Bilaam and Change

Midrash, Bamidbar Rabbah asks:

“Why don’t animals speak?”

“If they were able to speak it would be impossible for them to work for humans and no one could stand against them.  For here is this donkey, the most stupid of all creatures, and then there was her master, Balaam, the wisest of all men, and he could not contend with the donkey.”

“Therefore out of consideration for people, the Holy One closed the mouths of beasts.”

Remember the last time an animal spoke in the Torah?  It was in the Garden of Eden.  And that event was so cataclysmic it ended with the first man women disabusing one another ending with their expulsion from Eden.  It all started with a talking snake. 

Such a comment gels with the Torah, which states that “God opened the mouth of the donkey…” (Num. 22:28).  Until now, it was firmly shut along with all the other beasts of the world since the time of Eden. 

According to one Hasidic source, the nations of the world hear that Moshe rabbenu has led the forces of Israel from bondage and through glorious conquests since their liberation.  They further murmured that Moshe’s strength was inimical to him: His speech abilities enabled the Israelites to vanquish all their enemies.  That is why God disproved them by placing the power of speech in the donkey’s mouth.  This would prove the power of God was the source of all true power (imrei kohen)

The donkey also has a past.  According to Midrash he was a gift given by Jacob to pharaoh.  You will remember how Jacob spent his final years in Egypt, brought by his son Joseph, viceroy to the throne.

Jacob gifted the donkey to the Pharaoh with the caveat that the king always treats the Israelites kindly.  Time passed and Bilaam, the prophet-for-hire, bent the ear of the Pharaoh and convinced him that Pharaoh could make better use of the Jews by making them work for him, eventually enslaving them. Bilaam further advised Pharaoh to increase the quota of bricks that the Jews were forced to make.

It is interesting what the Midrash is doing. The Midrash is trying to sew the thread between various stories so that we can get a bigger picture of these narratives.  Everything is connected.  Bilaam’s noxious behavior is consistent throughout the years.  He can spotted throughout the ages advising people on how best to hurt one another.

Do people change?  Of course they do but it does not come easily or without effort.  Most times, the effort comes from elsewhere, from the unconsidered aspects of life.  There often needs to be an “emergency” or an unavoidable conflict that forces us to bend. In Bilaam’s instance change does not come until God decides that He will intervene. 

That is where the donkey comes in.  Apparently, Bilaam refuses change until he hears it from an unlikely source, one that has remained silent since Eden.

Shlach Lecha

Faith

The Midrash states that nothing can compare with the person who risks his life to fulfill a mitzvah.  Let the truth be told; we are here only because someone risked their life to escape the clutches of people who were bent on destroying them.  It is just like the powerful and prescient narrative of the Passover Haggadda, “A wandering Aramean tried to destroy my father.”  That is how Jacob wound up living in Egypt.  He ran from Laban who was intent on murdering him.  Is your family’s story very different?  Probably not. 

         Although prior generations were reluctant to share their painful journeys, we know the truth of it.  They were running from terror.  That is how most Jews in the world arrived where they are today.  Some edict, pogrom, a threat or Holocaust pushed them toward an opaque, unknown future.  We are alive today because of they left their roots.

Emunah is the Hebrew word for “faith.”  Emunah is connected to another word that is familiar to everyone, “Amen.”   Both have the same Hebrew base.  Whenever we utter “Amen” we are affirming our faith in what has been stated.

This week’s Torah reading, Shlach Lecha, is about both elements, making journey to an unknown place and having faith.

God did not command Moshe to send out people to spy the Land of Israel; the people demanded it.  So Moshe, according to Sforno, deliberately handed over the task of determining the viability of the Land to the chiefs of the tribes, knowing they would be fearless and honest.  Yet, his trust was misplaced. The chiefs and nation as a whole lacked the “emunah” in God’s word and hence they had forty years of exile and wandering.

Rashi later observed that if the Israelites had faith in God’s promise to deliver them safely, not only would they have been spared a generation in the desert but many wars when they subsequently encountered hostile tribes along the way.

In a more personal sense, we are commanded to follow God’s mitzvot, whether we understand their meaning or not.  Such is an act of “emunah.”  To do a mitzvah is by definition an act of faith.  Implicit in the action, doing the mitzvah, is the idea of God (if there is law, there must be a Lawgiver).  When we follow God’s dicta we are acknowledging it, as well as Him.

In this way each of us is on a life-long journey.  We do not know the destination but we have all the necessary provisions to keep us on the right path.  Essentially, teaches the Safat Emet, in following the mitzvot we are faithfully (maintaining our emunah) adhering to a journey that will keep us safe and end in the promised land of our future.   In his commentary, the Safat Emet reminds us of the phrase from Ecclesiastes, “There is a time for every purpose under heaven.”  The way he understands this statement is to underscore the words “under heaven.”  Tread the path of God and all else will make sense, even the parts that we do not understand.

According to our sages, the date when the tribal chiefs returned with their faithless report was Tisha B’Av, the generational night of tragedy and weeping.  This date, which we mark yearly by fasting, reading Lamentations and recalling the terrible events of the past, is less about history and tragedy and more about faith moving forward.

Going back to the narrative in the Torah, when the people heard that the land of Israel was too great and overwhelming for them they responded, “Let us appoint a new leader that will take us back to Egypt!”  What was in front of the people was unfathomable whereas the past was known.  Despite the fact that Egypt represented their tortured past, it was preferable for them to go backward instead of forward. 

We know that was a dreadful mistake in reading this ancient story.  We know how it turned out.  Is our present day lives all that different?  Isn’t having faith, moving into an uncertain future, less palatable than moving backward?  Even if moving backward brings us into the arms of diminution of character or will bring us pain?

Emunah is the hallmark of this week’s parasha and what ought to be the hallmark of our lives.

Do not look over your shoulder at what was: Look forward towards what can be.

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D'var Aher

Dialogue from the 2,000 year-old man:

Carl Reiner: "What was the means of transportation then?"
Mel Brooks: "Mostly fear."
Reiner: "Fear transported you?"
Brooks: "Fear, yes. An animal would growl — you would go two miles in a minute. Fear would be the main propulsion."

Fear is a great force for movement.  Instincts allow us to save ourselves from potential threats.  Fear also diminishes us.

In the week’s Torah portion we read of how the fear kept the generation of the desert from transcending to a higher level of life.

The Israelites, still newly sprung from the Egyptian slavery were on the verge of entering into the land which God promised. Yet they could not bring themselves to summon the courage to engage their destiny.  They saw a land filled with unknown terrors, giants that would squash them, a land which they were undeserving of entering, and strange people who might be friends or foes.

God granted their wish.  They would not come into Israel for another generation, when they would have hopefully grown out of their self-imposed limitations.

We are those Jews, still wrestling against the tide of fear; afraid to speak up when immigrants are abused, afraid to stand up for ourselves when virulent anti-Semitism arises and personally daunted to take on new challenges.

We read the story of the Shlach Lecha and the fears faced by our ancestors as a personal trial to speak up and stand up when it matters most.