Hello and welcome to the latest installment of my Torah thoughts.
This week’s parsha (Torah portion) is called Balak who is the current king of Moab. Our parsha begins with Balak seeing all that Yisrael had done to the Emorite (which comes from the root, “To say”) and Moab becomes afraid. So, Balak sends messengers to Bil’am asking him to bore into Yisrael so Balak can drive them from the land. He calls for Bil’am because what Bil’am blesses is blessed, and what he curses is cursed.
Bil’am tells the messengers to stay overnight, and he will give them an answer after haShem (god) speaks with him. Elokim (another name for god, a name that means powers) comes to Bil’am and tells him not to go with the messengers. The second time Balak sends messengers, this time with charms, god tells Bil’am he can go. Bil’am goes and god gets angry and sends an angel to Bil’am. Bil’am’s donkey sees the angel and tries to avoid it, getting hit by Bil’am for not obeying him. After a conversation with the donkey, the angel is revealed to Bil’am who realizes he has sinned. But when Bil’am asks if he should go back, the angel says go, but say only the words that god will speak to him.
Balak comes out to meet Bil’am who informs him that he will only say what god tells him to say. Balak leads Bil’am up on a mountain where he can see Yisrael and they build altars and make sacrifices. This happens three times and all three times Bil’am blesses Yisrael, which upsets Balak greatly, and he tells Bil’am to go, but before he goes, he tells what Yisrael will do to Moab in the end of days.
After all this, the women of Moab persuade Yisrael to stray from god and worship their god, Ba’al P’or. God, gets upset and tells Moshe (Moses) to kill them and Moshe tells the judges. At this point, a man from Yisrael brings a Midianite women, in front of Moshe, into a tent. Pinchas, son of El’azar, son of Aharon the priest, takes a spear and impales the man to the woman. This ends a plague that killed 24,000.
Quite an exciting parsha, no? And what is it trying to tell us? The simple reading of the text (the p’shat in Hebrew) is very difficult. God tells Bil’am not to go, and then go, and then gets mad at him, and then tells him to go. All the while Bil’am is saying he will only do what god tells him to, and god keeps telling him to do only what he, god, says.
And what is up with a talking female donkey? What is god trying to tell us with that?
Well, if you recall me saying in the past, when one reads the Torah they look at it through the orchard (or pardes in Hebrew) which is an acronym for the four ways one is to read the Torah. The first level is p’shat or the simple, plain meaning. The second level is called remes and means analogy, or that everything is symbolic. This is the level I want to work with today. For when we read the parsha at this level, everything seems to fall in place and it makes a lot of sense. You see, this week’s parsha is telling us how the yetzer hara (the evil inclination) leads us astray and how t’shuva (repentance, or literally, to turn) is done.
How does the parsha do this? Where can one find us, or the yetzer hara in this parsha? I already hear you asking these questions. So, let me explain. Bil’am represents us, or our soul. The first thing he teaches us is that we do not have to be Moshe in order to have a close relationship with haShem. At the beginning of the parsha, and from just the simple reading, he just wants to do haShem’s will.
Enter in Balak. Balak is the yetzer hara. He is driven by his uncontrolled desires and fears. He is afraid of this new nation that has shown up. So what does he do? He does what a good yetzer hara does: he reaches out to the soul, or Bil’am and tries to convince it to do its will as opposed to haShem’s will. At first this doesn’t work. So, Balak sends more messengers.
Well, as we have seen before, if you keep asking haShem for permission to do something, he will eventually grant it. This he does, with the caveat that Bil’am does only what haShem directs him to do. Of course Bil’am agrees to this because his true desire is to do god’s work.
However god gets angry with Bil’am and sends and angel to stop him. Why? This is where we learn the importance of a seemingly insignificant word in Torah. The Torah says that Balak sent messengers with magical charms. Why does it bother to mention that they brought magical charms? What do these charms do? Quite simply, they block the soul from seeing haShem’s desires, which make the yetzer hara’s desires seem all important.
