Hello everyone,

Welcome to the whacky world of Torah where things are not as they seem.  This week’s parsha (weekly Torah portion), at the beginning, seems one way, and then ends another way.  It is called Balak, and we start talking a lot about him.  That, however, is only to introduce our main character Bilim, who is hired to curse the children of Israel.  However, he tells his employer, Balak, that he will only do what haShem (god) tells him.   This is good enough for Balak, who nevertheless gets upset when Bilim keeps blessing the people.  And Bilim himself has to deal with a god that says: stay…go…stay…go.  And a donkey that talks back.  Finally his eyes get opened.  And at the end of the parsha, we see the Jewish people, who are doing things right for once, getting seduced by the daughters of Moab, which by-the-way, is what Ruth, who has a book in the bible (Tenach in Hebrew) named after her, is, and she is also the great grandmother of King David and the messiah.

So, what is haShem trying to tell us here (yes, I am making the assumption that the Torah is the divine word of god)?  To me, I see this parsha being about trust and faith in doing right.  Why is trust and faith so important?  Because you often do not see when you do what you are supposed to do, it prevents bad things from coming to you.  What we also see, is that haShem does give you many chances to do right before letting you hang yourself.  Let’s see how this works.

First we have Balak.  Now his whole job is to convince Bilim to curse Israel.  Why is this such a bad thing?  Well, perhaps because haShem has blessed Israel, Bilim is being asked/tempted to do the exact opposite of what haShem has done.  And what is Bilim’s purpose in all this?  Is it to show how easy it is to get tempted, or how confusing haShem can be?   Personally, I think he is showing us how easy it is to get seduced by the dark side.

What does it mean to be “seduced by the dark side?”  I see it as letting your ego, fears, and desires get in the way of “hearing” the messages haShem is giving us all the time.  For example, why does Balak send for Bilim?  Because he is afraid the tribes of Israel will destroy him and his people.  And where does this fear come from?  From what the tribes did the to Amorites.  However, if he would let go of his fear, he would see that the Israelites only want to pass thru the land; they fought only because the Amorites attacked.  The Edomites, on the other had, did not attack and so are none the worse for their interaction with the children of Israel.

Now let us look at the first time Balak’s emissaries come to Bilim, requesting him to curse the camp of Israel.  Bilim tells them he will give them an answer in the morning after he talks with haShem.  HaShem patiently tells him that he cannot curse the Jews because haShem, personally, has blessed them.  In my mind, this should be a done deal for Bilim.  Yet it isn’t, for he receives more emissaries and talks again to haShem.  Now, as we have seen in the past, if one bothers god enough, god will give that person what he wants – often with disastrous results!  See the episode of the Hebrews wanting meat, that we had earlier in this book we call B’midbar or Numbers.  So, haShem lets Bilim go, but only to do whatever god says.  Bilim repeats these words to Balak, but I am sure we have all experienced a person saying one thing and doing another.  Is this Bilim?

HaShem decides to test Bilim and discover his sincerity.  Is Bilim so focused on the task at hand of cursing the Jews that he will not be able to see a message put in front of his nose?  The test is an angel with a drawn sword that stands in front of Bilim’s donkey.  Bilim’s donkey stops to avoid this angel.  Bilim, on the other hand is too focused on his personal desires to notice the angel.  And is even too focused to pay attention, to wonder why his faithful donkey won’t obey him.  HaShem finally has to force his eyes open to see the angel.  You would think this would be enough to wake Bilim up, but it isn’t.  It takes Bilim two attempts at trying to curse the people before he finally wakes up and wholeheartedly does as haShem says.  It is at this point that Bilim is referred to as the man with the open eyes.  Because, you see, a person must open his eyes for himself, another cannot do it for him.  Or to put it another way, one cannot force another to behave a certain way, it can only come from within.

Now sometimes, god will help one wake up.  But to stay awake one must have faith in what they are doing.  One must trust, even when they cannot see the pitfalls that are being avoided.  Every once in a while we see the pitfalls we miss, but usually it is only when we become too focused and stop paying attention to the subtle messages from god, via the universe, that we wind up seeing these traps, and then we see them only because we are in them!

This parsha gives us a beautiful example of this.  We have Bilim ready to curse the tribes, and can’t.  Why?  Because there is no divination going on within the tribes, ie, they are doing what they are supposed to be doing and so nothing bad can happen to them.  And they do this by faith, for though we can see the threat that was avoided, they had no idea of the impending problems they avoided by not getting hung up on their desires to the point that they couldn’t do what was requested of them.  They did not get seduced by the “dark side.”

It is only when the Moabite women seduce them and they start following their lust instead of doing their job, that the get beset by the pitfall of yet another plague.

I bless everybody to be aware of their fears and desires enough to know when they are needed, and when they get in the way of what they are being called to do.

Shavuah tov/have a good week.

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.