(Delivered July 20, 2024)

Psssst! Have you heard the one about the talking donkey?

Parshat Balak invites us into a weird and wacky world, a place where a nervous king can hire an itinerant mystical sorcerer to lay a curse on an entire people; a place where that itinerant mystical sorcerer might or might not be a prophet; a place where divine messengers appear as roadblocks and donkeys talk. 

So far it sounds like Fantasy-World, almost Disney-fied, maybe even a little silly. A topsy-turvy, funhouse mirror kind of parsha that might lend itself to a cute and pithy lesson. When we think of it this way, it’s tempting to underestimate its theological and moral import, but as any follower of the Marx Brothers or Sarah Silverman can tell you, just because something is funny doesn’t mean it isn’t serious.

Underneath the trappings of magical realism—with the emphasis on the magical part—there are questions of prejudice, free will vs. divine intervention, and insight coming in its own sweet time from the most unlikely places. What speaks to me the most this year, though, amidst high feeling about Israel and Gaza with ever-fresh wounds, and a contentious and downright bizarre election season, is the way that the character of Bil’am occupies a liminal space between cultures, and how he navigates it in this parsha—haltingly and full of dread and confusion—toward an abiding statement of peace. 

For although Bil’am is not an Israelite, when he finds himself in places of moral confusion in this parsha—which is often—he relies on the Israelite God to help him make sense of his situation. At the very beginning of the parsha when King Balak’s messengers approach Bil’am to hire him to curse the Israelites, I think his gut instinct is that he shouldn’t go, but perhaps he’s flattered by the attention. In any case, he stalls for time, saying to them: 

לִינוּ פֹה הַלַּיְלָה וַהֲשִׁבֹתִי אֶתְכֶם דָּבָר כַּאֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּר יי אֵלָי

Stay here tonight, and I will answer you with whatever Adonai says to me

It’s not only that Bil’am seeks divine counsel but that he seeks it seemingly across cultural boundaries. Indeed, Adonai answers him back, more than once. It seems that this outsider has not just access but also a deep loyalty to God, even going so far as to later use the phrase Adonai Elohai: Adonai my God. It raises the question not only of how and why Bil’am is so connected to the Israelite God but why Balak would think to engage someone “under the influence of Adonai,” so to say, to curse Adonai’s chosen people. Surely hiring someone who hated the Israelites would have made more sense. 

Yet Bil’am is, at least in this parsha, positively linked with the Israelite God, such that some even call him a prophet. But it’s complicated. Because he is tempted by the riches and recognition that Balak’s representative dignitaries try to entice him with, he agrees to go on this unholy errand. But he goes reluctantly, with the understanding that he can only utter the words that Adonai feeds him. 

It’s interesting to me that our tradition gives us a non-Jewish character with such a strong connection to the Jewish God. While it’s unfashionable to admire Bil’am—especially knowing that a few chapters on, he will get blamed for Israelite heresy and idolatry—I can’t help seeing him in this moment as something of a role model. Here is a person who becomes a kind of fellow-traveler, a person who is not himself “one of us” but who is nonetheless familiar with Israelite culture and theology, and whose conscience leads him, despite his best worst intentions, to reflect for himself and bless where he was expected to curse.

This capacity for reflection surfaces in the scene with the donkey as well. When God finally grants Bil’am’s donkey the power of speech, she scolds Bil’am: 

מֶה־עָשִׂיתִי לְךָ כִּי הִכִּיתַנִי זֶה שָׁלֹשׁ רְגָלִים

What have I done to you, that you thrash me these three times? 

And when he doubles down on berating her, she says essentially: you’ve known me all these years. Have I ever done anything like this? 

Bil’am, to his credit, says, No. Rather than continue to antagonize the animal, he pauses and allows himself to admit he was wrong. And at that moment, 

וַיְגַל יי אֶת־עֵינֵי בִלְעָם וַיַּרְא אֶת־מַלְאַךְ יי

God uncovered Bil’am’s eyes and he saw the divine messenger

Bil’am’s humility here—and the ensuing divine insight—are a powerful lesson for us about what can happen when we embrace the vulnerability of admitting the possibility that we could be wrong.

The relevance to today couldn’t be more plain. In a world where the sharper and more strident the opinion, the more attention it gets; there seems to be little reward for subtlety and nuance. That very dynamic, abetted by social forces like isolation, technology, and pandemic, has led us to a place of echo chambers and shouting into the abyss, of relationships in disrepair because we decide we can’t talk to people who think like that. The illusion of certainty is buttressed by a constant bombardment of cultural messages curated just for us, that allows us to think that people like us are paragons of virtue and correctness, while people like them are unredeemably misguided monsters, mere caricatures of humanity. 

The lure of certainty, the mirage of an airtight argument, makes us soft-headed and hard-hearted. We surrender the intellectual honesty of complex engagement, in favor of slogans and bumper stickers. And we give up on people whose orientation to the world leads them to different conclusions than our own, determining that they are too far gone, too brainwashed to be worth talking to.

But today I’d like to make the case for listening more carefully, reflecting more deeply, and earnestly seeking the truth, even when it means, like Bil’am, admitting we’re wrong, even when it means, like Bil’am, withholding judgment until we can discern what God wants of us. 

I’d like to suggest that we make it a point to resist the idolatry of easy answers and invest our energy instead in learning more, and in trusting in the good will of others. Admittedly, it’s not true of everybody, all the time, and unprovoked attacks are not an indication of good will. Still, most of us, most of the time are decent people, created in the divine image, who are at least worthy of a smile or a conversation. We won’t always agree—and we shouldn’t have to—but there is no harm in considered, respectful disagreement. 

Let’s take the best of Bil’am by teaching ourselves to listen for the highest moral authority even if it means reconsidering what we thought was incontrovertible; by pulling back from the impulse to senseless violence; and by imagining the possibility of looking at those we are supposed to hate and saying: 

מַה־טֹּבוּ 

How beautiful!

Shabbat shalom!