As I'm writing this, I'm sitting at a dining room table displayed for sale in Costco. "Why?", you ask, "Is the Rabbi writing in Costco?" Because the remnants of tropical storm Barry are, at this moment, barreling through Ocean County and it is raining so hard, that I am certain I just saw an ark tossing and turning with Noah on the bow screaming, "I'm Flying!"
Admittedly, there are worse places to be stuck than Costco.
What could the story of Noah possibly have in common with this week's Torah portion, "Balak"? Perhaps it is because they are the only two Torah portions that feature animals as a main focus of the narrative of the story. In Noah, it is the animals marching two-by-two and the dove finding an olive branch. In Balak, it is the appearance of a talking donkey.
In this Torah portion, Balak is the King of the Moabites, a nation who was one of the Israelite's perpetual enemies. King Balak seeks to hire the prophet Balaam to place a curse the Israelites. (Yes, the torah acknowledges that there were prophets who were not Jewish.)
After much delay, Balaam heads toward the Israelite camp on his faithful donkey. God is not happy about Balaam's assignment and sends an angel armed with a sword to kill them.
The donkey sees the angel, but the prophet does not.(This may cause you to wonder how good this prophet was.) When the donkey refuses to move forward, Balaam becomes angry and strikes the donkey. The Donkey then, out of the blue, talks to Balaam and verbally chastises him for hitting him when he has been a faithful servant for many, many years.
As the story unfolds, God permits Balaam to proceed to "curse" the Israelites. However, each time the prophet opens his mouth, he actually blesses the Israelites. In fact, one of Balaam's blessings, is featured prominently in our tradition. You probably know the blessing well. Our tradition has us recite it each time we enter a prayer space and it is featured prominently at the beginning of our Friday night service. It is
Mah Tovu Ohalecha Ya'akov, Mishk'notecha Yisrael,
"How goodly are your tents, Jacob, your dwellings, Israel".
Balaam's attempted curse is quite apropos today. There are two ways to view the prophet's inability to curse the Israelites. First, we could read the story literally say that, God placed the blessings in Balaam's mouth. Indeed, there is power in knowing that God refuses to allow someone to curse God's people.
However, I think the second way to see it may be even more powerful. Perhaps Balaam could not curse the Israelites, because they had done nothing to be cursed for. The truth pushed the lies away and cleansed the words so that by the time the curses became audible, they were heard as blessings.
It's not that the Israelites were perfect. If one follows the story of the Israelites in the Torah, it is clear that they were not beyond reproach. The message is that mere imperfection does not justify cursing.
People often say bad things about other people or about institutions, or about counties. The motivations are not always the same, but some people seem to revel in speaking ill of others. Even if it is not true, such talk can be damaging. The best way to fight this destructive behavior is to continue to do our best to do good in this world.
We live in a time when anti-Semitism is clearly on the rise. It appears, like a plague, to have, yet again, permeated our world. We see it in rich and poor, young and old, men and women, democrats and republicans. It is in our country and it is in other countries. It is not always violent, but it is virulent.
Today, God does not seem willing to turn the curses into blessings. This leaves us Jews to do our best to have the curses be so incorrect and so untrue, that they will not be heard and the blessings will push them away.
As I have often said. We, each of us, must continue to do good things in our own names, in the name our people, and in the name of our tradition. The more "good" we do, the harder it will be for the curses to stick, and the easier it will be to turn those curses into blessings.
Where people try to curse, see beyond their words. Determine for yourself, if the curse is appropriate. If it is not, then it is up to each of us to turn the curse into a blessing.
"How goodly are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel." We have the power to change a curse into a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom - Rabbi Michael S. Jay
RABBI'S CLASS
My Friday class on Ethics will occur every Friday between July 12th and August 23rd from 10:00 am to about noon. The Class is entitled: "Conflict Resolution, the Beit Midrash Way." Each class is "Stand-alone", so if you cannot make it to all 7 classes it is fine. There is a suggested donation of $5.00 per class and $30.00 for all 7 classes. Among other things, we will learn how to actually talk when we disagree.
