Balak (Torah)

“Who sees the vision of the Almighty, fallen down and with eyes uncovered”

This week’s Torah selection, Parshat Balak, adds yet another, unique perspective on the people of Israel to those already presented in the Book of Numbers: that of the outsider. Almost the entire parshah (Numbers 22-24), with the exception of the final nine verses, is a self-contained unit devoted to the story of Bil’am (conventionally spelled Balaam in English), the Midianite soothsayer approached by Balak, king of Moab, to curse Israel. Instead, he ended up submitting to the will of God and blessing them in the most glowing, exuberant terms.

The poetics of the story are interesting: it begins with a delegation from Balak approaching Bil’am, who enjoyed a reputation as the outstanding sorcerer of his day, to curse Israel. Balak had heard about the Exodus from Egypt and was apprehensive at the prospect of such a large and invincible nation dwelling adjacent to his own country. That night Bil’am was visited by God, who instructs him not to curse the people, “for they are blessed” (22:12). Balak counters by sending a second, larger and more prominent delegation, and this time—but only after consulting with God—Bil’am agrees to go with them, albeit making it clear that he will only speak “that which God tells me” (v. 18; and reinforced by God’s comment in v. 20).

While I was writing this, my wife Randy commented that she felt certain echoes of the story of the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac) in this chapter. Apart from the fact that both are the 22nd chapter of their respective books (both of whose titles begin with the Hebrew letter Bet), it occurred to me that this idea has much to recommend it. Can this chapter be read as a parody or ironic inversion of the Akedah story? Abraham sets off early in the morning, riding on his donkey and accompanied by two assistants, upon a journey of several days to perform God’s will without questioning it. Here, Bil’am sets off on a donkey (albeit female rather than male), also with two servants, to perform an act which is opposed to Gods’ will, but to which the Almighty has given his grudging consent with certain conditions attached. Both journeys last several days: Abraham‘s was from south to north within Eretz Yisrael, while Bil’am’s, if I am not mistaken, was from north to south in the steppes of Transjordan. An outstretched weapon and an angel play important roles in each: in the Akedah the angel stays Abraham’s hand from slaying his son with the knife, while the angel holds an outstretched sword to warn or stop Bil’am. Both culminate on mountains or high hills: Mount Moriah; and the three high vantage points to which Balak takes Bil’am. Finally, there may be a parallel between the angel’s parting blessing to Abraham that his seed shall be as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sand of the seashore (Gen 22:17) and Bil’am’s blessings, which mention both these items (Num 23:10; 24:17).

But the truly significant point is the relationship between the central theme of the two stories: Abraham is, in Kierkegaard’s words, a “knight of faith” who unquestionably, even in the face of absurdity and paradox, obeys God’s will; while Bil’am starts out as a defiant, prideful person, who gradually comes to learn that he cannot do other than to submit to the will of the Most High.

Along the way there occurs the famous incident of the talking donkey. As in many biblical stories, things happen in threes: three times the donkey sees the angel with drawn sword, while Bil’am fails to see him: the first time he departs the high road for a side path through a vineyard; the second time he leaves that, pressing Bil’am against a stone wall; and the third time he stops dead in his tracks and lies down. At this point, after a vicious beating at Bil’am’s hands, he suddenly begins to talk and asks Bil’am what he has done to deserve this. People make a great fuss over the talking animal—Rambam and Saadya Gaon explain it away as a dream, while the Mishnah in Avot says that the ass’s mouth was created prior to the very first Shabbat of the world. But this seems to miss the real point of this incident. Bil’am himself is shown as taking the she-ass’s speech in his stride, as if they’d been chatting with one another for years over nargila and Turkish coffee, and answers him in an everyday tone, and to the point.

At this stage, “God opens Bil’ams eyes” and he, too, sees the angel with outstretched sword. Now he understands that the donkey was not being disobedient or rebellious, but reacting prudently to this frightening apparition. The point is, of course, that this “dumb” animal perceived the presence of this divine messenger, while Bil’am did not. The ass, like most animals, was constantly aware of the surrounding world, sensing rather than seeing the uncanny presence of this spiritual being. Bil’am, by contrast, was so wrapped up in his ego and pride as an internationally-renowned sorcerer and soothsayer that he was unable to sense the presence of the non-tangible.

