechukotai.” In Text Study 5786: Awareness in All Things. Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Accessed June 14, 2026. https://institute.jewishspirituality.org/courses/take/text-study-5786-awareness-in-all-things/pdfs/74899192-week-30-behar-bechukotai.): “by not abandoning or punishing the body, but by aligning our physical actions with the soul’s deepest yearnings we can stop being a house divided, and become a unified vessel by allowing the body to become subsumed within the subtle radiant light of the soul.” Alive. I now understand the concept of holistic healing in a different way. The challenges and discomforts of my chronic illness continue. There have turned out not to be any pat answers or easy solutions. There should be no classic expectations for fixing any of us. But to my surprise, I can now embrace the possibility of the mystery unfolding and pointing the way for me. Who knows what that might be?

Liz Kopin is a Jew by choice whose life is strengthened by the study of teachings from Hasidic masters, the ancient Jewish wisdom of Mussar, and the practice of mindfulness and meditation. Having retired from a 30 year practice of obstetrics and gynecology she now offers her services as a spiritual companion/director certified by the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She is proud and grateful to be part of the wise Disability community. She can be reached at liz.kopin@gmail.com.