The Donkey Driver

(Based on an article from The Book of Zohar, Vol. 1 item 74)

There is a story about Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Aba who were going to see Rabbi Yosi, and one man was leading their donkeys. Rabbi Aba said, “Let us open the doors of Torah, for now is the time and the moment to be corrected in our way.”

All of the books of Kabbalah, all the more so The Book of Zohar, depict the sequence of internal stages a Kabbalist experiences along the spiritual way. The story before us deals with two of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai’s nine great students. This story is not about two rabbis hiking in the Galilee, chatting cheerfully, as it may first appear. When the Zohar writes that the two rabbis were going to visit Rabbi Yosi, it means that they wanted to climb on the spiritual ladder to a higher degree than their own. They could only do so by a force that would pull them from above, and for this, they needed to be corrected by a higher degree. This is the meaning of opening the doors of Torah.

The donkey driver refers to the one who leads the donkeys. He does that by poking them and urging them to walk faster. The Hebrew word Hamor (donkey) comes from the word Homer (substance).

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, our substance is “egoism.” Along the spiritual climb, each person learns how to work with one’s Homer correctly, to evolve in spirituality.

Man’s egoistic nature is in contrast with the spiritual nature. To compel it to progress to the next degree, it must be “poked.” There is only one purpose to the pains one experiences—to urge the suffering individual to draw the light that reforms. We can obtain this light—the only means to changing our egoistic nature—by studying in books of Kabbalah. Once we have changed our egoistic nature, we discover the “secrets of the Torah,” i.e. the complete reality. Only after the secrets of the Torah become revealed does the donkey within us know how it should change and where it should climb.

When they began to reveal the secrets of the Torah, the donkey driver, who was leading the donkeys behind them, began to ask them deep questions, which they could not answer. These questions left Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Aba without answers.

The donkey driver seemed like a simple man, walking alongside them while they are riding their donkeys. A climb from one spiritual degree to another reflects a correction of another egoistic section of one’s desires. The donkey driver asks the Kabbalists questions related to the rules that will be revealed to them on their next spiritual degree. They cannot answer these questions because they haven’t attained the next spiritual degree.

Thus, the driver’s questions reveal to them that they are unable to rise to the next level by themselves. The driver leads to them to the next degree, and this is why he is called “the donkey driver”: he is the one leading their Homer—uncorrected, egoistic desire. When the two Kabbalists discover the greatness of that “simple” driver, which they previously discarded, they place him at the head of their convoy, leading them forward.

The Zohar explains that the donkey driver is a soul sent from above to help souls and elevate them from degree to degree on the spiritual ladder. The two Kabbalists could not have risen to a higher spiritual degree had it not been for this assistance.

In the beginning, it seems to a person that the soul that accompanies one is a “simple soul.” In that state, one does not identify it as help sent especially for one’s assistance. All that is required of us is to want that change, that correction to happen. When our desire for it is strong enough, assistance comes. Every person who wants to rise is sent a “high soul” from above, which helps one and leads him or her through the spiritual ladder of degrees.

Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Aba demanded of the driver to tell them “How the Creator ‘arranged’ it so you would come to us, and by which we would rise to a higher degree?” You will learn this secret, the driver promised, in the future…

Reading in the Zohar as we just did, immediately calls upon us the donkey driver within our own souls. The donkey driver then begins to work on the soul and elevates it to higher degrees, the place from which the donkey driver comes.