[The following is a d’var Torah (like a sermon) that I gave on the reading of Balak (Numbers 22:2-25:9) to the congregation of Beth El Synagogue, St. Louis Park, Minnesota, on July 12, 2008.]
“Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”
Don’t worry. That’s my only Hebrew for this d’var Torah. I know to some, these words sound alien. To others, my poor pronunciation must be agonizing. But to many of you they will sound familiar.
“Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”
We are invited to say this blessing each time we enter a synagogue. The Siddur Sim Shalom translates it, “How beautiful are your sanctuaries, O Jacob, your houses of worship, O Israel.” A more literal translation of these same Hebrew words is, “How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel.”
When I have read this blessing before, with its poetry and its clear admiration of the subject, I always assumed it was from the Psalms, or from the Proverbs, or from the one of the prophets on one of his better days. I assumed it came from one of us, from a Jew.
Today I know that it did not. It came from the mouth of Balaam, and discovering my error, my false assumption, has been part of a greater journey of discovery, one which has been profoundly moving and gratifying for me, and hope that sharing this part of my journey will be pleasant for you as well.
My journey of discovery, though decades in the making, really began in earnest a few months ago when I decided to apply to rabbinical school. I have spent just over ten years in the corporate world, mostly as a consultant, crunching numbers, making risk assessments and action plans for senior management, then moving on to the next client, and the next. I decided that I wanted to bring my ongoing dialog with God from the periphery of my life to its center. I wanted to upgrade my connection to the Jewish community from one attribute among many to the overarching algorithm of my life. I wanted to go from dial-up to broadband, and take my spirituality to eleven. And as a rabbi, I sincerely hope to show others the joy and meaning that seeking God and seeking community can bring to their own lives.
So I talked to Rabbi Davis. He gave me a list of rabbinical schools to consider, a list of questions to ask myself, and a warning, “Start slow.”
A couple of months later, I’m back in the rabbi’s office, totally overwhelmed. I had started out knowing I had a lot to learn, but now I was beginning to understand exactly how much, and it was terrifying. Of course, Rabbi Davis said, “Slow down. Why don’t you start with a d’var Torah this summer, and see how you like it.”
Rabbi Davis knows I love to talk. He knows about my ecclesiastical heritage. My father, his father, and his father’s father had all been Christian preachers. That is another story for another time.
What Rabbi Davis did not know when he emailed me this message – “I have you down for July 12 – parashat Balak. You’ll love it.” – he did not know that this passage is the subject of my father’s favorite “Old Testament” sermon, one that he’d written decades ago and still uses from time to time. He calls it “The Story of Balaam’s Ass.” From the talking donkey he derives a timeless theme: The truth, God’s truth, sometimes comes to us from the most unexpected sources.
Some parshiyot really challenge us to find something in them to illuminate our modern existence.
Leprosy? Really?
Balak, on the other hand, challenges us to choose something from among many attractive possibilities. There is so much here to talk about! First, it’s about a consultant. I can dig that. A consultant torn between telling the client what he wants to hear and what he needs to hear, especially when there’s treasure on the line. There’s talking livestock, a sword-wielding angel, and that unpleasant bit at the end of the parasha about consorting with the locals, bringing on plagues and impalement. Among all this a couple of interrelated themes really struck me as personally meaningful, and I hope, collectively helpful.
First, there is a political lesson here that I would be irresponsible to skip in an election year. Balak tells his advisers that he wants to hire Balaam. “Whoever this guy blesses,” he says, “is surely blessed, and whoever he curses, they stay cursed. How about I hire Balaam to curse Israel? Then they’ll be weaker, and we can beat them in battle and not wind up like those poor Amorites.”
Not one of his advisers said, “Hey Balak, have you considered hiring Balaam, not to curse Israel, but to bless Moab, that we might be victorious against Israel? Better yet, maybe he can bless both Israel and Moab, so that the traveling mob finds all it needs to eat without consuming Moab’s resources. That way, we don’t have to waste treasure or blood on a war in the first place!”
I promised Rabbi Davis I wouldn’t make this a political appeal, but I do appeal to your thoughtful and inquisitive natures. Between now and Election Day, please ask yourself, “Am I voting for this candidate because he gives me hope for the future of my town, my country, my people? Or am I voting for him because he inspires fear of a boogeyman, either foreign or domestic? In other words, is he going to spend our treasure on a blessing, or on a curse?”
And that’s enough of secular politics. Instead, consider what this lesson means for us as Jews in the Conservative Movement.
The Conservative Movement has evolved over the last century and a half as an exercise in negative definition. Within K’lal Israel, which is Solomon Schechter’s concept of the collective body of all Jews everywhere, we tend to see ourselves as simply the absence of what we are not. We occupy the middle ground by virtue of not being attracted to the extremes. First, we start with K’lal Israel. Then we remove everyone to the right of our bubbes, and finally, we subtract everyone to the left of what we want our children to be. Here we are, Conservative Jews. Or perhaps I should say, the United Synagogue of Non-Reform, Non-Orthodox Judaism.
