TORAH SPARKS
Parashat Balak
June 26, 2021, 16 Tamuz 5781
Torah: Numbers 22:2-25:9; Triennial 22:2-38
Haftarah: Micah 5:6-6:8
Flawed Prophets
Ilana Kurshan
In commenting on one of the final verses in the Torah never has there arisen in Israel a prophet like Moshe (Deuteronomy 34:10) the midrash raises a surprising challenge from our parashah. While it is true that there has never been another Jewish prophet as great as Moshe, there has in fact been a gentile prophet who rivals him, and that is Balaam, who is summoned by the king of Moab to curse the Israelites during the final years of their desert wanderings (Bemidbar Rabbah 14). What was it that made Balaam so great, and why does the midrash regard him as Moshe s counterpart? And what can a comparison between these two prophets teach us about what it means to serve as a conduit of the divine voice?
Although celebrated as great prophets, both Moshe and Balaam were imperfect individuals. Each lacked the confidence that they would be successful in their missions: Moshe told God at the burning bush that he was not a man of words and had uncircumcised lips (4:10) and was therefore reluctant to be a spokesperson for God. And Balaam, who initially resists King Balak s entreaties to come curse the Israelites, warns the king that he is limited in what he can say: I can utter only the word that God puts in my mouth (22:38). As Avivah Zornberg points out in her book Bewilderments, both prophets suffer from speech impediments of sorts they do not feel they have full command of their powers of speech, and therefore they question their ability to fulfill the mission with which they are charged.
Both prophets, too, suffer from an inability to control their anger. Moshe grows furious at the Israelites for worshipping the golden calf and shatters the first set of tablets; he then grows angry at the people when they complain about the lack of water at Kadesh, and strikes the rock rather than speaking to it. He also lashes out at the people: Listen up you rebels, shall we get water from you out of this rock? (Numbers 20:10). Balaam, too, resorts to violence when his ass, which he is riding en route to curse the Israelites, suddenly halts and pushes him against the wall; the Torah relates that Balaam was furious and beat the ass with his stick (22:27). Balaam, who cannot see the angel intercepting the path, lashes out at his ass verbally as well, telling his animal, If I had a sword with me, I d kill you (22:28). Perhaps it is not unrelated to their speech impediments that both men speak harshly in moments of anger, and resort to violence when words do not seem to suffice.
God recognizes each prophet s shortcomings, and as a result, neither man merits dying the way he desired. Moshe is not allowed to lead the people into the Promised Land, and is buried in the valley of the land of Moab, near Bet Peor (Deuteronomy 34:6) in the same country whose king summoned Balaam, and near the very hill of Peor where Balak brought Balaam to curse the Israelites. And Balaam, who declares in his prophecy, Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like theirs (Numbers 23:10), does not in fact come to a righteous end; the Talmud in Sanhedrin (90a) lists him among those who have no share in the world to come. Balaam is denied entry into the world to come just as Moshe is denied entry into the Promised Land; each leader is punished by being deprived of the ultimate fate he so fervently desires.
Although neither God, nor the Torah, nor the Talmudic rabbis gloss over their flaws, it is clear that both Moshe and Balaam have unique abilities to connect with God and intuit the divine will. Moshe alone was able to talk to God directly, as God asserts: When a prophet of the Lord arises among you, I make Myself known to in a vision, I speak to him in a dream. Not so My servant Moshe With him I speak mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles (Numbers 12:6-7). The Talmud (Yevamot 49b) explains that while all other prophets observed their prophecies through an obscured looking glass, Moshe s prophecy was transmitted with total clarity– he directly perceived the divine will, undistorted by any ulterior motives which might twist the way he transmitted God s word. Perhaps his insecurities furnished him with the humility to overlook his own personal needs and desires in favor of serving God s people.
Balaam, on the other hand, was very much affected by his own motives and desires, so much so that he was unable to accept God s injunction that he should not to go with Balak to curse the Israelites. And yet Balaam had another unique talent that distinguished his prophetic career he knew how to intuit the exact moment of God s wrath, and thus manipulate God s anger. According to the Talmud (Berakhot 7a), God is angry for only a fraction of a second every day, and Balaam like a lightning rod perfectly positioned to absorb the shock knew how to calculate that moment and harness God s wrath against others. Balaam knew how to manage God s anger, even if he could not manage his own. Indeed, perhaps it was because of Balaam s own struggles that he knew how to intuit and manipulate the moment of God s wrath. He was so extraordinarily intimate with God s anger that he knew what Balak refused to accept, namely that a prophet cannot curse anyone God deems worthy of blessing: How can I damn whom God has not damned, and how can I doom who God has not doomed? (Numbers 23:8).