The precise purpose of the angel’s mission is not clear. In the end, he does not instruct Bil’am to turn back and not go with Balak’s people, but simply reiterates what he was already told in verse 20: that he must only speak those words that God puts in his mouth (vv. 34-35).

The number three figures prominently again in the next phase of the story: Balak, after greeting Bil’am personally upon his arrival in the royal city of Moab, goes with him to three separate places: Bamoth-ba’al, Zophim at the top of Pisgah, and the top of Pe’or. Each time they offer numerous propitiatory offerings (to Balak’s pagan god? to the God of Israel, whom Bil’am mentions by name? It doesn’t say), and each time Bil’am “takes up his discourse” and utters words of praise and blessing to Israel, which upon each turn become stronger and more unqualifiedly positive (see 23: 7-10; 18-24; 24:3-9); these are, by the way, among the finest, most beautiful examples of Hebrew poetry. By the end, when Balak tries to stop him (saying, in essence, “Nu, if you can’t curse them, at least you shouldn’t bless them” - 23:25), he answers “I can only do that which God commands me.” The final time, he completely abandons his magical techniques and omens that he had used previously, and “turns his face to the desert,” seeing himself purely as a recipient of Divine powers. At this point he describes himself as “Bil’am son of Be’or, the man whose eyes have been opened / who hears the words of God, the voice of the Almighty, falling down, but with eyes uncovered” (vv. 3-4). After his final prophecy, in which he extols Israel to the skies, he gives a parting “present” to Balak: a prophecy of what will happen to the various nations of the region (Moab, Edom, Amalek, the Kenite, Asshur, Eber) in the latter days—the long and short of it being, that all but Israel will eventually come to a bad end.

I see the essence of this narrative as revolving around two basic ideas: one, Bil’am’s gradual enlightenment, and his conversion from one who believes in magic, in human power to manipulate the cosmos by the supposed harnassing of hidden, magical forces, to a true prophet, who recognizes the sovereignty of the true God. Two: Israel’s central role in history, as the beloved of God and the axis around which history revolves.

I am puzzled by much of the midrashic and other traditional commentary on this parshah, which is very anti-Bil’am, and which seems to go against the simple intent of the text. By end of the account, Bil’am comes to understand the truth of his own accord, abandoning his earlier belief in his own ability to force his will upon history. That the Book of Joshua (13:22) later mentions in passing the fact that he died a violent death seems to me to neither add nor detract from this basic fact. His role is to be a Gentile witness to the covenant with Israel. My own feeling is that this line of interpretation on the part of the midrash is part of a general anti-Gentile tendency, rooted in bitter experience of the Jewish people, which was reluctant to admit a conversion (not in the halakhic sense, but of heart) of this non-Jewish magician/prophet.

“They are a People Who Dwell Apart”

Both the Bil’am story and its proximity to the beginning of the mourning period for the destruction of the Temple bring to mind the issue of Jewish chosenness and separatism. Bil’am himself is known for coining the famous slogan of Jewish apartness (which was the title of a well-known book by Yaakov Herzog), Am levadad yishkon (23:9)—“A people who dwell apart.”

For many of us who grew up in the generally liberal, tolerant atmosphere of the post-World War United States, and who did not see “goyim” either as hate-driven, frightening monsters, nor as ignorant, primitive, uneducated peasants, there is a certain dissonance in the constant hammering upon the theme that “It is natural for us to live apart”; “you can never trust the Gentiles”; “halakhah: Esav sonei et Ya’akov” (“it is a law [of nature] that Esau hates Jacob”), etc. In the world in which I grew up, there was widespread acceptance of certain principles of human rights and decency, dignity, etc.—and these have, in anything, taken root more broadly and deeply over the past thirty years. I found much to learn from and appreciate in non-Jewish culture: be it on the aesthetic level—arts, music, literature, poetry, much of which spoke to me on a deep emotional level; on the intellectual level—sciences, both natural and social; and even on the value level—philosophy, the political concepts of democracy and the universal rights of man, etc. (Of course, many aspects of European and Western humanism since the Enlightenment, and particularly during the twentieth century, have been decisively shaped by Jews, mostly those of the assimilated or acculturated ilk.