Now, I know this portrait is neither complete nor accurate nor entirely fair. It is merely personal. I know that we now have a rich literature of positive statements of principles for the Conservative Movement. Rabbis Elliot Dorff, Robert Gordis, Neil Gillman, Mordecai Waxman and others have illuminated our path toward a positive definition of Conservative Judaism; however, as a layperson who has only begun to scratch the surface of that literature, I know that I am still struggling to internalize such a positive definition. If someone – a coworker, my child, my neighbor from another denomination or another faith – asks me what it means to be a Conservative Jew, I have to admit that my default answer is, “Well, I read this part of the Bible, but not that part. I follow more rules that this guy over here with the cheeseburger, but fewer rules than that guy over there with the hat.” I am still afflicted with negative definition. But I’ve come up with a challenge for myself and a challenge for you, if you are likewise afflicted.
First, clear your mind of all the qualities of other Jews that you are not. Then, come up with some ideal you hold or action you take that defines your particular approach to Judaism, and finally, try to describe that ideal or action using only positive terms.
For example: I keep kosher. I eat certain kinds of meat that come from certain kinds of animals that have been prepared in certain ways. I eat this way because I believe God wants me to eat this way in order to improve my spiritual awareness and more fully realize my potential as a human being with free will. That is what kashrut means to me, and I feel supported to keep kosher as a member of the Conservative Movement.
Did you see what I just did there? I described kashrut and my observance of it without a single mention of the words: no, don’t, prohibited, unclean, or abomination. Instead of saying, “Keeping kosher means I don’t eat at this restaurant or at that person’s house,” I could say, “Keeping kosher means I eat different things at different peoples houses, and I’d like to invite everyone to my house to sample how delicious keeping kosher can be.” To my dear wife, I apologize. I know I’m not supposed to invite the entire congregation over for dinner without asking; in my defense, it’s a chapel day, not a sanctuary day.
“Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”
Another theme in Balak builds upon this idea of focusing on blessings rather than curses. When Balaam arrives in the court of Balak, Balak takes him to a particular vantage point from where Balaam can see a part of the Israelite encampment. This is important.
The commentators surmise that Balak has risen to power recently and suddenly by some kind of clever, Machiavellian scheme. Indeed, Niccolo Machiavelli would have been proud of Balak’s example that it is often more expedient to rule by curses and fear than by blessings and hope.
So Balak shows Balaam only part of the camp, and presumably a part hand-picked for its worthiness of a curse, perhaps an infirmary, or perhaps a stockade. Balak knows that revealing the worst of a population makes it easier to curse the whole population.
When Balaam looks on this part, and God instead puts blessings in his mouth, Balak is – let us say – nonplussed. Balaam is not a cheap, and so far, he’s a dud. Balak tries again. He takes Balaam to another vantage point, maybe to see the quarantine of the lepers, maybe to see the consorting, plagues, and impalement.
Once more, Balaam looks upon the worst of us, and he cannot help but bless.
“Fine!” says Balak, now furious. He hauls Balaam up a mountain where he can see the whole of the encampment. Twice so far, Balaam looked upon the chosen vista, and then he slept on it, and sought an omen from God in his dreams.
Not this time. The Torah says Balaam immediately cast his eyes upon the wilderness, upon the whole of Israel, and he said, unprompted, “Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”
How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel.
Note here the use of two names, Jacob and Israel. In effect, Balaam blesses both our “before” and our “after”, our potential and our fruition, equally blessed. How fair indeed.
What Balak presumes about human nature is that it is easy to reveal the worst part of something and inspire a curse of the whole. It is easy to look at the recent shame of a certain kosher meat packing operation, degrading to all God’s creatures, human and animal, who came in contact with it, and say, there are the Jews for you. Curse them. It is equally easy for a Jew not inspired to follow the kashrut to look at the same shanda and say, if that is what keeping kosher is all about, then you keep it.
It is easy for me, as one who converted to Judaism with a Conservative Beit Din to look upon religious authorities in Israel, who would reject my identity as a Jew, and for me to become angry, or to succumb to despair.
It is easy, it is tempting, but it is incomplete and ultimately wrong.
What Balaam shows us about human nature is this: When we scale the mountain, when we look upon the whole of Israel, when we get what consultants call the view from thirty thousand feet, it is easy to say, “Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”
From the top of the mountain, I can see Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching arm-in-arm with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I can see leaders in my own community promoting the use of the Heksher Tzedek to keep the recent perversion of kashrut in Iowa from happening again.
I can see our community, locally and globally, respond to humanitarian crises from New Orleans to Darfur with swiftness, with compassion, and with results.
I can see Jews in St. Louis Park and Jews in Jerusalem in the Masorti movement fighting for the rights of all Jews, even me, in Israel, the homeland of every Jew, even me.
It is easy to curse the worst of our extremes, but our longevity, our presence, and our impact as a people will be an inspiration of blessing for all time.
If you take nothing else from my talk today, please take a moment to consider the positive attributes of your commitment to Jewish life, already in evidence by your presence here today. Consider the positive aspects of our whole community, comprised, as it is, of flawed and occasionally weak human beings. Please give any negative definitions of yourself and your movement a well-deserved Shabbat. Please give your curses of the whole for the sins of the few a permanent rest.
Because as I stand here this Shabbat, in this tabernacle of Israel, in this tent of Jacob, I see in the microcosmic lens of all those gathered here, distinguished local families and citizens of the world, the successful, the struggling, the young, the experienced, I see in us the whole of Schecter’s K’lal Israel, I see much that is worthy of blessing, and I say, “Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”
Shabbat shalom.
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