Balak: And Reason Shall Not Prevail

Rembrandt: Balaam and the Ass

“In all things, reason should prevail,” wrote William Penn. Yet in quite a few things, we have lost reason altogether.

In this week’s portion, Balak, the pagan king of the Moabites, is desperately trying to protect his commonwealth. Israel has just routed Moab’s neighbors—the Bashonites and Amorites—and Balak knows that his nation may very well be next.  So he engages the services of a non-Israelite prophet, Balaam, whose task is to get the God of Israel to curse the Jewish people.  

In terms of military history, praying to one’s personal deity for victory is hardly remarkable. That’s what prayer is for. No more surprising is hiring a cleric to pray on one’s behalf, that’s what clerics are for. What is surprising is that Balaam is not asked to appeal to Moab’s gods for assistance but to enlist the enemy’s God—the Redeemer of Israel—instead.  

By way of an imperfect analogy, imagine if in the Middle Ages a Catholic general were to ask the Pope to invoke Muhammad as a way to curry advantage against an invading Moslem army. The idea abounds with absurdity. Even if Muhammad had any say in the matter, why should he forsake devotees of the Koran for a people who entirely reject the Word of Allah?

Yet, this is Balak and Balaam’s very strategy. ‘Make the God of Israel abandon his flock of monotheists and embrace the pagans of Moab.’ As to be expected, the plan fails miserably; Balaam is compelled by God to bless Israel instead of cursing them. Which begs the question, why was the plan even attempted?

Rashi brings down an insightful teaching on the verse: “And Balaam awoke in the morning and saddled his donkey.” (Num. 22.21) He writes, “From here we learn that hatred destroys common sense.” Balaam had numerous servants that could have done all his packing, yet in his zeal to curse Israel, he saddled the donkey himself. The stubborn mule of passion stamped out the cool stoicism of reason. Balaam’s heart brimmed with so much hatred there was little room left for good sense.

This aspect of Balaam’s personality is alluded to in the conclusion of the story, after Balaam has unwillingly blessed Israel for a fourth and final time: “Balaam arose and went and returned to his place; and also Balak returned to his way” (24:25). Perhaps the larger sense of the verse is that the repeated interventions of God left no lasting impression in the hearts of both men. Each returns to his old habits and prejudices. The truly stubborn never learn.

Bertrand Russell once quipped: ‘Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.” The book of Joshua records that Israel eventually ‘put Balaam to the sword.’ (13.22) Balaam simply could not stay home indefinitely, he had to try again, and his compulsion to harm Israel eventually lead to his own demise.   

It is testament to Jewish tradition that in every generation, students and scholars expound and derive new meaning from our beloved texts, and yet somehow, there always remains some new idea to add to the halls of Jewish learning. I fear, however, that what this week’s thought does not add but detract.

For in recent years, when I imagine the face of Balaam, it tends to resemble a certain type of villain that has become the fodder of daily news.  Two weeks ago, Balaam resembled a young white man who walked into a Black church study group and with a single pistol turned nine parishioners into martyrs at an African-Methodist Church in Charleston, S.C.. Last Friday, Balaam’s face bore a liking to that of the ISIS terrorists who blew up a Shi’ite Mosque in Kuwait. Intermittently, it is the face of the Ayatollahs in Iran or the Imams of Hamas. As for the latter, no amount of bloodshed and war has diminished their faith in Israel’s inevitable destruction. Such is their stubborn hatred.

Readers are often struck by the absurdity of Balaam’s talking donkey.  Like the talking serpent in Eden, the narrative beckons for an allegorical interpretation instead of a historical or scientific explanation. What ought to be noted, however, is that well before this she-ass (supposedly) spoke, the Torah records three times that she “saw the messenger of the Lord” blocking her path. –All while Balaam saw naught.  Seeing must always precede speaking. Balaam “the prophet,” may have spoken God’s words, but he did so without seeing any godliness on his own.  

One lesson perhaps: We, who pursue tolerance, may reach out to those who cling to racism, anti-Semitism, religious intolerance. We long to start a dialogue. But if the Balaams of the world, do not first see, of what is there to speak?

Black, white and nameless: Parashat Beha’alotecha (Numbers 8:1-12:16)

Black, white and nameless: Parashat Beha’alotecha (Numbers 8:1-12:16)

“And Miriam spoke, and Aaron, against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married: For he had married a Cushite woman”(Numbers 12:1).

