Who is the ass?

[This column began with a picture of a young donkey draped in ceremonial robes with Hebrew writing on them.]

If your Hebrew is a bit weak, I’ll translate. The sign on the donkey’s drapery says, “I feel like a damn fool, but I’d rather look like an idiot than be in that sheep’s clothing.” Or something like that.

With all the world’s trouble, from economic melt down to swine flu to Taliban successes in Afghanistan and Pakistan I turn to the daily Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily Briefing with some trepidation. But then I read this story and wondered if it wasn’t a holdover from Purim.

Here’s what grabbed my attention. How could it not: “SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) -- It took nearly two years, cost more than $7,500, and involved two donkeys, one sheep, a case of mistaken sexual identity, several DNA tests and the unwavering faith of two fervently Orthodox Jews in Australia.” Now there’s a lead paragraph to capture the reader’s attention.

My theory is that it all began because people in Australia are all walking upside down and the blood rushes to their heads and they get dizzy and giddy and waltz with machine guns named Matilda. Two chasids from normally rival sects (Vishnitzer and Belzer) who study at Adass (read that slowly and carefully, and no, I’m not making it up) Israel Congregation in Melbourne found an obscure passage detailing the rituals of pidyon petter chamor—redemption of a first-born male donkey. The ceremony is like the more familiar pidyon haben, where if the first born child of an Israelite Jewish woman is a boy, money is given to a Kohen to redeem him, to prevent the necessity of giving the child to the Kohaneem. A very simple ceremony and a lot less painful than the one that takes place 22 days earlier. But I digress. Instead of money changing hands, at a pidyon petter chamor, in exchange for the donkey, a sheep is handed over to a local Kohen.

The problem was (one of the many problems was) that the chasids didn’t actually have an appropriate donkey. Who does? But resourceful as only the obsessive can be, they found a donkey breeder in Canberra, about 400 miles away. “There, a maiden female ass who had never been pregnant or miscarried was selected and mated with a male. She soon became pregnant.”

Mazal tov! Problem solved, right? Wrong. Or maybe right. The breeder reported that the foal was female. Quoting an ancient rabbinic text our two chasids lamented, “how all occasions do inform against us.” A new search for a virgin donkey would have to commence immediately. But lo and behold, miracle of miracles the breeder called back a few days later to report that the foal was, indeed, the desired male. Since there was some uncertainty the Adass rabbi ordered a DNA test. On the third try it confirmed that the ass was indeed a male.
Everything was now set. “We were thrilled,” Berel Goldberger, the Vishnitzer, said. “We really wanted to do this mitzvah.” Naturally, because of the rarity of event, a simcha fête was declared. Parliament member Michael Danby, whose electorate includes the Adass schul, was among those in attendance, reports the JTA. (One can only wonder what he reported to his wife upon returning home, weak and weary from the festivities. “For votes, honey, you’ll never guess what I did today,” is my guess.)

So, blessings recited, the sheep was handed over to the Kohen, the donkey was redeemed, not slaughtered.

“It probably looks strange, a bit primitive,” Yumi Rosenbaum, the other chasid, acknowledged. “But there’s a general theme throughout Judaism about the first of anything -- the first fruit, first born and so on. It was fairly unique.”
The sheep was slaughtered, its meat distributed to the poor, its hide to be used at circumcision ceremonies in the Adass community.

And the donkeys? Mom has been named Tip Top and baby is going to be called Peter. I don’t know why.

So, nu, what do we learn from this story? That it’s better to be an ass than a sheep? That absurdities of religion come in all forms—from the slaughter of Muslim women in honor killings in Pakistan to the benign (from the human perspective) killing of an innocent sheep so that another animal might live? I don’t know; I’m only grateful that our Adass chasids didn’t find an obscure passage saying that the son of a virgin donkey could be used as a substitute for a rooster in the Yom Kippur ritual of shlugen kapores. Oy, what absurdities we weave when first we practice to believe.