Bilaam's Lads and Facing Failure

Parshat Balak

by Rabbi Avi Billet

Bilaam is one of the more despicable characters in the Torah. Even before he unsuccessfully attempts to curse the Israelite nation, he simultaneously lies to Balak's messengers and goes against the wishes of the God to Whom he has expressed his devotion, when he agrees to go with the king of Moav's emissaries. 

When he does head out on his journey, the Torah tells us, "And God was very angry that he went, and so an angel of Hashem stood on the road to obstruct him, as he was riding on his donkey, and his two lads were with him." (22:22)

Two lads? In the whole story, this is the only mention of anyone, other than Balak's men, accompanying him in any way. These two lads play no role in helping him pack, no role in helping him travel, and there is no reference to them in the tales immediately following, neither with the "talking donkey" nor when dealing with Balak upon arriving in Moav.

Rashi teaches the important lesson, which the Siftei Chachamim calls a "suggestion of derech eretz (proper way-of-the-world conduct)" - as opposed to an obligation - that an important person should not go out alone, especially on a journey.

Some might compare this to the story of Avraham (Bereshit 22), who similarly traveled with two lads. Rashi there explained the obligation incumbent upon an important person not to travel alone.  While the importance of Bilaam versus the importance of Avraham is a relative debate, their tales are nonetheless comparable. 

They both travel by donkey, preparing the donkey for travel alone, they both go in the morning (though Avraham seems to leave earlier), they both go on a few-days journey, they both don't know how the story will turn out. And they both bring two n'arim (young lads) to accompany on the journey, presumably as servants or helpers.

The difference with the lads is that in Avraham's case, they are prominent in the story. They accompany him, they stay with the donkey as he ascends the mountain with Yitzchak, and he returns to them at the end of the tale as they accompany him on his journey home. 

In Bilaam's case, they make one appearance: only when the angel is standing before him on the road, as quoted above. They do not embark with him at the beginning of his journey, and they are not present for his return journey. It is almost as if they don't really exist.

When he leaves his home, he goes with "officers of Moav." When he arrives at his destination, he is with "officers of Balak." His lads are either inconsequential or, perhaps, no longer present.

If they were inconsequential, why mention them?

Perhaps Bilaam's lads are mentioned on account of what was about to take place.  Following their appearance, Bilaam has his fateful encounter with his faithful donkey, an encounter, says Maimonides (Guide to the Perplexed II:42) which took place in his mind as a prophesy.

Whether the donkey actually spoke or was perceived as having spoken, the one who comes out of the story looking like, shall we say, a donkey, is Bilaam!

The officers of Moav do not seem to be present when Bilaam converses with the donkey. But our verse would indicate that as the story begins to unfold his lads are present.

Somewhere between their appearance here and his arrival in Balak's land, they disappear. From his perspective, this is a bonus. Had they arrived with him, they would have undermined every thing Bilaam tried to do (not that anything worked) because they saw him at his weakest and knew how imperfect he was. A donkey had bested him in an argument!

The proof that he is not an important person, as Rashi proposed, is that he went home alone! Were it true that an important person doesn't travel alone, there is no way he could have traveled, in either direction, alone.

Did they abandon him? Did he fire them? Did he kill them? All possibilities are suggestive. They might have left of their own accord when they realized he was a crock.

If they were fired, we must understand why he had them in the first place. Maybe Bilaam wanted to put on airs suggesting he was important, and having two young servants may have served that purpose through being part of his otherwise very unimpressive entourage.

When he had his unfortunate episode with the donkey, however, the gig was up. No one who had witnessed that could be part of Bilaam's party. They were either fired (or killed?) to keep his secret safe. Until... he demonstrated for Balak how worthless he was, as Balak said, "And now, escape to your place. I said I would honor you, but God has denied you any honor." (24:11).

We are always presented with opportunities to prove our worth or to fail.  May we be blessed to be successful in our endeavors. May we also be blessed that when we fail, we have the opportunity to pick up the pieces so that even those who saw us at our weakest moments will not be able to say, as Bilaam's lads could have said about him, that we have no worth. Because we are all of infinite value.

May we be blessed to tap into that value and make the most of our lives.  

Making The Most Out of Life

With the return of Gilad Shalit to Israel, alive and in one piece (at least in body - who knows what his mind has been through?), an image many had doubts we would ever see, there is cause for celebration for the positive end to his personal ordeal. Many question the math of a 1,027 person exchange, many of whom are convicted murderers who literally have blood on their hands, as being a fair price to pay to get Gilad back. I will not render an opinion in this forum on that question. It was surely a difficult decision, and I do not envy the Israeli leaders who brokered this deal, for the aftermath of this exchange which rests on their shoulders.


It did get me thinking, however, about a famous film that raised a similar question. It's hard to compare the storylines, and perhaps I am stretching things, but the quotes I present here from the movie "Saving Private Ryan" are provocative conversation starters, and certainly fit in line with my parsha piece this week. I present the quotes first (lifted from imdb.com), unedited, followed by the dvar torah on the first parsha of the Torah. The spaces between lines indicate that the quotes are from different parts of the film and are not presented as straight dialogue.

Private Reiben: You wanna explain the math of this to me? I mean, where's the sense of riskin' the lives of the eight of us to save one guy? 