Their “outsider” status and feelings of alienation—often, both from their own roots and from the majority culture—gave them a unique critical vantage point on the societies in which they lived; hence the disproportionate Jewish involvement in such fields as sociology, psychology, literary criticism, etc.—but that’s another story.)

On the other hand, during the course of my adult life, I have seen a growing tendency towards a more parochial and ghettoized approach within the Orthodox community. At least on the basis of my own subjective impressions, it seems to me that the American-born yeshiva men whom I encounter today are, on the whole, less conversant with general culture, speak a less literate, educated English than their parent’s generation, and are generally less interested in “synthesis” of the two cultures. This is true even of the Yeshiva University crowd, let alone those of the more “right wing” yeshivot. That world no longer seems to be producing Rabbinic leaders of the stature and cultural breadth of an Emanuel Rackman, Norman Lamm, Shubert Spiro (to 120), or of a David Shapiro, Norman Frimer, or, of course, the Rav, z”l. Symptomatic of this new breed is the curriculum of an Orthodox Mens College and Beit Midrash recently established in one of the garden suburbs of New York City. Secular studies are seen in purely instrumental, parnasah terms, college subjects being limited to practical, marketable skills: business, management, accountancy, pre-dentistry, a bit of counseling. The sciences, not to mention history or the humanities, are unheard of. Needless to say, the attitudes fostered in that milieu toward Western culture and the non-Jewish world tends to be xenophobic and suspicious (the American-born rosh yeshiva speaks of “Yidd’n”), seeing non-Jews at best in utilitarian terms—as in the unholy, bizarre political alignment between millenarian Evangelicals and Gush Emunim settlers.

But the other side of the coin is equally, nay, more dangerous to Jewish survival as such—namely, the total embrace of general culture, to the point of uncritical acculturation, assimilation and intermarriage. So much has been written on this subject that it hardly needs elaboration. Let me only add that in recent years I have had the opportunity to come to know that the situation is nevertheless far more complex and multi-faceted than I had thought, with an infinity of shades and nuances. Not all intermarriages are ipso facto destructive Jewishly. I have come to know inter-married families in which the non-Jewish spouses are supportive and sympathetic to the effort to raise Jewish children. It is nevertheless clear that this is a constant uphill struggle, typically occurring among Jews who are largely Jewishly ignorant, making the task that much harder. I have also learned to appreciate or at least to understand the efforts of non-Orthodox rabbis in communities throughout the United States—in the Midwest, the Southwest, California, or wherever—to attempt to convey whatever knowledge of Judaism they can, operating within the given context of highly mixed, assimilated communities. This is the reality of Jewish life today, outside of the warm, cozy “frum” cocoon. The same holds true for the various “New Age” rabbis and spiritual teachers—of the Jewish Renewal movement, etc.—who have tapped into a certain public and its profound thirst for a certain type of personal spirituality, and learned to speak to it Jewishly. There are of course, profound halakhic problems in all these groups, and many points on which I would disagree, but they can only be admired for taking up the cudgels of preserving Jewishness, in however attenuated and strange-seeming ways.

The path I would advocate on this issue is a middle way: one that avoids both the Scylla of xenophobia and parochialism, and the Charybdis of assimilation. I have no detailed programmatic answers, but only a sense of the general principles to be followed. What I would say, with regard to the problem of intermarriage and assimilation in an open society such as the US, is the following: Given that, for a large part of the community, free social mixing is inevitable, the only solution is to take a less stringent approach to conversion, and to find ways of including as large a number of people in the community, in halakhic ways, as possible. The solution must be along the lines of community-wide, cross-denominational conversion boards, such as that introduced by Rabbi Stanley Wagner in Denver, and later shot down by Orthodox zealotry. Zvi Zohar and Avi Sagi have explained the validity of this approach in a comprehensive halakhic study, in which they present both a new and different analysis of the classic halakhic sources, and a compendium of responsa on the subject by many of the leading aharonim of the past century and a half. These men, who made the needs of the entire Jewish people their top priority, applied creative and innovative halakhic conceptualizations in their rulings on these difficult and delicate subjects.

