THE LORD PLACED SOMETHING INTO BALAAM'S

MOUTH, AND HE SAID, "RETURN TO BALAK AND SAY AS FOLLOWS." BALAAM RAISED HIS EYES AND

SAW ISRAEL DWELLING ACCORDING TO ITS TRIBES, AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD RESTED UPON

HIM… HOW GOODLY ARE YOUR TENTS, O JACOB, YOUR DWELLING PLACES, O ISRAEL!

A Curse into a

Blessing or a Blessing into a Curse? Love and Hate.

And the Lord

put a thing in the mouth of Balaam. R. Eleazar said, An angel; R. Jonathan

said: a hook.

R. Johanan said: From the blessings of that wicked man you

may learn his intentions: Thus he wished to curse them that they [the

Israelites] should possess no synagogues or school – houses – [this is deduced

from] How goodly are your tents, O Jacob; that the Shekhinah should not rest

upon them – and your dwelling places, O Israel; that their kingdom

should not endure – As the valleys are they spread forth; that they

might have no olive trees and vineyards – as gardens by the river's side;

that their odor might not be fragrant – as the trees of lign aloes which the

Lord has planted; that their kings might not be tall – and as cedar

trees beside the waters; that they might not have a king the son of a king

– He shall pour the water out of his buckets; that their kingdom might

not rule over other nations – and his seed shall be in many waters; that

their kingdom might not be strong – and his king shall be higher than Agag;

that their kingdom might not be awe-inspiring – and his kingdom shall be

exalted. R. Abba b. Kahana said: All of them reverted to a curse, excepting

the synagogues and schoolhouses, for it is written, But the Lord your God

turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved thee;

the curse, but not the curses.

(Sanhedrin 105b)

and saw Israel dwelling according to its tribes – Not like the

first time he looked at them to give them the evil eye, but rather with the

love he comprehended at that hour, and so writes the RaShBaM, and accordingly

it is written, and the spirit of God was upon him – that the holy spirit

rested upon him out of love and fondness.

(NeTziV MiVolozhin: Ha'Amek Davar

Bamidbar 24:2)

The

Parasha that Should Have Been Written

David

Yiselzohn

Each and every story in the Torah demands of us a second

reading. It calls out to us to take another look and search for the meaning

hidden behind the words and terminology AND to come to conclusions about

ourselves. The story of parashat Balak seems quite straight-forward. The King

of Moab fears Israel and he enlists the help of a sorcerer to curse the

Israelites but – as in every good movie – things change at the last moment, he

utters a blessing instead of a curse and the Israelites are saved. Such stories

are interesting enough to read as they are, leaving us disinclined to seek

their deeper significance. If things are so simple, why dig for profundities?

All too frequently, we make the mistake of thinking a story

is simple without asking ourselves the following slightly odd question: did

this story really need to be written down to begin with?

If we look at the Talmudic tractate Bava Batra (12b), we will find

there a list of the authors of biblical books, including this dictum: "Moses wrote his book and the Balaam passage." Rashi

there adds: "The Balaam

not needed by Moses nor by his Torah nor by the account of his deeds." It

would appear that without Moses' insistence, this parasha would have never had

been included in the final redaction of Torah. What exactly did Moses find in

the story of Balaam that made him feel it must be included?

Following in the

footsteps of the Sages (Sifri

Devarim and other locations), the RaMBaN

proposes an interesting link between Moses and Balaam based on a verse dealing

with Moses' death found at the conclusion of the Torah: "There arose no further

of Moses, but among the nations there did arise one. And who was that? Balaam." It would be

interesting to imagine one of our contemporary exegetes drawing a similar

comparison between a Jewish sage and a clergyman belonging to another faith. The

RaMBaN continues to explain: "But there are differences

would speak with him, for it is said, speaks to him (7:89), but Balaam knew when God would speak to him, as is written, Who

standing, as is written, And you stand here with Me (Devarim

5:28); while Balaam

king spends on his table."

Summing up RaMBaN's comparisons, we notice something much

more radical; prophecy was a difficult business for Moses – it was easier for

Balaam. Still, our question remains unanswered: why did Moses include Balaam's

story in the Torah? It would seem to have been more advantageous to him to leave

such a "strong" prophet outside of the cannon.

Two relatively simple solutions may be offered to this

problem, as long as we don't delve too deeply into it. First of all, since

Moses was famously the most modest of human beings, therefore he would have no

qualms about mentioning in the Torah a prophet more "powerful" than

himself. Secondly, if Moses felt genuinely secure about his status, he would

find it unnecessary to ignore the story of Balaam, and so he included it in the

Torah in order to publicize how the curse was transformed into a blessing. None

of this, however, explains Rashi's comments in Bava Batra in which he claims

that Moses had no need for the story. If he had no use for it, why did he

record it?

We have seen that there is a connection between Moses and

Balaam; we can see that the similarities between the two men make their

differences all the more apparent.

