This early insight into the Torah’s visual aspect stayed with Buechler as she grew older, attended high school and college, traveled to Israel, and entered rabbinical school, at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York—and has culminated in an unusual practice. Each week, usually on Friday morning, Buechler reads the weekly parasha, or Torah portion, in Hebrew. Then she studies ancient commentaries, followed by modern ones. In the process, a particular image or scene, or occasionally a phrase, will emerge as a visual distillation of the reading that she paints on her fingernails. “This becomes a nice way of ending my study period for the morning,” Buechler says. “And this way I have something to look at and think about over Shabbat.”

Nearly every week for 10 years, she has painted iconic scenes (the great flood), powerful phrases (u’vcharta b’chaim—“choose life”), and holiday symbols (dreidels, sukkahs) on her nails. She invests small choices with great creativity and thought. When she paints the first Passover plague, rivers filled with blood, should a small fish be swimming around as a reminder that the river is a source of life? She associates her nail-painting with midrash, a type of commentary that fills in narrative and logical gaps in the Torah. Midrashic stories, often imaginative, are tools for thought. “This is not written midrash,” Buechler says, “but this is artistic midrash.”

Her current practice evolved from something much simpler. In middle school, inspired by teachers who got their nails done, she began to paint her nails each week, in solid colors according to the season: browns for the fall, mulberry and maroon for the winter, whites for the spring. In high school, she found that giving herself a manicure was a way to relieve stress, unwinding Thursday nights while watching television, sometimes with friends. She started by painting smiley faces, then seasonal icons—snowflakes for winter, turkeys for Thanksgiving. “And suddenly it hit me that I could make this something more meaningful,” she says.

Not only Buechler but the people around her find meaning in her nail-painting. Rabbinical-school classmates approach her with their own ideas for images and phrases, which means that somehow her practice has crept into their study sessions. And they ask questions. For Hanukkah this year, will she paint one menorah or one candle on each finger? (Undecided). Has she ever done the splitting of the Red Sea? (Yes.) She also gets noticed in the wider world. Curious shop owners get a crash course in parasha study. Buechler’s bat mitzvah student has negotiated a deal where after they finish studying the parasha together, Buechler will paint her nails with an image from it.

I visited Buechler last month, just before Rosh Hashanah and a few weeks before Simchat Torah, when congregations celebrate the completion of the year’s Torah cycle and prepare to begin reading it anew, starting from Genesis. She took a break from writing sermons to paint her nails with several favorite designs. For a brush, she used an unusual kind of toothpick that looks like a thin, flat rectangle, and which she buys whenever she comes across them. (She once used the point of a paper clip, until it started to hurt.) She worked quickly but precisely, using each hand with equal skill. In front of her sat more than 50 bottles of polish, which she picks with a particular subject in mind (“I was running low on brown, and I wanted it for my shofars,” she explained).

As we talked, Buechler interjected reflections about small details. Working on an intricate Sukkot design, she said, “I have to leave room for the schach” (the sukkah’s thatch roof). And later: “I’m not doing bamboo. Sorry.” Toward the end, she said, “I’m putting oranges in right now.” And the brush darted into the bottle of bright orange polish and dabbed each nail. “I think we’re going to do oranges and cherries. Or grapes. I’ll do grapes.”

I’m surprised this hadn’t happened before. Writing a weekly Torah column, one gradually learns how to suspend all the machinations of modernity and indulge in the stark rules of simpler times. Smiting seems like a perfectly normal reaction, the plague like a plausible occurrence, and God is everywhere present and involved. In a world burdened by economic uncertainty, geopolitical unrest, and celebrity memorial services, this ancient mindset is not without its charms.

Usually, it is the humans that capture my attention: what, I occasionally found myself thinking, would I have done in Moses’ place? How would I have suffered Joseph’s tribulations? Abraham’s trials? But this week, it was the Supreme Being that was foremost on my mind.

It began with the parasha. In it, the five daughters of the deceased—and deliciously named—Zelophehad petition Moses, arguing that as Jewish tradition allows only males to inherit their fathers’ property, a clan such as their own, consisting only of women, is doomed. Why, they plea, must the name of Zelophehad perish? Why couldn’t his daughters enjoy his fortune and continue his lineage?