I want to make a small digression here. R. Fleer once asked the question, “What is the difference between a good person and an evil person? They both get up in the morning and put on the same clothes and eat the same breakfast.” The answer he gave is that while they might do the same outward activities, inside, their intentions are very different.
Now, I bring this up because it is important. Bil’am believes his intentions are good. Of course he is going only to do what god will tell him. However, the influence of the yetzer hara is strong and subtle. And the truth is that he has rationalized to himself, via the influence of the charms, to go against god. God says the people are blessed; Bil’am is going with the hope of cursing the people. The yetzer hara has created a wall between Bil’am/the soul, and god. The affect of the wall is to block the soul from having awareness of god’s wishes, and substituting the yetzer hara’s wishes in their place. This is why god gets angry and sends the angel. God is hoping that the angel will wake Bil’am up. Bil’am is too disconnected to see the angel. However, Bil’am’s donkey sees the angel.
Ok, I haven’t talked about Bil’am’s donkey. What is she an allusion to? She represents the body. The body is a very sensitive instrument with only one true desire: to keep the soul housed within in. We see this alluded to when the donkey says to Bil’am that he has ridden the donkey all his life.
So, when the angel comes, it sees it cannot connect to Bil’am directly. However, the donkey sees it and knows it wants to harm the soul, and so it tries to evade the angel. What does Bil’am do? He beats the donkey and is ready to kill it.
How many times have we abused our body to the point it breaks down and gets sick? Our Torah is describing this, all in symbols. When we go against god (which includes the laws of nature on eating well, getting rest, etc.), the body reacts, first with tension, to try to get the attention of the soul that it is moving off its path. If the soul ignores this, and continues pushing the body, the body will react more strongly, until it lies down (gets sick so you have to stay in bed), hoping that you will stop and wake up and look at the message god is giving you. This finally happens when Bil’am sees the angel and realizes he has sinned (or gone off the mark, which is what the Hebrew word for sin literally means). He is still under the influence of the charms of Balak, so he isn’t sure exactly what he has done wrong which is why he asks if he should go back. The angel tries to tell him where he went wrong in a positive way by saying, you can go on, but remember, you are only to do what god tells you!
We are getting to the climax. Bil’am arrives and Balak takes him up the mountain. They make altars and offer sacrifices.
I want to pause for just a moment to share that the word for sacrifice in Hebrew is karbon which comes from the verb, “To come close.” The reason for giving a sacrifice is to get closer to god.
We read that this happens three times. The first two times, Bil’am leaves the sacrifices hoping to happen upon god. What does this mean? It means that Bil’am, the soul, knows deep down that it is trying to do something that is not what god wants. So, it/he goes through the motions of getting close to god, but then goes away from god, hoping to, “Happen,” upon a part of god that wants what he, the soul, Bil’am thinks he wants which is really what the yetzer hara/Balak wants.
Both of these times, the results are not what the conscious part of the soul thinks it wants, which creates anger and frustration between it and it’s perceived desires (between Bil’am and Balak).
We can see this play out in our own lives when we keep going after the same thing over and over again, and finding it never working out the way we want. Obviously we are doing something wrong, and what we are doing wrong is following the yetzer hara and not god. We have walked down the path of Bil’am.
What we need to do is come close to god AND NOT WALK AWAY, which is what Bil’am does the third time. The third time Bil’am and Balak make a karbon, Bil’am stays there. He makes the effort, throws off the effects of the charms and the yetzer hara, and surrenders to god. The results are that his eyes are opened, and he can see clearly and he knows exactly what to do and he goes on his way, freed from the clutches of the yetzer hara. Bil’am, the soul, has done t’shuva!
Of course the yetzer hara has many tricks up its sleeve, one of which we see at the very end of the parsha. But, I will save that for another time, for this is plenty long as it is.
Before I go, I want to wish that everybody is open to feeling when they are uncomfortable and not to ignore it – for it just might be a sign you are fighting with your very own Balak. And if you can be aware of it, and make the sacrifice of stopping what you are doing and really trying to check in with god and what is making you uncomfortable. Then you can defeat the yetzer hara and you’ll find that life will start going your way, for your desires will be god’s desires and nothing can beat that!
If you care to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
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.