We need our political + religious leaders to model honest humility, riding the donkeys of modest public service instead of the high horses of war, arrogance and power.
Earlier this week the Christian world celebrated Palm Sunday, beginning Holy Week by recalling the day on which Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, welcomed by cheering crowds waving palm branches.
The scene is described in detail in all four of the gospels, and one of the sources specifically notes that this dramatic entrance was the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy in today’s chapter:
גִּילִ֨י מְאֹ֜ד בַּת־צִיּ֗וֹן הָרִ֙יעִי֙ בַּ֣ת יְרוּשָׁלַ֔͏ִם הִנֵּ֤ה מַלְכֵּךְ֙ יָ֣בוֹא לָ֔ךְ צַדִּ֥יק וְנוֹשָׁ֖ע ה֑וּא עָנִי֙ וְרֹכֵ֣ב עַל־חֲמ֔וֹר וְעַל־עַ֖יִר בֶּן־אֲתֹנֽוֹת׃
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Żion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, your king comes to you: he is just, and victorious; humble, and riding upon a donkey, and upon a colt, the foal of an jenny.
Zechariah 9:9
The prophet is imagining a future in which Jerusalem is saved by a new king - likely the messiah, of David’s lineage. But why is the donkey important? Why would this be the detail that would continue to matter to Christians and Jews alike when it comes to describing the arrival of the messiah - whether it happened already, or not?
Unlike the horse that represented war, riding a donkey was a more modest and humble symbol of peace. Saul, the first king of Israel, went off looking for lost donkeys - and the crown found him instead.
In the rabbinic imagination the donkey that Zechariah describes is no ordinary animal, but a mythical creature that transcends space and time. In the Midrashic collection of Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 31, there is a story about the donkey which accompanied Abraham and Isaac to Mt. Moriah for the binding. That donkey was one of the ten miraculous creations of God, the last to be created at sunset on the last day of creation. It would be the same donkey that accompanied Moses back to Egypt, and it will be this same donkey that the Davidic Messiah will ride into Jerusalem, up to the holy mountain, at the end of days - just like Zechariah said.
With time, this timeless creature would be so identified with the longing for the messiah that according to the Talmud, if one sees a donkey in one’s dream -- it’s a sure sign of dreaming about the future redemption.
The messiah’s donkey would take a strange turn as the redemptive possibility of return to Zion became reality at the turn of the 20th century. One of the first great rabbis of the Holy Land, Rabbi Abraham Issac Kook, wrote about this image as a symbol for the secular phase of building the state - towards the next, messianic, religious phase of building a holy nation. He was referring to the fact that the common Hebrew word for donkey ‘chamor’ is similar to the Hebrew word for ‘matter’ or ‘material goods’ - “Chomer’. One of the ways this was possibly meant and since interpreted was that the secular pioneers who literally built the new nation, brick by brick, were like the donkey - working hard, but in effect paving the way to the religious revival that will follow.
The term has become quite controversial in the harsh, complex and painful political-religious struggles that define Israel. In recent years, as messianic, ultra-right voices have more political power and say - this debate is in the spotlight. Earlier this year, in response to the increasing protest movement for democracy, a popular book first published in 1998 was republished - to reflect the growing gap between the different segments of Israeli society. “The Messiah's Donkey” , written by journalist Seffi Rachlevsky, labeled ‘the secular prophet’ caused widespread controversy when it was first published, and is now re-read for its compelling and horrifying details in which the ultra-orthodox and far-right Jewish Israeli voice is dominating secular Israel. The riding of the donkey becomes a symbol for what Zechariah or Jesus may have never intended -- not just the spiritual cherished above the material, but also the religious factions overriding the democratic.
There are many more weird legends about this donkey, sometimes depicted as white and sometimes as multi-colored.
Whatever Zechariah meant, the mythic imagination that yearns for hope and leaders who will save us from ourselves, keeps churning, and all we can hope for is that one of the donkey’s most endearing qualities - humility - will be what defines those who enter our gates offering balanced visions of soul and body, working hard for the visions of a better life for every creature and every soul.
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