In the synagogue the Torah is read aloud in a fixed annual cycle of fifty-four weekly portions (parashiyot), one each Shabbat morning, with certain adjacent portions doubled in ordinary years so the sequence fits the calendar. Each portion is named for a distinctive word near its opening and is paired with a haftarah, a reading from the Prophets. The cycle closes and restarts on Simchat Torah. Balak ('Balak', Numbers 22:2-25:9) tells how the Moabite king Balak hires the seer Balaam to curse Israel; his donkey sees the angel he cannot, and his intended curses turn to blessing, including the words 'how goodly are your tents, O Jacob' (24:5) with which many begin the morning prayer.
Balaam's donkey, seeing the blocking angel invisible to its rider and speaking in human words of protest at being beaten (Numbers 22:22-30), is one of only two speaking animals in the entire Hebrew Bible, the other being the serpent in Eden, and rabbinic tradition lists the donkey's mouth among a small set of exceptional things created at twilight on the sixth day of creation, understood as built into the natural order from its very origin rather than a later miraculous suspension of it. Balaam's repeated insistence that he can speak only the words God places in his mouth, regardless of Balak's payment or pressure (Numbers 22:38, 23:12, 23:26), is read by commentators as the portion's central irony, a professional curser hired specifically for his supposed power over blessing and curse discovering that this power is entirely and involuntarily subject to a God he does not himself worship, so that his oracles function despite, rather than because of, his own intentions.