A comparison of Moshe and Balaam suggests that perhaps it is not in spite of their flaws that each man is regarded as a great prophet, but rather on account of their flaws. God chooses to communicate through Moshe and Balaam not because they are perfect, but because each has a unique ability to convey God s word. Moshe, in spite of uncircumcised lips, furnishes the people with the teachings they will need in order to create a society aligned with God s will in the land God has promised. And Balaam, in spite of his lack of control of his own speech, delivers a blessing so eloquent that it becomes a part of the daily liturgy: How goodly are your tents, O Jacob (Numbers 24:5). Their example reminds us that to channel God s word, we need not rid ourself of our imperfections, but learn how to harness them to our advantage. Our struggles to speak can teach us to hear the words of others more clearly. Our difficulty overcoming our anger can ultimately make us more empathic. No one is perfect, but if we succeed in finding a calling which draws on both our strengths and our weaknesses, we may find that accepting our humanness affords us, like the prophets, the possibility of transformation.
But You Said I Could!
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Background: Balak king of Moab sent for Balaam the magician to curse the people that had left Egypt so that he might overcome them. God informs Balaam that he will not curse the people for they are blessed, but Balak persists. Here is the second conversation between God and Balaam:
Text: Bamidbar 22:20-22
20And God came to Balaam at night, and said to him: If the men are come to call you, rise up, go with them; but only the word which I speak to you, that you shall do. 21And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went… 22And God s anger was kindled because he went; and the angel of the LORD placed himself in the way for an adversary against him.
● In round one God forbade Balaam from going to curse the people for they are blessed. Has God changed His mind? What is Balaam getting permission to do?
● If God allowed Balaam to go, why does He send an angel to stop him?
Commentary: Ramban Bemidbar 22:20
Balaam ought to have disclosed [that God will not allow him to curse the people] to the princes of Balak and if they are not agreeable to these [conditions], they should leave. But even on this second occasion Balak said, come curse me this people for me , he did not want Balaam for any other purpose, except that of cursing the people. And Balaam, because of his overriding desire to go, did not inform them [that he may not curse the people] [instead] Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with them, like someone who is eager to fulfill their wish. Therefore God’s anger was kindled because he went, for had he informed them [of the conditions], he would not have gone.
Furthermore, a profanation of God’s Name was involved in this [behavior of Balaam], for since he went with them without explanation, whereas he was in fact under the control of God, they thought that He had given him permission to curse the people for them. Therefore [they thought that] God had reneged on that which He had said originally.
● According to Ramban, Balaam acts wrongly to both the messengers and to God. How?
● What might we learn about Balaam from his behavior?
Commentary: Rashi Bamidbar 22:22
An adversary against him It was an Angel of Mercy, and He wished to deter him from sinning so that he should not sin and perish.
● Rashi views the adversary as an act of kindness from God. Try to think of situations in which what hinders us from acting on our wishes might save us.
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Losing Lions
Bex Stern Rosenblatt
It can be shockingly easy to forget how close the wild, untamed, and untamable are to our lives. Even in the heat of summer, air conditioning is never far away and the most dangerous animal we are likely to meet is a mosquito. The world we live in can seem impossibly far from a world of lions and tigers and bears. We know our cats and our dogs and our goldfish. All other animals belong in children’s books or on camping trips, at the zoo or in cute videos on the internet. So how in the world are we supposed to understand this week s parashah and haftarah? What do we do with a talking donkey and a blood-drinking lion?
Jewish tradition cares about animals. We pay a good deal of attention to which we can eat. We go out of our way not to cause emotional or physical harm to animals when we must eat them. And there is all sorts of discussion about the souls or lack thereof of animals. Bereshit Rabbah 10:3 even explains the existence of mosquitos: God carries out God s purposes even with a snake, scorpion, gnat, or frog.
Moreover, the animals described in the Tanakh once meant something to the readers of the Tanakh. When the text chose to describe God as a lion, that description carried real meaning. Biblical Hebrew has five words meaning lion – we translate them all as lion because we no longer are able to make the distinctions about lions that were made by the writers of Biblical Hebrew. In the Book of Amos, God roars like a lion; in Lamentations, God stalks the nation like a lion in hiding. And when the text took those same lion images that described God and used them to describe Israel, those too carried meaning. In our parashah, Balaam describes Israel saying we are A people that rises like a lion, like the king of beasts gets up, and does not lie down until it devours its prey and drinks the blood of the slain. The haftarah picks up this same theme: Micah 5:7 speaks of the remnant of Jacob, saying that it will be in the midst of the many people like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a lion among flocks – when he passes through, he tramples and devours, with no one to save.
Lions show up incredibly frequently in the Tanakh, sometimes as actors in their own right, but most often in metaphors for God, Israel, Israelite tribes, the nations, enemies, or foreign kings. Lions are not being used to represent one thing; we cannot reassemble what a lion meant to the original audiences of the Tanakh based on analyzing the things for which they are used as metaphors. But we also cannot fully understand the metaphors without having a real understanding of life with lions, lives in which lions were a real threat to existence.
Once the lions are gone, what is the nation of Israel? Balaam could no longer describe us as the king of beasts; the remnant of Israel no longer devours. Do we already live in the idyllic world imagined for the end of days in Isaiah? A world in which lions and calves can play together because lions have become vegetarians? A world in which the wild has been tamed? Do we not need to imagine ourselves as blood-thirsty lions anymore because there is no cause to do so? Or have we lost something?