Moses brings this before God, and the Almighty doesn’t skip a beat: “Zelophehad’s daughters speak justly,” he says. “You shall certainly give them a portion of inheritance along with their father’s brothers, and you shall transfer their father’s inheritance to them.”

A lesser deity might have scoffed, resenting the insolent humans questioning His commands. A more apathetic creator might have shrugged His heavenly shoulders, leaving the matter for His wretched creatures on earth to resolve. But not our God; He is never beyond hearing the pleas of his people, never averse to conversing with commoners. He listened, and He acted accordingly.

This, I thought, was a particularly moving moment, and after dwelling on it for a long while I felt some mindless distraction was well-deserved. I whisked out my iPhone, and turned to one of the new applications I had recently downloaded, a game called “Pocket God.”

The premise is simple: the player is the invisible Lord of a small Pacific island, on which pudgy pygmies live happily. That is, if one lets them: the game’s greatest pleasure, which helped propel it to great heights on Apple’s iTunes sales chart, is inflicting all manner of otherworldly calamities on the unsuspecting creatures. Tilt the phone, and they slide off the island into shark-infested waters. Twirl your thumbs, and a storm gathers, complete with deadly lighting bolts. Each tap or flip brings with it endless possibilities for sadistic fun. Soon, I was deeply immersed in dispensing biblical doses of random retribution.

As satisfying as this digital slaughtering had been, however, guilt soon took over. Why, I asked myself, was I so ready to resort to violence? The game, after all, offered another path altogether, allowing players to supply their pygmies with fishing rods, for example, and watch with satisfaction as the little guys learn how to find their own food and fend for themselves. Why, then, was I waiting for my creations to fall asleep before punishing them with a menacing vampire bat? Why the lava, the fire, the sharks? Why couldn’t I be a merciful God? If Moses had asked for my opinion, I thought, ashamed, I would have probably advised him to pelt Zelophehad’s daughters with coconuts; it’s what you do with pesky subjects in the handheld, animated universe of which I am the scrupulous sovereign.

Sighing, I had to concede that I was not fit to be a deity, not even for pixelated pygmies, not even for a few minutes each day. In my playful mind, omnipotence left no room for hesitance and had little regard for consequence. Having power meant using it, each and every time, joyously and incuriously. Even if the game’s programmers had allowed it, I can’t imagine listening to my virtual subjects argue against a flaw in my design, let alone conceding the point.

I put down the iPhone and resumed reading the Book of Numbers, which recounted God’s announcement to Moses that the Israelites’ fearless leader will never enter the Promised Land, as he had to be punished for disobeying God in the desert. Sometimes merciful, sometimes stern, intermittently reasonable and erratic, and eternally unknowable: it was impossible to understand God’s motives, let alone replicate them. As if I needed another reminder.

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.

I also remember my twenty-second birthday: I spent it locked up in the back of a police van. I was placed there after being apprehended while blocking one of Tel Aviv’s major traffic arteries, protesting with dozens of my friends the government’s refusal to institute student loan programs, subsidize tuition for needy students, or do anything else to halt the rapidly plummeting rate of college graduation. Five years older and just a touch smoother, I still screamed many of the same slogans. I was drenched with sweat and flushed with hope. I didn’t really care what happened in the end; all that mattered was that I had tried to make a difference.

It’s been nearly a decade, and with one brief exception involving tequila and a faulty stall in a downtown bar’s men’s room, I haven’t been locked anywhere since. I am relieved by that fact, of course—my instinct and my intellect have both matured, and I have since learned that the subtle and the sublime needn’t necessarily be mutually exclusive. But a part of me, throbbing and restless, can’t help but feel cheated. In rage, there was purpose; in disobedience, life.