Those of us in Israel have our own collection of problems vis-a-vis Jewish-Gentile relations. Without getting into politics, a few thoughts. There is a pressing need for a change in heart and attitude toward the non-Jewish, and specifically Arab, world. We need to realize that we are no longer the oppressed victims, but a powerful, economically and technologically superior, majority. We must stop seeing any political objection to Israeli policies (on the part of Europe, etc.) as anti-Semitism. We need to see the Palestinians as fellow human-beings, children of Adam and Eve, created in the image of God. Our goal must be not merely non-violent co-existence, assisted by high barbed-wire fences and a crisscross of separate roads, but real reconciliation and human understanding, along the model attempted in South Africa (notwithstanding the problems there).

More on Bil’am and the Akedah

Randy’s suggested parallel between the Akedah and the Bil’am story received favorable comment from several readers. One further point, which is perhaps the most central: Both accounts repeatedly used the verb r’ah, “to see.” Abraham sees the mountain from afar; he tells Isaac that God will “show” (yireh lo) him the livestock to be offered up; he sees the ram among the bushes; and, in the end, calls the place Hashem yera’eh (“The Lord will see”). As for the Bil’am account: the entire section begins with Balak “seeing” what God did for Israel. The she-ass sees the angel, but Bil’am does not, until God “rolls open” his eyes (22:31), and he too sees. Balak takes him to a series of vantage points, from which he “sees the people” or “sees the edge of the people, but not all of them.” All three of Bil’am’s blessings mention the word ra’ah and/or its synonyms: hibit, hazah, etc. Finally, in the third and final section, when the Spirit of God rests upon Bil’am after he “sees Israel dwelling by tribes” (24:2), he introduces himself as “the man who sees the vision of the Almighty, fallen down and with eyes opened.” The central motif of the entire chapter is seeing, and the inner perception and in-sight—i.e, interpretation—for which physical sight is a metaphor.

Once again, Michael Kagan had some interesting insights to share:

The comparison between the Akedah and Bil’am goes even further. Rashi already points out that Bil’am rose early to saddle his own ass cynically emulating Abraham…. After a period of time he “lifts up his eyes” and sees the mountain that God has chosen. This lifting of the eyes is spiritual seeing. The servant boys can’t see what he sees, nor can the donkey. So (again Rashi) they who cannot see must stay at a distance—the servants are no better than the donkey in this regard.

Bila’m too sets out with his servants. However, satirically, the eyes of the ass are opened and it sees what neither Bil’am nor the servants are capable of witnessing. An ass is made of Bil’am.

While I too am very sensitive to traditional anti-other elements in Judaism and have always felt uncomfortable with the hatred poured onto the head of Bil’am by the commentators, I have recently looked at the story differently. Does Bil’am praise Israel through his own prophetic vision or does he remain, like the ass, a mere tool of God? In other words, is he an empty vessel mouthing God's words in spite of himself, or an active transmitter wholeheartedly identifying with the amazing visions that fill him, literally bursting forth from his mouth? One way of checking the difference between the two states is what happens after the trip ends. When the body and soul align with the Divine, the prophetic state results in a permanent change in the human psyche. The being is filled with sublime Love for all of creation. There is no room for hate, jealousy, or materialism; there is humility and awe. However, when God chooses to use you despite yourself, your ego, then when you come out you are in many ways broken—your ego has been smashed, you understand that everything that you thought was important was just your own vanity, there is embarrassment and disorientation as the ego tries to repair itself, everything is different but not necessarily for the good.

So which one happened to Bil’am? The willing servant or the witless ass? If indeed it was Bil’am that later recommended sexual promiscuity as the means of “cursing” Israel, then I would vouch for the witless ass interpretation. If Bil’am showed signs of Tshuva, conversion, fighting Balak or anything else, then maybe the willing servant model would fit. With this question in mind it is now possible to go back and examine the hints given in the story as to Bil’am's mindset.

