With a bruised ego and in great frustration, he loses his temper when the donkey sits down under him in a narrow passageway, reducing him to a ridiculous heap of silks and saddle bags, like a howling child astride a broken tricycle, going nowhere fast. He beats the beast with his staff. Where Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it, here our donkey responds to Bilam’s abuse with calm, reasonable speech: “What have I done to you that you have struck me three times?” (vv. 27–28).

An internationally sought-after sorcerer, Bilam is rendered by a few quick strokes of Torah as laughably absurd.

What is this slapstick figure doing here in the Torah?

Two concerns drive our story, both of current, and timeless, relevance: The first is fear. The second, at root, is truth.

Our parashah opens with the report that the kingdom of Moab is terrified of the Israelites, having seen what they did to King Sihon and the Amorites. In a deliberate, extended echo of Pharaoh and the Egyptians’ fear of the Israelites in Exodus, our passage tells how the vastness of the Israelite nation—significantly, an explicit fulfillment of the blessing God conferred upon them—unnerves King Balak and his people (). The Israelites are seen as less than human—an animalistic horde posing a mortal threat simply by being. Essentially, they fear that Israel will eat Moab alive.  It is only reasonable for Moab to be concerned that a large, passing nation may overwhelm it, but that fear quickly demonizes Israel irrationally.

The Rabbis recognize the Moabites’ fear as hatred, and they find it contagious. Bilam, merely a hired hand, comes to hate the Israelites, too. He takes his paid mission to curse the Israelites as his own. Observing that a man of Bilam’s station has no business saddling his own ass, which he does when setting off on his journey (), the Talmud teaches in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar: “Hatred cancels out the norms of high status. That is, even the high and mighty do lowly work when motivated by hatred” ().

And what is Bilam’s mission? To use his ostensive skill with poetic invocations to reverse God’s decree and independently bless or curse the subject of his words. In other words, Bilam’s mission is to thwart God’s will. Bilam learns, as any ass can tell you, that one ought not to set out against God’s will.

When a Jew hears terrible news, most commonly of a death, tradition teaches us to recite a blessing which names God as the arbiter of truth, dayan ha’emet. In reciting these words we confront unflinchingly what we will need to come to terms with over time: that the reality we see before us is true. It is irreversible. It is of God in the sense that all that is real, all that is impervious to dissembling or spin, all that sheds the evasions of wishful thinking and stands firm in its truth, is from God.

What’s going on in the story of Balak and Bilam is a doomed attempt to change what is, and will remain, true. God’s first instruction to Bilam is “You shall not go with them. You shall not curse the [Israelite] people for it is blessed” (). At the conclusion of the donkey episode, God revises His instruction: “Go with the men. But the word that I speak to you, it alone shall you do” (22:35). Thrice, Bilam opens his mouth and offers lasting words of blessing that affirm and enhance Israel’s standing. By the end, it is Balak’s turn to be exasperated as Bilam—and by extension, God—proves as impossible to steer as our famous donkey.

There is much to ponder in this story. For example, it’s of great significance that our portion concludes with the inalterably blessed people Israel committing a particularly ugly episode of idolatry and violation. What does it mean to be blessed, or cursed, when we retain the freedom to act in exalted or debased ways?

An opening to the answer can be found in the first part of the teaching of Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar, quoted above. “Love cancels out the norms of high status. That is, even the high and mighty take up lowly tasks when motivated by love.” Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar cites Abraham as his example. Out of love for God and a desire to carry out God’s command, Abraham arose early in the morning to saddle his donkey and offer up Isaac. Now, for many of us, the Akeda, or binding of Isaac, is not a model we embrace as expressing love of God, or even an expression of God’s will that we can countenance. Nonetheless, Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar’s insight about the power of love remains true, whether in human society or in seeking to discern God’s true will and to live, with love, in alignment with it.

When fear festers into hatred we are stupefied, unable to face up to the truths that stand squarely in front of us, sometimes even with sword unsheathed. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Puck, what fools we mortals be when we try to force God’s hand, when we seek to falsify what’s true or tar truth as falsehood. Rather, we learn this week to affirm truth from love and with modesty, for there is no other path to God’s blessing.

This commentary was originally published in 2017.

