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Who Sees the Truth, and Who Speaks It?
Jun 26, 2026 By Loraine Enlow | Commentary | Balak | Hukkat
Long-time New York subway riders are familiar with the slogan, 鈥淪ee something, say something.鈥� Balaam鈥檚 story in this week鈥檚 parashah is closer to: 鈥淪ay something, because you didn鈥檛 see something.鈥� After all, 鈥淪ee something, say something鈥� assumes that the hard part is speaking up, but Parashat Balak suggests the hardest part may be noticing at all, especially when Balaam, the professional seer, can鈥檛 see the angel in the road that his donkey does. This reversal of who notices (and who misses what鈥檚 right in front of them) is what draws me into this passage. As a scholar working primarily on medieval Jewish and Christian biblical commentaries, I鈥檓 especially interested in noticing how texts travel, how communities guard them, and how outsiders can sometimes help shed light on a tradition. Biblical interpretation is itself, in a sense, the discipline of noticing 鈥榓ngels in the road,鈥� learning to see what is already present right in front of you in the text.
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Are We Just Speaking, or Truly Communicating?
May 17, 2024 By Loraine Enlow | Commentary | Emor
Perhaps the breaking of the formula for our parashah鈥檚 irregular emor is about more than just words. Using its characteristic wordplay, the Midrash connects the parashah鈥檚 emor here to omer in Psalm 19:3 (spelled the same way, but as a poetic noun): 鈥渄ay to day utters speech (omer), and night to night reveals knowledge.鈥� It explains that the day and the night are negotiating the giving and borrowing of time from each other to create the cycles of the year between the equinoxes. Reading the next verse in the psalm, we see 鈥渢here is no speech (omer) . . .鈥� Or as the Midrash puts it, 鈥渢hey pay each other back harmoniously, without a contract.鈥�
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