A New Take on Balak

The entire chapter of Balak is a kind of independent unit, an interlude of sorts, inserted within the Torah’s ongoing account of the Israelites’ exploits in the desert. Here, rather than being the main protagonists, seen in all their subjectivity as doers and actors, Israel are seen from the outside, as the passive objects of Balak’s hate-filled machinations.

We are in the habit of interpreting the title of this week’s portion, ”Balak,” as a mere formality, generally focusing, after the midrash, on Bilaam as the main protagonist. Yet when we read a crime novel, who is considered more venal and more central to the murder: the hit-man, or the person that hires him? Surely the latter. This question is one worth keeping in the background as we read this week’s portion. A close reading, focused more on Balak, will disclose some interesting new aspects.

The story is divided into three sections, each one of which is marked in turn by either two- or three-fold repetition:

a) Balak sends messengers to Bilaam and their conversation with him: Num 22:2-20;

b) the actual journey, and the conversation with the donkey: 22:21-35;

c) Balak’s meeting with Bilaam, the three attempts to curse Israel, and Bilaam’s blessings and concluding prophecy: 22:36-24:25.

In the first phase of our discussion, I wish to read parts (a) and (c) consecutively, omitting the incident of the donkey (even though for many that is the best known part of the whole parsha). In such a reading, we find that the story as a whole still makes sense. Balak is driven by intense fear and hatred of Israel, while Bilaam, from the very outset, seems to be a pious, God-fearing figure, who repeatedly says things like, “If Balak gives me all the gold and silver in the world I cannot cross the word of the Lord my God” (22:18) or “Whatever the Lord puts in my mouth, that I must make sure to speak” (23:12). He only consents to go with them after a second delegation is sent to him, and God permits him to go, while reiterating that “but you will only do what I say” (22:20).

The words used in the initial description of what motivated Balak to hire Bilaam is interesting. “and Moab was very much afraid of the people… and Moab was filled with loathing for the children of Israel” (22:3). This combination of fear and loathing is interesting. The latter verb, va-yokatz, is unusual: BDB describes it as “to feel a loathing, abhorrence, sickening dread.” It is used in only a handful of other places in the Bible: by Rebecca regarding Esau’s Hittite wives (Gen 27:46); by God regarding Israel at the climax of the great Rebuke (Lev 20:23); by the Israelites who are “fed up” with the manna (Num 21:5); of the Egyptian’s feeling towards the hoards of “swarming” Israelites (Exodus 1:12); and a few other places in the Prophets. It suggests, to my mind, both a sense of superior contempt (“being fed up”), and real dread of a powerful, uncanny, frightening factor. Is this a typical or normal reaction to a powerful nation that has suddenly appeared on the scene, that threatens to mow down and overrun all the other countries in the vicinity, perhaps to become a new regional power? Or is their an element of demonization involved here (or, in light of the cow metaphor in v. 4, should one call it “bovinization”)? Is it too far-fetched to see Balak as archetypal of the first anti-Semite, whose reaction to the Jews has but little in common with the objective reality of what the Jews are? (Certainly, the midrashim here see it that way) Indeed, anti-Semitism seems to me more of an eternal, perennial fact in the world than anyone would have suspected. The symbolic position of Israel in the world today, after more than half a century of Zionist statehood was supposed to have “normalized” Jewish existence, suggests that this is so. Alongside a certain justified criticism of some of Israel’s actions by European and other nations, one finds a goodly measure of loathing, of self-righteous moral posturing, out of all proportion to the reality (and ambiguity) of the situation, which leads one to suspect that something more than ordinary relations between nations is at stake here.