Of the one woman, we know much; of the other, we know very little. 

Of Miriam, the prophetess, we are familiar with her deeds in Egypt and her song by the sea. We know her parents, Yocheved and Amram, and her brothers, Moses our teacher, and Aaron the High Priest. Of their likeness in Jewish history, none compare.

In the wilderness, no family was held in higher regard, and to the best of our knowledge, no woman was held in higher esteem. Upon Miriam’s death, we are told that the Congregation immediately thirsted for water (Numbers 20:1-2). The Talmud remarks that it was on account of Miriam’s righteousness that water flowed from the rock all those years in the wilderness (Taanith 9a).

In contrast, who is this other, “Cushite,” woman Moses reportedly has taken for a wife? She has no name, no family, no back story. However does she find herself in the camp of Israel and married to Moses, of all men? 

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus, perhaps to impress his Roman audience, records in his “Antiquities of the Jews” that in Moses’ younger years — as Prince of Egypt — he led a military campaign through the land of Ethiopia, and there took an Ethiopian princess, Tharbis, as his first wife. But if such a tradition about Moses existed in Israel’s collective memory — passed on orally outside the biblical canon — it likely would have found its way into early rabbinic texts such as the Midrash or Targum. No such text exists, making Josephus’ claim highly suspect. 

Slightly less implausible is an attempt to identify this Cushite woman with Moses’ Midianite wife, Tzippora, daughter of Yitro (see Rashi). But this raises difficulties. The Torah states twice in one verse (in case we doubted it) that Moses married a “Cushite woman.” Cush in the Bible begins in Ethiopia (below Egypt) and continues southward into Africa, quite a distance from the Midianite settlements in the Jordan-Arabia region. Imagine mistaking Sacramento for San Diego, or a Londoner for a Parisian.    

The simplest explanation, and the most credible, is that Moses took a second wife. We do not know the why or the when; and of the woman herself, we know little beyond her nationality. But perhaps half the lesson may be derived from the impoverished description of her personality, for it lays bare a stark difference in status and power between herself and Miriam.

How much more awful is the slander when a great woman such as Miriam, esteemed for her accomplishments and privileged by her familial bonds, criticizes a seeming “nobody,” an unnamed outsider from a distant and foreign land. With no blood ties to the Jewish people, or known accomplishments, her importance is derived from her husband. Without intrinsic worth, she is flippantly dismissed as Moses’ Cushite wife. 

The Torah does not detail what Miriam, and to some lesser extent Aaron, found bothersome about Moses and his wife. Perhaps Moses was neglecting his husbandly duties of intimacy with his beloved, or so claims Rashi. Perhaps Miriam and Aaron thought Moses’ Cushite wife to be unattractive; so writes Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra. More likely, Miriam thought it wrong that Moses should marry a foreigner instead of taking an Israelite wife. That Tzippora had been a foreigner could be forgiven, for at the time, Moses was living far from his brethren in Egypt when he took her as his wife. But later in the wilderness, among the Children of Israel, certainly Moses could have found a more fitting Israelite bride (Shadal).

Far more remarkable is what Miriam’s punishment says about her crime, for the Bible always metes out justice measure for measure. Miriam is publicly humiliated. First, Miriam’s skin turns flaky white by her having contracted tza’arat, the biblical skin disease. Second, she is shut outside the Israelite camp for seven days. In the Torah’s words, her personal shame was like that of a daughter whose “father spits before her face” in disgust (Numbers 12:14).

But how does this reprimand fit her offense? 

Conceivably, if Miriam used the term “Cushite” as a racial slur referring to skin color, it may be thought quite just that Miriam’s skin turned a sickly white color in rebuke. Additionally, if “Cushite” was used to convey the foreignness of Moses’ wife, it is fitting that Miriam is in turn made to feel the outsider as she is set apart outside the camp.  

Thus, in an instant, Miriam, an insider, comes to know the difficult predicament of being an alien — a predicament she should never have forgotten considering Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. 

What an apt lesson for minding the social divide between privileged and underprivileged, between those in the center and those on the fringes. After all, what an Israelite can suffer in Egypt, an Ethiopian can suffer in Israel. In God’s eyes, she who was superior today can become subordinate tomorrow, and vice versa. If Miriam can succumb to forgetfulness and pride, prejudice and xenophobia, we’d do well to doubly guard our words and deeds.