The Unity We Learn From Bilaam

Parshat Balak

by Rabbi Avi Billet

This Shabbos is the 17th of Tammuz (which will be observed as a fast day on Sunday), which means the 3 weeks begins today, and that 9 Av is around the corner. This makes this times of year a time of reflection.

It’s not just that 9 Av is a sad day and we need to prepare ourselves, through a gradual but relatively quick mourning period, to be ready for 9 Av. It’s because the Talmud Yerushalmi (Yoma 5:1:1) tells us – כל דור שלא נבנה בית המקדש בימיו כאילו נחרב בימיו – every generation in which the holy Temple isn’t (re)built in its days [should be viewed] as if it were destroyed in its days. The main reason for it not being rebuilt in our time is because we (the collective Jewish people) are unworthy of experiencing that blessing. 

 One can easily point to the sad reality that far too many Jews know very little about Judaism. If even connected to any communal infrastructure, many more are connected to a JCC than a synagogue. 

 Too many Jews know little to nothing of Shabbos, of kosher, of davening, of shul. Too many Jews think “a mitzvah = a good deed” (a mitzvah, in fact, is “a commandment”), and that the most important principle of Judaism is “Tikkun Olam” (which truthfully means nothing beyond bringing God’s reign back to the world – see the reference we say daily in the prayer of עלינו/Aleinu). 

 Too many Jews think their politically-informed identities stem from their Jewish values, and are unaware that God, Torah and Mitzvot are supposed to inform the lens through which we model and showcase who we are and what we stand for. 

The idea that “The Book” refers to only the Five Books of the Torah, and that Mitzvot are suggestions, indicates an ignorance of who we are supposed to be as individual people and what we are supposed to be as a People. Torah as we define it is much more vast than five books. It includes the 24 books of the canon of the Bible, as well as all of the Talmud, and the commentaries on all of these books, as well as Halakhic Codes and Responsa Literature across the millennia. 

 Too many people are on the edge, or close to gone. It’s been said that more Jews have been lost to Judaism through assimilation and ignorance-of-Judaism than through the Holocaust. 

 After having been hired by Balak, Bilaam appears on the scene, and after spending the night in Balak’s place, the Torah tells us “In the morning, Balak took Bilaam, and brought him to the High Altars of Baal, וירא משם קצה העם - where he could see [as far as] the outer edges of the [Israelite] people.” 

What does קצה העם mean? What did Bilaam see? 

From the Living Torah: The idea of his seeing “as far as the eyes can see” is advanced by Baaley Tosafoth; Paaneach Raza; cf. Ramban. Now he saw the entire camp, because later he saw only part of it (Numbers 23:13; Lekach Tov). Others, however, maintain that he only saw 'the edge of the camp' (Tur; cf. Ramban). 

 Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan mentions those and also includes the possibility that it means that he saw the camp's outcasts (Midrash HaGadol; cf. Targum Yonathan).

Let us explore two more commentaries - Kli Yakar and Netziv – perhaps to see what Bilaam was looking for, what he found, and what our mission in life has to be. 

 Kli Yakar writes that in the first place it says he saw קצה העם. Then it says (second time) אפס קצהו תראה וכולו לא תראה – he only saw the קצה, but not everything. Third time it says וירא את ישראל שוכן לשבטיו, which implies that he saw everyone just before he said the famous words of מה טובו. 

 Kli Yakar explains this was in fact a 3-stage process. First he looked at their קצה, which is not their out of touch cohort, but is the edge which is their “front-line”! It’s the fathers! If the fathers (the roots and trunks) are valueless and powerless, then the branches and leaves have nothing holding them up. 

 The second stage was to look at the branches to see if he could find a flaw in future generations. This is כולו לא תראה, because when you’re only looking at the children and not the parents, you’re missing something in translation.

Third, when he couldn’t find a flaw in the parents, nor in the children, he needed to look at them in their totality, and throw an עין הרע (evil eye) against a complete entity. 

Netziv offers a counter approach that Bilaam was perhaps unable to see the entire population because he had enough self-awareness to realize that he was not going to be successful against the entire nation. He purposely did not look to see everyone because it was an exercise of futility, leading to failure. 