Bilaam then journeys to the city of Moab, going with Balak to a certain place where the latter builds an altar and offers sacrifices. Each time Bilaam protests that he can only say that which God tells him, and each time he utters increasingly positive and enthusiastic words about Israel. Balak tries in vain to reverse his positive prophecy, but to no avail. In the end he is even willing to compromise his original intention, telling him, “Don’t curse them and don’t bless them,” but even that Bilaam is unable to do: he can no longer refuse to say that which God tells him. As Balak gets more and more disgruntled, Bilaam rises to greater poetic heights in his praise of Israel, and achieves ever higher degrees of prophecy. He discards his tools of divination (24:1) and speaks with the spirit of God, describing himself as one “who hears the speech of God and sees the vision of the Almighty, fallen down and with open eyes” (24:3-4). Israeli scholar Haviva Pedaya has described a phenomenology of a certain type of religious visionary experience, found both in the Bible and in various later sources, such as Apocrypha and Merkabah literature, consisting of the stages of “seeing, falling, and singing.“ This perfectly fits the description of Bilaam here: he falls down, his eyes open, and recites words of prophetic poetry. In the end, he utters a few well-chosen words of prophecy regarding the other nations, mostly regarding their ultimate downfall, but not before predicting that “a star shall rise from Jacob.”

Two notes about Balak. Three times he is described as building an altar and offering seven bullocks and seven rams. Conspicuous here by its absence are sheep, which serve as the archetypal sacrificial animal of Israel: in the daily offering, in the Paschal lamb consumed in fellowship by the entire people offering, and a main component of the festival additional offerings. It is the most gentle and least aggressive of the classical korban animals. Bullocks and rams are, by contrast, prominent mostly for their use in sin offerings (e.g., Yom Kippur). Is this fact conveying some sort of a subtle message about who and what Balak is?

Second, each time he wants Bilaam to curse Israel, Balak takes him to different places, from which he sees less and less of the people. He starts at Kiryat Hutzot, where he sees the whole people; he goes from there to Sdeh Tzofim, where he can only see “the edge of the people”; and finally, takes him to Rosh Pe’or, where he faces the wilderness, and does not see them at all. As if he knows that the actual sight of the people, the concrete reality, is somehow a hindrance to cursing them, might be dangerous to his plans. Again, anti-Semitism (like all group prejudice) is based upon an artificial stereotype of the Jew; the hater doesn’t want to know the object of his hatred in all his human complexity, in the particularity of each individual in the group. There is even the “some of my best friends are Jewish” syndrome, where the individual who is known is seen an exception to the group stereotype.

We now return to the donkey episode. In Maimonides’ introduction to his Guide (a point seen by Leo Strauss as a key to reading the book), he points out that at times incongruous elements are introduced to make the reader think, to place a question mark on the whole, to allude to some concealed idea. In other word, where higher Bible criticism would say that an anomalous passage was written by another hand, one can say here that the deliberate inconsistency is used as a “red light,” to turn about the meaning of the whole.

The donkey episode, in which God sends an angel to stop Bilaam from carrying out Balak’s mission, notwithstanding His having given him permission a few lines earlier, seems intended to give the lie to the idea that Bilaam is a pious man, obedient to the will of God. Why is God so angry at Bilaam? Presumably, because he should have understood, between the lines, that he did not really have permission to go. This, in any event, is the basis for the view expressed in numerous midrashim in which Bilaam is described as a prophet of the same stature as Moshe: that is, in the sense of technical knowledge of theurgy and visionary technique. Morally, however, he is a wicked, negative figure, an archetype of all the enemies of Israel, a pervert who had sex with his donkey, and so on.

The donkey herself is shown as a reasonable, dignified, intelligent persona. She sees the angel of God where Bilaam does not, perhaps because she has the sensitivity of any animal to subtle, unseen presences in the environment. Bilaam, by contrast, comes across as an impatient, petulant, self-centered child. Or, as my wife has suggested: this incident may be read as a slightly farcical, negative parody of the Binding of Isaac: here too, the protagonist sets off on a journey with a donkey and two servants, and the climax is brought about by the appearance of an angel. But here the protagonist is , despite his lip service, confuting the will of God rather than going to perform it.

Most other biblical verses about Bilaam (Num 31:8; Deut 23:5-6; Josh 13:22; 24:9-10; Micah 6:5; Neh 13:2) seem factually noncommittal, and may be read as showing him as a passive instrument, a hired tool of Balak. But Numbers 31:16 explicitly points to him as the architect of the plan to use Moabite girls to seduce Israelites into sex orgies, which would negate their holiness and bring them down to the level of all the other surrounding nations. This, taken in concert with the donkey story, make Bilaam an at-best ambiguous figure.