That particular feeling bubbled within this week, as I read the accounts of New York’s Internet Week, a bacchanal of twitterers and text-messengers, the people of the Facebook and the Friendfeed. They were blogging about each other, these radiant youths, posting photos of parties and exchanging witticisms in 140 characters or less. They were speaking their own cryptic tongue, the language of the hash tag and the squee. And for a brief moment there, I felt the urge to break out and do something non-violent that might get me locked up again. I wanted to scream at the crowds of techolytes huddled in the bars of the Lower East Side, clad in ironic t-shirts and vintage dresses and a fake, facile manner crafted in so many chatrooms. I wanted to take away their microbrewery beers and hacked iPhones and tell them that they were wonderful, thoughtful, intelligent people currently wasting genocidal amounts of creative energy live-blogging the season premiere of Top Chef Masters instead of trying to somehow change the world. I wanted to shout at them like I did at my timid principal nearly two decades ago, and speak to them of all the beautifully hopeless and thoroughly inspiring ideals in the world. Instead, I did nothing. I flipped my laptop shut, read a book, and felt like an aged man who time had mugged and left for dead.

The paragraph above, naturally, is rich with stereotype. Nascent technologies, of course, have given an army of impassioned activists the tools to influence the agnostic and organize the likeminded. Not all webutantes, as they are sometimes called, are vapid creatures who see the Web as a Cosmos-sized mirror reflecting their own vanity. And there is, to be sure, a healthy measure of audacity in writing harshly about the Internet on a web-based magazine that was gloriously born this week and received an ecstatic group hug from many kind and generous souls online. For all of those reasons, I will speak of the Internet no more, but of this week’s parasha.

It begins with hordes of hungry Hebrews. “Who,” they petulantly demand of Moses, “will feed us meat?” Then, sounding like some of the cooking contestant on Top Chef, the Israelites sing of culinary treats past: “We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free of charge,” they said, neglecting to mention that small bit about being enslaved, “the cucumbers, the watermelons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.”

All this talk of food makes Moses angry. More into the spirit than the stomach, he wonders aloud why he had been punished with leading such a nasty nation. “Why have You treated Your servant so badly?” he demands of God. “Why have I not found favor in Your eyes that You place the burden of this entire people upon me? Did I conceive this entire people? Did I give birth to them, that You say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as the nurse carries the suckling,’ to the Land You promised their forefathers?” If the burdens of the bitching Jews continue, Moses concludes, he’d be better off dead: “If this is the way You treat me, please kill me if I have found favor in Your eyes, so that I not see my misfortune.”

God acquiesces. He orders Moses to take seventy elders to the Tent of Meeting, where they would receive the word of God and share Moses’s terrible burden of being the only living man to regularly chat with the Creator of all things. The elders are gathered and transported to the holy of the holies. Then, however, trouble erupts. Eldad and Meidad, two young lads, feel the spirit of God descending upon them. And they begin to prophesy, in defiance of the religious hierarchy and the rules of the priests.

As some readers may remember from the unpleasant incident with the Golden Calf, Moses, for all of his many virtues, was not one for tolerating dissent. When his leadership was questioned or his beliefs challenged, he called on the Levites—like ancient, bearded ninjas—to draw swords and settle scores. Joshua, Moses’s young apprentice, knows that; as soon as he spots the prophesying, he runs to his master, reports Eldad and Meidad’s transgressions, and expects swift and violent orders, deploring Moses to imprison the two offenders.

But the old man is jubilant. “Are you zealous for my sake?” he scolds his young aide. “If only all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would bestow His spirit upon them!”

If only all the Lord’s people were prophets. Needless to say, they’re not. Just as Eldad and Meidad conclude their transcendental trip, God decides to relieve Moses’s dolor by raining quail from the heavens, asking only, like a divine Surgeon General, that folks eat in moderation. The Israelites, however, remain true to their bad reputation, and horde the birds, each man carrying his own weight in game. This vision of insolence and greed makes the lord angry, and he strikes the hapless Hebrews, the meat still stuck in their teeth, with “a very mighty blow.”

“He named that place Kivroth Hata’avah [Graves of Craving],” the Bible tells us, “for there they buried the people who craved.”

The people who craved were smitten. The people who prophesied were celebrated. Those who scattered about, infatuated with ephemera, left behind them no mark. Those who risked all for the sake of the spirit remain two of Judaism most revered rebels. God himself made it clear that sometimes we would do well to drop the petty concerns of our mundane lives and speak, like teenagers, with much passion and little sense, about the stirrings of the soul.

These are all great lines. I hope I remember them next time I get locked up.