Balaam, Bluster, and Bullies

By Rabbi Alan Yuter
Posted Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Balaam is best known because his donkey engaged him in a conversation. He was walking on the way to curse the Israelites when an angel stood in a narrow passage in order to stop Balaam's beast of burden from advancing in order to thwart Balaam's defiance of the Divine will.

On one hand, Balaam knows God by name, and takes God seriously. On the other hand, he is a pagan and a curser for hire. God wants Israel to be blessed, and Balaam is a hired "gun" whose words have, at least to the ancient pagan mind, the ability to influence reality. Balaq the king of Moab does not want Israel passing through his "back yard." Now, Balaam is a "seer" who sees what others cannot, he sees into the mind of God and claims to impact that Divine mind. He possesses daat 'elyon, Daas Torah, the ability to divine the Divine and impact the course of history. The Author of Torah and history stops Balaam in his tracks with a talking donkey whom Balaam is unable to see until God opens his eyes. The reader is then treated to the contradiction between one who claims to see into the mind of God but cannot see what his donkey can see, that Balaam is bent out of shape by being bent on defying God and cursing Israel.

Balaam believes that God is real, but that God can be controlled. His Israelite counterpart, Korah, did not even believe that God is real. Both represent challenges to authentic religion. Both use the language, mastered the gestured, and give the appearance of legitimacy, sincerity, and authenticity. But the Torah of words is a Torah of principle, not people¸ of sincerity or purpose, not virtuosity in the execution of communally conditioned expectations, and doing right, not sounding right.

The Balaam's and Korah's of the world talk about law and order, but when no one, including the God Whom they quote and reject is not looking, succumb to selfish motives. Vice President Spiros Agnew spoke about law and order but he was not bound by those two values. Mayor Giulliani of New York City also spoke about law and order, but at every turn stifled dissent and criticism of himself and of values he held dear, only to be overruled by the Courts which regularly challenged his overstepping of First Amendment protections. Now, it takes money to challenge governmental limits on Constitutional Rights. People in power stay in power by wielding power, rightly or wrongly. It is intimating that one is not patriotic if one does not affirm the policies of those in power. There are Jews who make this mistake, in both liberal and in what is mistaken to be Orthodox Judaism.

The late Reform Rabbi Jacob Peteuchowski once observed that the only sin in Reform Judaism is apparently being a Republican. Jewish rituals may be jettisoned, but the politics of the political Left carry the mandate of Sinai. The Judaism of pluralism is pluralistic when deviating from Tradition, but not when others deviate from its own intuited policies, doctrines, and practices. Those who claim that their intuition trumps reason within Orthodoxy are, like Balaam, claiming to know da'at 'Elyon, that they and no one else is qualified, ordained, or inspired to divine the spirit of God's law. According to God's report in Numbers, they see less than donkeys who engage us in conversation. They claim, like Jack Nicholson, that we "can't handle the truth." God claims that "we [all] were given a Torah of truth, with eternal life planted within us." The Torah teaches us to defy the dissemblers, with a faith that is pure and an integrity that, like God's commandments, are straight and not self-serving.

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