 What is most clear from all these commentaries is that what Bilaam actually saw is quite unclear. And, with rare exception in the course of Jewish history, it can be argued that clarity has always been lacking. Our people are not always on the same page. Not politically. Not religiously. Not in terms of how we learn and study Torah. Not in terms of how we educate our youth. Not in how we daven. Not even, sadly, in how we view where we are headed as a People. 

 What are our common goals? 

What unites the Jewish people other than “being Jewish”?

That certainly is a place to start… it may not bring the Messiah or the Temple, but “being Jewish” is a uniter in a way that is hard to explain. When compared to other groups who have differences within their ranks, Jews were far less likely to take up arms against one another in the last two millennia.

Who kills the most Muslims in the world? Muslims. Who is responsible for the most violent deaths of African-American youth in this country? African-American youths. In the history of the world, people under smaller tents of a larger group were often at each other’s throats over their differences – even when, for example, they both identified as Christians. Think Protestants and Lutherans and Catholics. 

This is not to say there hasn’t been violence of Jew against Jew. Tanakh mentions several Jewish Civil Wars. And there have been murders in Israel, of a Jew murdering a Jew. 

 In his book “It’s a Small Word, After All” Hanoch Teller tells a story of a battalion leader in WWI who has caught the enemy battalion leader in his sights through his telescope. As he plans his attack, he tells his men, when we get there and defeat them, you leave that one for me. And he looks forward to taking the other man’s life. 

To make a long story short, when his battalion does attack and defeat, he’s about to take the life of his adversary, when the latter cries out “Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokaynu” and his mortal enemy, who is also a Jew, says, “Hashem Echad” and spares him. Because how can he knowingly kill a fellow Jew? Maybe קצה העם means the extremes. Bilaam looked at the extreme right. He looked at the extreme left. And he couldn’t understand. These people have nothing in common! How could they get along? 

And when he tried to curse them the third time, the words just came out. מה טובו אהליך יעקב משכנותך ישראל. 

 There’s something about your אהל (tent). Something about your משכן (dwelling place) Or, perhaps, your place of worship, which connects you in a way that nothing else can. 

 When we can sit next to someone with whom we might share little in common, but we can daven together and have that religious shared experience together, we let differences fall aside because of our commonalities in our dedication to God, Torah and Mitzvos, we demonstrate who we are, and why Bilaam was unsuccessful in each attempt.

 אהבת ישראל defeats differences in upbringing, in life experiences, in politics, because in our kind of community setting, barring the exception of each person’s individuality, our commonality makes a bond which is really unexplainable. 

We feel pain when a Jew is murdered for being a Jew – no matter where in the world. We are bitter over the high standards to which Jews are held by society. We are embarrassed by Jews who make it to the newspapers for crimes in which their Judaism is brought up, as if Judaism informs their immoral or unscrupulous behavior, behavior which is certainly not guided by any semblance of Torah. 

 Bilaam couldn’t understand it, but he was nevertheless able to perceive and intuit that which went beyond his skill set. He saw that the Ohel and the Mishkan, the Jewish home and the Jewish Temple are incubators for a different kind of unity than we see in other groups. 

Are we (the global Jewish community) therefore the perfect community? We certainly have much to improve upon. We don’t always put the “You are my Jewish brother or sister” directive at the front of what guides our encounters with other Jews. This is the challenge of the 3 weeks and 9 days. To at least explore if there is a possibility of finding common ground. Bilaam saw a group of individuals and was looking for what divided them. Instead, all he could see was what united them, and that made them untouchable. 

Bilaam certainly saw the unity in the Ohel and the Mishkan. That may be a starting point. Perhaps Israel can be a uniter. Perhaps Shabbos can be a uniter. Perhaps loving one’s fellow Jew can be a uniter. Perhaps the Torah will one day be the uniter. Maybe God Himself will be Who unites us all once again – לתקן עולם במלכות ש-די 

If we can find what unites us, and highlight it and emphasize it, hopefully we’ll merit for this time period that is upon us to turn מיגון לשמחה with the arrival of Moshiach Tzidekinu.