Dvar Torah for Balak
BaMidbar, 22:5-21 (p. 857)
At the beginning of this week’s parsha, right before the whole business with the talking
donkey, we find an incredible story. Allow me to read it to you! (Read 22:5-21). Balak,
the king of Moav is afraid of the Jewish people; he has seen what they did to the
Amorites and he’s seeking a new weapon against them. Moav is a warring nation, but
what secret weapon does Balak seize upon to attack his enemy? A verbal weapon, a
curse, commissioned from a nearby prophet or magician, Bilaam. This is a very odd
idea: I would point out that it is usually WE who think in terms of God’s power to effect
the actions of others. But this God is not Moav’s God, and for Balak to try to incur our
own God’s power against us is a radical idea. Of course, we know Balak’s plan didn’t
work, but I want to explore why he would choose this tactic of cursing his enemy before
battle.
Rabbi Marc Angel points out that such a curse, even if Bilaam had been able to utter it,
would have had no power over the Jewish people. A curse can only affect someone (let
us call him the “cursee”) if they believe in its power. And in the converse situation, a
blessing has tremendous power only IF the subject believes in the power of that
blessing. Like the bride who gives blessings out to her friends on her wedding day, her
friends are touched and blessed only if they believe in this powerful tradition. If not,
the blessing or the curse falls impotently to the ground, helping or hurting no one. It’s
like placebo drugs: they work for an ill person because of the patient’s fervent belief
that he or she is taking potent medicine. But if the patient is not aware of the impact
the drugs may have, there is no impact. The Jewish people were not aware of Bilaam’s
impending curse, and therefore it would not have affected them in battle.
On the other side of the coin, the curser, like the nation of Moab who has hired Bilaam
to curse Israel, CAN gain power by that curse, again, because they believe in its power.
So, God had two reasons to prevent Bilaam from uttering his curse: one, the Moabites
would have derived a psychological advantage as aggressors against the Jewish people,
and two, the Jewish people may have believed in its power and felt even more
vulnerable than they already did. If the Jewish people were more secure in their place
as God’s chosen people, protected and guided toward their land and their promised
destiny, they would have no need to fear such a symbolic curse. But we have seen time
and again, throughout Shemot, Vayikra and now Bamidbar, that our ancestors in the
desert had no such self-confidence on which to rely. Most recently, we saw that the
meraglim perceived themselves as victims and weak losers: “There we saw the nephilim,
the sons of the giant;….we were like grasshoppers in our eyes, and so we were in their
eyes”, and the people were more than ready to agree with that assessment: the people
actually wept in fear. With such a self-image, the curse of Bilaam could have had
tremendous power over the Jewish people, not militarily but psychologically.
I was thinking about a modern-day example where a curse is employed by the curser to
have power over us, but has none because we choose not to give it power. I thought
about the evangelical Christian right, which supports Israel partly for their own religious
goal of bringing all the Jews to Israel in preparation for the end of days, when their
belief holds that we will all be destroyed as non-believers. Many Jews feel threatened
by this theology, which they feel is a sort of curse on us, casting us as the villain in the
salvation narrative. Many Jews say, “we don’t want the Christian right as our allies in
Israel; they only support us to bring about their ‘second coming’, when we will all be
destroyed!” But does this theology of theirs affect us at all? Only if we buy into their
religious view, which of course, we don’t. Although it’s intended as a type of curse, it’s
actually a blessing: the blessing comes from the process by which they prepare for their
end of days, which includes support of Israel along the way. Their ulterior motive hurts
us not a bit, and the means to their end helps us a lot in the here and now. Again,
because we are secure in ourselves and in our own path, we are immune from their
curse, and we are open to receiving the blessing that comes in its place.
We can now understand why Balak chose a curse as his military tactic. The Jewish
people in the desert didn’t have the theological foundation or self-confidence to know
that, if Bilaam uttered his curse, it would have no impact on the battle. Much like other
battles, God was fighting on behalf of the people and with faith in God, the people had
no reason to fear, but the people weren’t in a frame of mind to understand that. They
were vulnerable to someone else’s curse, they already felt like grasshoppers in a land of
giants, so God protected them from Bilaam’s curse.
We see in this week’s parsha, that it’s God who is pulling the strings for the benefit of
the Jewish people. Maybe in 2,000 more years we will see how the same thing was
happening in our day, but it sure feels today like God is allowing foreign powers to curse
Israel with impunity. We need to work at our salvation from our end, with self-
confidence and faith, without feeling like grasshoppers in a land of giants, and hope and
pray that God is pulling the strings today as well.
Shabbat shalom!