Sergeant Horvath: I don't know. Part of me thinks the kid's right. He asks what he's done to deserve this. He wants to stay here, fine. Let's leave him and go home. But then another part of me thinks, what if by some miracle we stay, then actually make it out of here. Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess. Like you said, Captain, maybe we do that, we all earn the right to go home. 

Captain Miller: He better be worth it. He better go home and cure a disease, or invent a longer-lasting light bulb. 

Captain Miller: You see, when... when you end up killing one your men, you see, you tell yourself it happened so you could save the lives of two or three or ten others. Maybe a hundred others. Do you know how many men I've lost under my command? 
Sergeant Horvath: How many? 
Captain Miller: Ninety-four. But that means I've saved the lives of ten times that many, doesn't it? Maybe even 20, right? Twenty times as many? And that's how simple it is. That's how you... that's how you rationalize making the choice between the mission and the man. 

Captain Miller: [weakly mutters something] 
Private Ryan: [leans in closer] What, sir? 
Captain Miller: James, earn this... earn it.         [Captain Miller dies shortly after he says this]

Old James Ryan: [addressing Capt. Miller's grave] My family is with me today. They wanted to come with me. To be honest with you, I wasn't sure how I'd feel coming back here. Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I've earned what all of you have done for me. 
Ryan's Wife: James?... 
[looking at headstone] 
Ryan's Wife: Captain John H Miller. 
Old James Ryan: Tell me I have led a good life. 
Ryan's Wife: What? 
Old James Ryan: Tell me I'm a good man. 
Ryan's Wife: You are. 

Parshat Bereishit

After she finished reading Dara Horn's recent novel "The World to Come" my wife said to me, "The last chapter is amazing." I have not yet read the book, but I did read the last chapter. It's filled with Dara Horn's style of weaving Jewish titles, terms, and quotes in her narrative, and is a joy to read. Especially if you "get" all the references.

In the chapter, two souls who already lived spend some time with a "not-yet," a soul who is soon to be born, on a journey to the Tree of Life that is guarded by the sword described in Bereishit 3:24.

The male character wants the not-yet to eat from the tree, while the female character does not. She says, "You actually, genuinely want him to be born and never die." When the male character (the not-yet's deceased grandfather) proceeds to scream at her saying, "WHY NOT? Why can't he have what we didn't have? Why should his children have to watch him die?" her response is, "Because that's what makes it matter."

It's a chilling image, one imagines taking place in a heavy rainstorm, at a tottering bridge, before the world is about to end. The scene is very powerful and dramatic.

The Torah lists the concern that a person might eat from the Tree of Life and live forever as one of the reasons for the expulsion from the garden (3:22-23), but it does not say why living forever would be a problem.

In fact, Radak points out that original command of 2:16-17 included instructions that allowed people to partake of the Tree of Life: "You may eat from every tree except the Tree of Knowledge." Once they partook of the Tree of Knowledge, mortality was introduced – they were condemned to die one day. On account of this, they were expelled from the garden, lest they eat from the Tree of Life and extend their lives beyond their now-allotted years.

Radak feels God could not command them "Do not eat from the Tree of Life" because it had already been permitted to them. Furthermore, experience shows they don't do well with one commandment not to eat from a specific tree. Therefore they were taken out of the garden to avoid the problem altogether.

Ramban speaks in less cryptic terms when he says, "God wanted His punishment decree to be fulfilled with the death of man. Were he to eat from the Tree of Life, God's decree would have been thwarted, delayed, or he might even live forever." The problem with the Tree of Life, therefore, was that it would take away the punishment the humans were meant to get for eating of the Tree of Knowledge. (Chizkuni)

In the most spiritual of the answers I found, the Alshich looks at the practical side of living forever, and though he does not mention the cathartic stage we go through in death directly, he says "Were he to eat of the Tree of Life and live forever, he would never achieve a tikkun" or a correction for his mistake. Rashi even describes how a person who lives forever will steer people after him, making himself into a god-like figure.

It does not seem that immortality in and of itself is a bad thing (assuming one doesn't fancy himself a god on account of it). But for Man who was punished for partaking of the Tree of Knowledge, living forever would remove the punishment, and the possibility it would bring for the soul to make amends. For Man who needs to achieve atonement or to receive forgiveness for an error, death brings about such atonement and forgiveness. For Man to bring a correction to the soul, such a correction could only come about when the body no longer stands as interference to the soul.

Death also brings closure to a life lived – sometimes well-lived, sometimes long, sometimes tragically short. Knowing of our own mortality, we set goals for the lives we live, and if we are lucky enough to apportion our time right and stay focused, we can spend a good portion of our lives working towards and achieving our goals. The knowledge that we have a finite amount of time makes our individual journeys on this earth matter, and makes our existence matter to those we touch in our lifetimes.

The mark of a life well-lived is being missed by those who survive us once we are gone. Were we to live forever, we would never be missed, and we would lose our relevance. We might even ask God to end our existence, as did many Biblical and Talmudical figures (Moshe, Eliyahu, Yonah, Choni Ha'Magel, to name a few, as well as the elders of Luz (Sotah 46b) )

May we merit to always live our lives noting the incredible gift of life we have been given. May we also find the resilience to make the most of our lives so that when our time on earth comes to an end, we need not look back with any regrets.

As the female character says to the not-yet born in "The World to Come," "The test comes later." And her male counterpart says, "Later. During every moment of every day of your life."