Parashat Balak: When a Blessing can become a Curse

This week we read how Balaam is sent by Balak, a king of the Moabites, to lay a curse on Israel. Israel is on its trek to Canaan; Balak fears that Israel would defeat his people in battle and overrun his territory. Balaam, a powerful soothsayer, knows some of the limits of his powers, and learns more about the limits of his vision along the way. None the less, he is told by Hashem to go along with Balak’s delegation and attempt to do what they ask of him. Balaam makes several attempts, but instead of casting curses upon Israel, he utters words of praise. That is the story in a nutshell.

The first of these blessings raises a question. We read the following:

הֶן־עָם לְבָדָד יִשְׁכֹּן וּבַגּוֹיִם לֹא יִתְחַשָּׁב

There is a people that dwells apart, among the nations not reckoned. (Nu 23:9)

How, exactly, is this a blessing? In a literal sense, it can refer to security. Balaam sees them alone in their world, and the blessing is one to remain unencumbered by the designs of others. If only things could have turned out that way. For the land promised to Israel is one that was forever at the crossroads of history. It was always the junction between Europe and Asia Minor, and Africa, eyed by empires as an invaluable piece of real estate. To this day, it is the most fought over piece of territory that exists. Even if its mercantile and military value is not what it once was, its spiritual, emotional, and political value is unquestionable.

But there is another way of reading this verse. Israel, as a people, should remain separate from the world around it, unconcerned by the world outside of it.

Should Israel live in isolation and seclusion? Obviously, there are those who believe this should be so; let us live alone, away from everyone else. Let us do our own things in our own way. We have nothing for you, and you have nothing for us. This is the ideal of the Jew who opts for the ghetto. It will, forever, be us against the rest of the world, both spiritually and politically, and so we should separate ourselves from all others. For those who see the world in those terms, this verse can be read as a blessing of isolation.

But is that what the Torah intends for us? And if so, is this really a blessing?

If that is the intention, then the verse would have to be removed from the context of Balaam’s oracles. In this first one, Israel lives in secure isolation, but in the succeeding oracles, Israel emerges increasingly triumphant and powerful. It becomes clear that isolation cannot last for long, regardless of how good it appears.

The verse makes use of the word לבדד to signify Israel’s aloneness. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his recent book, Present Tense, notes that it has a negative connotation. In Bereshit we are told, following the creation of man, לֹא־טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָאָדָם לְבַדּו, it is not good for man to be alone. (Gn 2:18) The opening verse of Eicha says אֵיכָה | יָשְׁבָה בָדָד הָעִיר רַבָּתִי עָם הָיְתָה כְּאַלְמָנָה, How solitary sits the city once full of people. (Lam 1:1) We find it taking on a positive dimension only when it speaks of Hashem, who is One and always alone.

If this verse advocates Jewish isolation as a blessing, then it is one founded in negativity. Humans are social beings; as individuals, as families, as nations, we cannot survive in isolation. Time has taught us that we are interdependent beings, and that we must interact. It can lead to mistrust of all others and narrow self perceptions, all of which can lead to dangerous outcomes when, inevitably, we do come to interact with others.

But what is even more important is the outcome of the second half of this passage: וּבַגּוֹיִם לֹא יִתְחַשָּׁב - among the nations not reckoned. How is this consonant with the task of the Jewish people? As Jews, we are chosen - yes, chosen (so many Jews shudder at the thought of a chosen people without any understanding of what it means!) - to perform a task: to make Hashem’s presence known, to bring Godliness into this world. That is the role of a ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש, a kingdom of priests and a holy people. If we are to be a people that is not to be reckoned, then we cannot become the fulfillment of what Hashem promised to Avram when He told him to leave his homeland:

וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה:  וַאֲבָרְכָה מְבָרֲכֶיךָ וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ אָאֹר וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה

I will make you into a great people, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and  you will be a blessing. I will bless those that bless you, and those who curse you I will execrate, and all the families of the land will be blessed through you. (Gn 12:2-3)

Remaining alone may be fine for the insecure or inferior, but for a proud people with a mission, it is a sentence to a solitary confinement. Torah offers us strength to face the challenges of this world, even of those who wish to deny us our role and our destiny.

Balaam was no friend of Israel. He would have been happy to utter curses, and when he had the opportunity to create a crisis, he did, as we read at the end of the parasha with the incitement at Ba’al Pe’or. If Israel were to be blessed by self isolation, the only beneficiaries could be those peoples who could only live by values that are antithetical to Godliness. While the Jewish people have had to deal with much ostracism over the years, we can always look to our strengths and achievements, and to the blessings that the world has benefitted from our blessings, most of which have been realized not in isolation.

