[Avodah] animals and bechira??

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 09:32:04AM +0200, harchinam wrote:
: > do animals have bechira??
: > eg bilaam's donkey (apparently they
: > can see angels (at least in this case)
: > and have thoughts

: Why would it seem that Bilaam's donkey had bechira? If an animal sees
: someone in his path, he will try to avoid him, especially if whoever he saw
: had a sword and was standing in his path. Animals act out of instinct
: without much conscious thought.

: The miraculous thing in this case would seem to be that the donkey seems to
: have had ruach hakodesh to see what Bilaam could not, but how do we know
: that all animals don't see angels? ...

I don't think it's constructive to consider Bil'am's hinny an example
for discussion.

The "pi haason" was created separately from the creation
of animals in general (Avos 5:6), including Bil'am's hinny's
great-to-the-nth-grandparents. It's like trying to deduce the nature of
food in general from the mun.

But there is also an implication we can make here when we view what
the execption (rather than example) is... The ason's speech was a
stand-alone item, a different creation than the rest of the ason. This
*may* imply that:

1- This particular ason itself lacked free will even while speaking. The
speaking mouth wasn't even the same creature as the rest of the ason,
really.

2- The neis was not considered to be in the ason seeing the angel, but
in the ason's response to the angel. Implying that animals generally
can see mal'akhim.

The Rambam wouldn't make this implication, since he holds that seeing
mal'akhim is only possible within nevu'ah, which in turn requires major
intellectual refinement and (if you aren't Moshe Rabbeinu) being in a
special mental state.

Nor the Ramban, RnRF portrays his shitah:
: Ramban holds on the other hand that since angels are not physical beings
: they can only been seen when they take on human form, as in the angels that
: visited Avraham. Ramban holds that the donkey did not really *see* the
: angel, but rather sensed that it was in danger; that there was figuratively
: a being with a sword drawn standing in front of its path.

Where do you see the first clause? I didn't understand the Ramban that
way. Seeing a mar'eh maqom would help -- I find I don't unlearn mistaken
understandings without the effort of looking it up myself.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Life isn't about finding yourself
micha at aishdas.org        Life is about creating yourself.
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