You did it for literature: Of all of Sontag’s intellectual heritage, this sentiment—expressed in various essays and interviews in various shades of austerity—may prove the most endurable. How many of us, after all, still do it for literature? How many measure, as Sontag commanded us to do, every attempted bit of writing not in light of its putative contribution to our fame and fortune but against the yardstick of absolute cultural necessity?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. Or, at least, they oughtn’t be. As technology keeps widening the boulevards down which dross marches into our computers, our smart phones, and our minds, we are surrounded by more and more evidence that Sontag’s credo is both fiercely urgent and deeply ignored. Nothing about blogs or tweets or status updates or other similar channels of immediacy encourages much thought of posterity, after all, and few, if any, wonder if the 140-character update they’re about to unleash into the ether contains anything that might be considered of service to the greater cause of human development. The very thought, likely—that what we write, that everything we write, should serve to bolster Literature, Culture, Humanity, and other capital-letter concepts—will seem, to most contemporaries, uncool. If there is anything our mediated era sanctifies it is the right—indeed, the obligation—for all to have an opinion, and to share these opinions on social networking platforms that turn them into commodities.

If this sounds to you like a bit of old-fashioned alarmist piffle, kindly avail yourself of last week’s New York Times Magazine and turn to page eight. On the bottom of the page, under the headline ”Analytics,” the newspaper printed several illustrations of envelopes, each embossed with a number. Each number represents the number of readers who had emailed the newspaper’s executive editor, Bill Keller, to call him a particular name: Eight insisted he was “a leftist,” six chose “elitist,” four cried “communist,” and 21, in true American fashion, opted for four-letter words. What’s fascinating isn’t that people, given access to email and Keller’s address, might choose to opine; that, after all, is what the Internet is for. What’s truly astounding is that the purveyor of all the news that’s fit to print would supplement its traditional letters to the editor page with such a numerical aggregate of rageful readers’ missives. What value do these slurs-by-the-numbers hold? Without context, what is a reader to learn from the mere fact that three anonymous correspondents think Keller a socialist? This is sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or worse: As we’re swept by the meaningless, easy rage—can you believe these people said Bill Keller wasn’t as smart as his daughters? The morons! For shame!—we lose track of the real, and necessary, questions we should be asking. What we need, then, is some sort of device to steer us back on path, a device like Balaam’s ass.

The hero of this week’s parasha, Balaam is a fascinating figure. Although not much is said about this seer in the Bible, the Talmud is filled with introspection and speculation about his particular powers. In Tractate Berachot, for example, Balaam’s particular and awesome powers are explained: Alone among mankind, he had the gift of divining the precise moment in which the Almighty was wrathful—even omnipotent beings are angry, every now and then, for no good reason—and making use of this knowledge to his advantage. Like cursing on command: As this week’s parasha begins, Balaam is summoned by the Moabite king Balak to cast a spell on the Israelites, an upstart nation he fears and despises. Balaam hesitates, but God appears and assures him that all is well. And so, soothed by the divine promise, and thrilled with the promise of a house filled with Moabite gold, Balaam mounts his ass and rides to meet Balak.

What happens next is too lyrical to summarize adequately. The ass sees an angel of the Lord, understands that Balaam is riding toward disaster, and stops mid-trot. Three times this happens, and three times the prophet curses the poor animal, until the ass, blessed with speech, protests, and Balaam, shocked, finally sees the angel himself and realizes his mistake. When he finally meets up with Balak, he has nothing but blessings to bestow on God’s chosen people. The Moabite is mad, but Balaam is unfazed. “What the Lord puts into my mouth,” he states, “that I must take care to say.”

Most of us, lacking a magical ass, haven’t the advantage of receiving word directly from the heavenly source. But there’s still a lesson to be learned from Balaam: Turning to Balak, the seer asks, “How can I curse whom God has not cursed, and how can I invoke wrath if the Lord has not been angered?” He understands, in other words, that anger and expletives are potent things, not mere words but vehicles for spiritual matter, and that hurling them unnecessarily and injudiciously can cause disaster. He understands, in other words, what Sontag, too, understood, and what so many of us, opining furiously online, seem to have forgotten: Words have mighty consequences, and we should give them very careful thought.

This week, Fox Studios are releasing the third installment in the popular “Ice Age” franchise, this one titled Dawn of the Dinosaurs. So desperate were the besuited dudes at Fox to squeeze a few more sizable piles of cash out of the adventures of a woolly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger and a ground sloth, that they happily hatched a plot to introduce a clan of subterranean dinosaurs for the otherwise glacial gang to befriend, throwing in at least two or three additional funky, furry sidekicks for good measure.

Never ones to be out-cuted by the competition, Walt Disney Studios will introduce their own anthropomorphic adventure later this month. Entitled G-Force, the film follows a team of highly trained, fully armed guinea pigs serving as secret agents of the United States government. Their leader is named Darwin. I’m not making any of this stuff up.