תמוז תש’’ע/June 2010

Parshat Chukkat: The Death of Aaron

I have been derelict in my writing of these Divrei Torah in the 10 weeks since my father died. It has not been easy to concentrate, to muster the energy to get some things done. What follows was written last week, and had I not been caught in traffic on Friday afternoon it might have been shared before Shabbat. I share it now because I think there is something to learn from this. What’s more is that my dad’s Hebrew name was Aharon, and like his namesake, he was a kohen. The lesson that I derive here is very much in tune with the way my dad lived and believed.

There is a phrase that is used by mourners when referring to the one for which they mourn, particularly when repeating Torah that was learned from them: הריני כפרת משכבו, which can be translated as “I am an atonement for his resting place.” (B. Kiddushin 31b) When we say הריני כפרת משכבו, we ask that we should be seen as agents acting on their behalf. When a loved one dies, we try to think of them in a positive light. We also try to carry on their legacy in this world. If that   person taught us to do good in this world, then it is clear by our actions that we have learned from that person. I hope that I am up to fulfilling that duty, one that I accept with great love. - MM.

Parshat Chukkat: The Death of Aaron

As we read the account of the death of Aaron, the older brother of Moshe and the first High Priest, many commentaries are struck by one seemingly insignificant word. The verse describing the reaction to Aaron’s death states:

ויראו כל־העדה כי גוע אהרן ויִבכו את־אהרן שלשים יום כל בית ישראל

The entire community saw that Aaron had died, and the entire house of Israel mourned him thirty days.

There is nothing particularly striking about anything in this verse. Why wouldn’t the entire community mourn the passing of its high priest? A reader familiar with the Torah would recall one of its concluding verses, relating the public mourning following the death of Moshe:

 ויבכו בני ישראל את־משה בְערבת מואב שלשים יום ויתמו ימי בכי אבל משה

The children of Israel wept for Moshe for thirty days in the plains of Moab, and they concluded the days of weeping, the mourning of Moshe.

There is a sense of a conspicuous absence of the adjective כל, denoting the entirety of Israel. Can we not assume that the entire house of Israel would mourn for Moshe as they would for Aaron?
The rabbinic tradition attributed a particular characteristic to Aaron. We read in Mishna Avot (1:12)

הלל אומר: הוי כתלמידיו של אהרון: אוהב שלום ורודף שלום, אוהב את הברייות ומקרבן לתורה

Hillel taught: Be like the disciples of Aaron: Love peace, pursue peace, love living creatures and attract them to Torah.

The Talmud elaborates on this (b.Sanhedrin 6b):

וכן משה היה אומר: יקוב הדין את ההר. אבל אהרן אוהב שלום ורודף שלום ומשים שלום בין אדם לחבירו 

Moshe would say: The law pierces the mountain; but Aaron would love peace and pursue peace, and would make peace between people.

It is easy enough to derive a lesson about the importance of promoting peace and interpersonal harmony above and beyond the strict rule of law. But there is another interesting aspect to the character of Aaron in relation to his role as high priest. Anyone familiar with the role of the temple priest would sense that it was the keeper of the more detailed aspects of religious life. Parashat Chukkat itself opens with the details of the red heifer, which gives only a minimal look at the minutiae with which the high priest and his associates were concerned. Scholars of the biblical criticism developed what is known as the “documentary hypothesis” of the authorship of the Torah, a theory that divided it into 4 sources. One of the sources was known as “P”, the Priestly source, characterized by its interest in record keeping and distinct orderliness. In Freudian terms, the priesthood would be associated with the anal-retentive aspects of religious life. This is hardly the type of characteristic one would associate with a peacemaker. But it is true that the keepers of the Temple service had to deal with very strict and orderly rules and regulations.
What does this tell us about Aaron? We can derive that Aaron was able to maintain a sense of balance. On the one hand, he was responsible for the minutiae of the maintenance of the mishkan and the duties of the priesthood, but the strict detail associated with his duties did not overwhelm his humanity. While Moshe may have had a strict law and order orientation (which is the implication of the passage in Sanhedrin, above,) Aaron could deal with people as people, knowing how to bring them together when circumstances might have otherwise torn them apart knowing the ultimate value of peace in an otherwise dangerous world.

A well known verse in Mishle (Proverbs) offers the following maxim:

דרכיה דרכי-נעם;    וכל-נתיבותיה שלום

The ways [of Torah] are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. (3:17)

Sometimes, in our desire to fulfill our religious duties, we overlook the larger picture, our duty to make  Hashem’s presence in the world manifest through our example. But if we do so only by looking at the strict letter of the law and disregarding the value of peace, we take it a step backwards.

תמוז תש”ע/June 2010