The Power of Blessings
It strikes me that this week's Torah portion, Balak, almost couldn't feel more relevant to the moment! Its central story is a rich and interesting one. (If you aren't yet familiar with it, you're welcome to click here to read the parashain its entirety on Sefaria, or here to view a cute two-minute BimBam video.) Here's my summary version, in a nutshell:
Balak, the king of Moab, hears that the Israelites are headed his way. He knows that they have recently defeated a number of nearby kingdoms in battle, and he's terrified for himself and his people.
To deal with this threat, Balak hires a secret weapon: a local prophet named Bilaam, who he tasks with cursing the Israelites.
The prophet and God engage in some verbal wrestling about whether or not he should undertake the mission, until finally Bilaam goes. On his way to the Israelites' encampment in the wilderness, though, Bilaam's donkey halts suddenly and refuses to continue moving, as an angel is standing in his path blocking the way. Bilaam, however, cannot see the angel and beats the donkey, who then opens its mouth and scolds Bilaam. This part of the story is resolved by the angel of the Lord telling Billaam: "Go with the men. But you must say nothing except what I tell you."
Finally, the prophet finally reaches his destination, a hill above the Israelite camp. Looking out over the camp, he opens his mouth to do the job he was hired to do of cursing the Israelites, but each time he does so, God puts words in Bilaam's mouth and out comes a blessing instead! In line after line of poetic verse, Bilaam praises the Israelites, infuriating the Moabite king Balak. Ultimately both prophet and king return home, unsuccessful in their bid to damage the Israelites.
When we read the same Torah stories in a cyclical way each year, what we see in the text certainly relates to the lens we bring to it, based on what's happening in our own minds and in the world around us in real time. Given the week it's been in terms of the American political landscape, then, it's probably not surprising that I am finding multiple lessons embedded in this morality tale of a parasha that feel like they speak very directly to this moment. Here are three that have jumped out at me this week:
1) At the very beginning of the parasha, the text reads: "Balak son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. Moab was alarmed... and dreaded the Israelites, saying... 'now this horde will lick clean all that is about us as an ox licks up the grass of the field'" (Num. 22:2-4). Picking up on the Moabites' extreme fear and on the fact that Balak is first introduced without the title of king, 20th century commentator Haym Soloveichik explains that Balak begins as "a courtier who seized the throne by manipulating people's fear of Israel." Reading Balak in this way -- as a political strongman who asserts control over his followers by stoking fear -- we can hear a warning in the text: Be wary of leaders who traffic in fear-mongering and scape-goating; they are not to be trusted!
2) From that place of fear, Balak is willing to use violence against his rivals. His "assassination attempt" on the Israelites doesn't require an AR rifle, of course; rather, his weapon of choice is a prophet with a reputation of success and a big arsenal of curses to draw on. The text is crystal clear, though, that God loathes Balak's attempt to try to silence one's enemies through such violent means.
3) Ultimately, the punchline of the story is that when Bilaam does open his mouth to say something about Israel, only blessings come out. He conveys this to Balak in line after line of oracle-like text, for example: "How can I damn whom God has not damned, How doom when the Lord has not doomed?" (Num. 23:8) and "No harm is in sight for Jacob, No woe in view for Israel" (Num. 23:21). The bottom line is that sometimes would-be curses can, in fact, be transformed into blessings. The world can be surprising; we cannot always know what's going to happen next. We may brace for a curse, but we should also stay open to the possibility that curses can give way to blessings at any time.
This week, we here in America have witnessed a violent assassination attempt and a political convention filled with scary rhetoric. At the time of my writing this message, it’s not clear which names will even be on the ballot in November’s presidential election. Indeed, these are wild times, filled with a sense of foreboding and anxiety for many of us. But, if we can take the messages of Parashat Balak to heart, we might take some comfort in knowing that fear-mongering and political violence will not win out in the end; our Torah has given us the ability to see through these tactics for thousands of years! While we may yet have to weather some hard and unpredictable times, as our modern-day story continues to unfold, ultimately, the power of blessing is much stronger than the power of the curse.
So may it be this year -- and may we work to make it so!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum
P.S. - The most famous line of the blessing that accidentally emerges from the mouth of the prophet Bilaam is "Mah tovu ohalecha yaakov mishkenotecha yisrael," "How good are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel." This line has been set to music countless times, and it's a song I associate with Jewish summer camp. Over the past couple of weeks, I had the pleasure of visiting a Jewish camp in Colorado (Ramah in the Rockies) where my youngest, Elisha, was a camper, and it's hard to imagine any setting in which the tents of the Jewish people could be deemed more beautiful and full of joy! This week, it's RLO's turn to visit Kavana kids at Camp Kalsman (see below!), and next week Rabbi Jay is off to summer camp! In total, we have Kavana kids attending a total of at least nine different Jewish camps this summer (perhaps the most ever) -- hurray! In honor of this week's parasha and to add a little camp flavor, we'll be singing Mah Tovu at tonight's Shabbat in the Park event -- please register quickly (by noon today) if you'd like to join us this evening.