But studio executives, always on the lookout for inspiration (how else to explain the fact that two of the summer’s biggest movies are based on children’s toys from the 1980s?), would do well to crack open their Bibles. This week, the Good Book gives us the mother of all animated animals, a talking she-donkey who’s got mad spiritual skills.

The asinine heroine, it should be noted, is the second of only two talking animals in the Bible. If the previous chatty beast—a highly convincing serpent with a penchant for apples—is any example, when the scripture puts words in the mouths of the usually speechless, we better listen.

The she-donkey, to be sure, doesn’t deliver anything nearly as dramatic and disastrous as her slithering predecessor. But her message is one that we all, not just harried studio execs, would be wise to heed.

As the eventful parasha unfurls, the Israelites, every day getting closer to the Promised Land, meet with resistance from the local peoples whose territories they must traverse en route to redemption. God, of course, delivers, and pretty soon both the Amorites and the Bashanites are felled. Which, as you may imagine, makes the Moabites, the next in line on the Chosen People’s warpath, a tad nervous. Realizing that he could not best God’s people, Balak, their shrewd king, decides to fight holy with holy, and sends emissaries to summon Balaam, a prophet of sorts, to cast his spells in Moab’s aide.

At first, Balaam refuses to go with Balak’s men. He can only do, he says, as the Lord commands him. But the Lord, in a sporting mood, pops up in a dream and tells Balaam to go with the emissaries. Balaam sets out to do just that, but God, for some inexplicable reason, changes his mind and sends an angel to prevent Balaam from reaching his destination. Just to make things more interesting, God makes sure His cherub is invisible.

And so, riding his favorite she-donkey—the one, we’re told, he’s had his entire life—Balaam trots up the road to meet Balak. But the donkey, being the only one who sees the menacing angel, refuses to proceed and runs off to a nearby field. Her master, impatient, beats her up, forcing her back on the path. But the angel is still there, and the beast is still spooked, so she bucks and presses her master’s leg against a nearby fence. Balaam, annoyed, thrashes her again, and again drags her back to the road. But the donkey, as is the way of her species, does not relent; she lodges herself in a narrow nook, making Balaam so furious that he beats her vigorously, this time with a stick. And then, for the second and last time in the Bible, the Lord bestows on an animal the gift of speech.

And what a speech the poor donkey delivers! It’s doubtful that most of Hollywood’s contemporary screenwriters could come up with such touching lines for a human actor, let alone one with long ears and a rough coat.

“What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?” she asks.  “Am I not your she-donkey on which you have ridden since you first started until now? Have I been accustomed to do this to you?”

Balaam, ashamed, concedes the point. And, just then, God opens the Moabite prophet’s eyes, and the newly visible angel speaks to Balaam angrily.

“When the she-donkey saw me,” says the seraph, “it turned aside these three times. Had she not turned aside before me, now also I would also have killed you and spared her.”

The story, like most summer movies and Biblical tales involving God’s will, has a happy ending: Balaam confronts Balak, and instead of cursing the Israelites he blesses them. But it’s in the words of the talking donkey that contemporary readers might find some fascinating morsels of meaning.

Unlike Hollywood’s animals, who are constantly given permission to speak but who rarely deliver more than shtick and schlock, Balaam’s donkey’s plea is touching and timeless. As soon as she can talk, she doesn’t say, “Hey, quit yer’ beating!” or “Look out! There’s an angry angel about to kill you!” She speaks softly. She is hurt. She wants to know why her master, to whom she’d been nothing but faithful, is being so cruel.

Those of us who have pets will have no trouble recognizing this plaintive tone. We detect it in the eyes of our dogs and cats, often for committing far less grievous transgressions against them such as failing to share our hamburger with Fluffy or leaving Whiskers home alone for many long hours.

Even if, unlike me, you stir clear clear of that primal Hollywoodian sin of assigning to animals human qualities they probably do not possess—as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, my floppy-eared mutt, Molly, probably doesn’t spend her days contemplating malicious little retributions and thinking up new, inventive ways to be bad—Balaam’s donkey nonetheless provides a very convincing argument for animal consciousness. Animal magic, even: the donkey sees God’s angel when her owner remains blind.

If we seek to learn anything from animals, then, let us ignore the belligerent guinea pigs and hilarious sloths and listen to this biblical donkey instead. Let us believe that animals, like us, are God’s creatures, and that, like us, they are not without their spiritual stirrings. And let us do whatever we can to speak on their behalf. Myself, I support several animal rights organizations, including Safe Haven For Donkeys in the Holy Land—which saves battered brayers, a particularly brutalized animal in Israel and the Palestinian Territories—and the ASPCA. You, of course, could choose other organizations. But I hope that this weekend, instead of simply relaxing at the multiplex, you listen to the beasts, look heavenward, and see the angel.