The Mishnah in Pirkei Avot (5:19) distinguishes

clearly between the disciples of our father Abraham and those of Balaam: "The

disciples of the wicked Balaam have an evil eye, a haughty spirit and a gross

soul." In his commentary on Pirkei Avot, the RaMBaM writes that, "The

'good eye' refers to being satisfied [with one's lot], and a 'humble soul' is

takes care [to avoid sin], and a 'lowly spirit' is exceeding humility." Moses,

as we have mentioned above, was the most humble of men, a virtue he may have

inherited from our father Abraham. Balaam, the possessor of "powers"

similar to those of Moses was the exact opposite – he had an "evil

eye." He was not satisfied with what he had, he was not humble, and as we

can see from how his story turns out, he was not careful. Regarding this

Mishnah, R. Ovadia MiBartenura writes that it was Balaam's gross soul that led

him to use the Moabite girls as harlots, in contrast to Moses, who sets a

plague against the Israelites when they turn to fornication.

We see that the Mishnah takes pains to open the gulf as widely

as possible between the two characters, something which calls for a deeper

understanding of Balaam's train of thought. In one of his articles, Dr. Rapfael

Yarhi points out that we find differences in Balak's knowledge of God

throughout the course of the parasha. At first – even when receiving prophetic

revelation – he relates to God as a "god" [elohim] perhaps

just another god among the gods of the nations. After the incident with the

talking ass, he suddenly uses the term "Lord" [Hashem] instead of

"God": Perhaps the Lord will happen to appear to me (23:3); The Lord

placed a word into Balaam's mouth (23:5).

What does this change signify? The Gemara (Sanhedrin

106a)

relates to Balaam as someone who undergoes a process during the course of the

parasha. R. Yohanan claims that he started as a prophet and then became a

sorcerer. That is an interesting idea, because the process – starting with the

revelatory dream, the talking ass, and the preparations to curse the Israelites

– seems to be more one of someone who moves towards belief in the

"Lord" instead of belief in "God." R. Yohanan calls for an

inverted understanding of the situation (and see the NeTziV's

comments in his Ha'Amek Davar).

In regards to the curses, the Or HaHayyim (on

23:8)

writes: "When Balaam wanted to curse a nation he would choose an hour of

wrath… Balak thought that the Israelite people would not stop sinning… that

is why Balaam said, How can I curse, etc., meaning the transcendent root

has no control over the distant part of the branches of holiness grasped by the

Israelite people, through which he could excite the force of judgment against

them." Balaam and Balak's error was that they believed in "God"

rather than in "Hashem"; they did not learn that the Holy One,

blessed be He, is slow to anger and abundant in kindness. Balaam's

attempts to arouse anger were directed towards the god he knew, who would not

recall the Israelites' good deeds and who would allow the curses to harm them

after Balaam "reminded" that god of his anger against them.

Balaam' progress in his relationship to Hashem seems

positive, but he still chooses to curse the Israelites. Here we can see the

difference between Balaam and Moses. Balaam may have been endowed with

"stronger" prophetic powers, and perhaps his curse would have

destroyed or seriously harmed the People Israel, but the Holy One blessed be He

chose to place words in his mouth that alluded to the future redemption. At the

end of the day, Balaam's story is a tale of bad choices. That is the whole

difference.

When a child is taught the right path, even if he has the

best possible teachers and enjoys the best possible educational means, only he

himself can ultimately choose between good and evil, between a positive and a

negative path, between being a disciple of Moses or of Balaam.

Perhaps Moses included the story of Balaam in the Torah to

show us the power of free choice. The Sages point out that Balaam's prophetic

powers did not fall short of Moses' – but it was only in prophetic power that

he was Moses' equal. At the end of the day, the difference between them was a

matter of free choice. It is hard to imagine how the Torah would have been

written had Balaam chosen the correct path. It is not entirely clear why a man

as wicked as Balaam possessed prophetic powers on a par with those of Israel's

savior. However, beyond all of this – it is the path that we choose which

ultimately determines who we are and how we will be remembered.

Our teacher Moses also made some unfortunate choices in his

life, including one bad choice that kept him from entering the Land of Israel. He

included the story of Balaam in the Torah in order that we understand the power

of choices and to teach us to use the powers given us to make correct choices.

David Yiselzohn is a teacher.

On People. Asses,

Sorcerers, and the Will of God

Then the Lord opened

the ass's mouth – to inform us that the mouth and tongue are under his

control; should he wish to curse, his mouth in under his control.

(Bamidbar Rabbah Parasha 20)

Ten things were created

on the eve of Sabbath at twilight, namely: the mouth of the earth, the mouth of

the well, the mouth of the ass, the rainbow, the manna, the shamir,

the shape of the written characters, the engraving instrument, and the talents

of stone. Some include also the demons, the grave of Moses, and the ram of our

father Abraham; others include also the original tongs, for tongs can be made

only by means of tongs.

Mishnah, Avot 5:6)

The eve of the first

Shabbat of the six days of creation; not that they were actually created then,

for should you really suppose that if Father Abraham's ram and Balaam's ass

lived thousands of year, our holy Torah would have concealed this great miracle

from us? But the intention is to tell that He implanted in His creation the potential

to produce the miracle at its appointed hour.

(Tiferret Yisrael on Avot ibid., ibid.; see

also Pesahim 54a)

…Now we can certainly

comprehend the opinion of those of our commentators who understand the dialogue

between the ass and man as expressing the scorn with the Torah holds these

beliefs, contempt for human "wisdom's" conceit which believes that

the sorcerer-magician-augurer has the power to curse, i.e., to force

divine powers to obey him.

(Nehama Leibowitz: Studies in Bamidbar, p. 298)

There is a People that

Dwells Apart – Promise or Challenge?

A people that dwells apart