Parashat Balak - The Power of Blessings

Parashat Balak presents a very interesting sequence of events. These past weeks as we’ve read sefer Bamidbar, we’ve encountered numerous incidents in which the Children of Israel behave badly and are reprimanded quite steeply. The tide has indeed turned in Parashat Balak. Words of immense beauty and profundity are spoken by the prophet Bilam, a non-Jewish prophet sent explicitly by the king of Moab, Balak to curse his enemies, the Children of Israel. Instead of cursing the Children of Israel as he is supposed to, Bilam blesses them thrice, his blessings increasingly beautiful and filled with words of great comfort. One of his blessings, how goodly are your tents, your dwelling places, O Israel was included as part of our daily liturgy, the first words traditionally said upon entering the synagogue in the morning. It is quite amazing that the words from a non-Jewish prophet are such an integral part of Jewish liturgy.

Needless to say, Balak is quite displeased, his anger no doubt stoked when Bilam prophesizes that the Children of Israel will always be victorious over the Moabites.

Several aspects of this narrative are quite striking. Right from the get-go, Bilam appears to be a reluctant prophet, in the tradition of many other prophets before him and since. Two delegations are sent from Balak to convince Bilam to do the king’s bidding, and each time, Bilam is promised tremendous rewards. Bilam, following the command of G-d, declines the task the first time around and upon G-d’s command accepts it the second, only to be thwarted en route when an angel of G-d impedes the movement of the donkey upon which Bilam was riding, causing her to first swerve to either side and then stop dead in her tracks when the road became too narrow for her to avoid a collision with the angel. Frustrated, Bilam beats the donkey each time, and finally, the third time he strikes her, she opens her mouth and asks, one can imagine with a significant amount of incredulity in her voice the reason for his behavior, reminding him that she has been a steadfastly loyal donkey, upon whom he has ridden his entire life, and would she ever intentionally do this to him, to which he, perhaps a bit more humbly this time answers in the negative. The angel then makes himself manifest and explains the reason for his presence.

There is much we can learn from this passage. Bilam is no doubt frustrated by the fact that he is in a sense a constrained prophet, only able to say what G-d commands and nothing else. On top of this aggravation, he is thwarted en route by his donkey who had never before acted in such a manner. In his anger at the whole situation, he strikes his donkey, who then rebukes him, reminding him that there is a method to her madness per se, a reason she is acting the way she is. In our own lives and in our relationships with friends, family, significant others, co-workers and even strangers, we are often quick to make snap judgments or assume that a person’s intentions are other than they are. Too often, based on our preconceived notions or on the narratives we construct, we place events within a certain frame, not stopping to consider other perspectives. Instead of acting as swiftly as Bilam, perhaps we ought to make the space necessary to consider the perspective of the other so that we can build bridges of understanding and lines of communication.

I am also quite struck by the profundity of Bilam’s blessings, each seemingly more beautiful than the last. We are in the midst of the month of Tammuz, in which the fast of the 17th of Tammuz, when the walls of Jerusalem were breached as well as other tragedies occurred is observed. This fast ushers in the three weeks leading up until Tisha b’Av, the ninth of Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar on which we fast a full twenty-five hours and mourn the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem as well as many other countless tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, including the Spanish Inquisition and expulsions from Spain and Portugal, the Pogroms in Eastern Europe and the Shoah or Holocaust. In the midst of such great national sorrow and sadness, Bilam’s blessings reminds us that we can get through this period, that even in the midst of sorrow there can be joy and comfort, that despite all that we have endured we can and must continue forward.