The publication and distribution of the 91���� Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

The Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Talmud) will draw the connection between our parashah and clapping. It states that clapping, particularly when done in anger, is discouraged on Shabbat, and bases the prohibition on Numbers 24:10, where Balak, enraged by Balaam’s blessings instead of curses, claps his hands together in frustration. Balak’s clapping symbolizes a loss of control and submission to anger—actions that go against the peaceful spirit of Shabbat.

Shabbat is intended to be a day of peace and joy, a taste of the World to Come. Anger and frustration disrupt this tranquility. By refraining from clapping, especially in moments of anger, we maintain the sanctity and serenity that Shabbat demands. This prohibition reminds us to cultivate a sense of calm and to avoid actions that might lead to discord. The story of Balaam and Balak further illustrates the significance of divine intervention in human affairs. Balak hired Balaam, confident in his ability to curse the Israelites. However, God’s intervention turned intended curses into blessings, demonstrating His protection over Israel. 

Balaam had a unique relationship with anger. The sages considered Balaam one of the seven prophets of the nations and believed his prophetic level was close to that of Moses. However, they also depicted Balaam as morally corrupt, driven by greed, and possessing an evil eye. The Talmud discusses Balaam’s ability to discern the precise moment of divine anger, during which he could pronounce effective curses. This ability underscores the potential power of curses but also highlights God’s mercy in preventing such moments of anger during Balaam’s attempts.

The Talmud notes that God prays for His attribute of mercy to prevail over anger. This divine self-restraint serves as a model for human behavior, especially on Shabbat, a day dedicated to emulating divine rest and mercy. By avoiding actions that might show anger, such as clapping in frustration, we align ourselves with the divine attribute of mercy. The act of clapping, particularly in a moment of anger, symbolizes a loss of control and submission to baser instincts. Shabbat, on the other hand, is a time to rise above everyday impulses and connect with a higher spiritual reality. By consciously avoiding actions that might further anger or frustration, we reinforce the values of self-control and spiritual elevation that Shabbat embodies.

The story of Balak and Balaam teaches us about the limits of human intention, the supremacy of divine protection, and the consequences of moral and spiritual corruption. Refraining from clapping on Shabbat, rooted in the example of Balak’s angry reaction and in Talmudic teachings, reminds us to cultivate an atmosphere of moral uprightness, spiritual elevation, and peace and to embody the divine attribute of mercy. By avoiding actions that disrupt the tranquility of Shabbat, we honor the day’s sanctity and strive to elevate our own character, aligning ourselves more closely with divine examples. Through these practices, we transform Shabbat into a sanctuary in time, a day of peace, joy, and spiritual renewal.

The publication and distribution of the 91���� Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

Rav Hisda said:
“A dream that is not interpreted
is like a letter that is never read.”
()

The story of the heathen prophet Balaam—hired by Moabite king Balak ben Tzippor to curse the people Israel—is altogether strange. It concerns events happening outside the Israelite camp and seemingly unknown to them, characters we’ve not yet met, and a talking donkey. Its tone ranges from burlesquely funny to surreal.

One way to read it is as a comedic yet sharp cautionary tale about the seductions—but ultimate impotence—of selfish and shallow leadership. Though Balaam is much-sought-after and well-paid, skilled at glib oration, he is but a mercenary seeking money and fame. When he’s shown up by his own donkey, he is revealed as a buffoonish parody of the humble and service-focused Moses.

But here’s another possibility: perhaps the story is instead a dream Moses dreams. One hint of this is that Balaam comes from Petor (), a word used for dream interpretation (e.g., in the Joseph narrative). Indeed, both the narrative context and several details (too numerous to list here) strongly suggest this is dreamwork, incorporating and transforming elements of Moses’s experiences, anxieties, doubts, and fears.

For example, Moses long resisted the prophetic role because of his difficulty speaking and his fears that his words would be ineffective. Most recently at this point, he’s been experiencing frustration and disappointment in moving forward: literal roadblocks in the form of foreign kings refusing to let the Israelites pass, and the ultimate roadblock—God has said he will not enter the Promised Land (). His mortality is front and center, highlighted by the recent death of his siblings and leadership partners, Aaron and Miriam, and by the encampment now on the steppes of Moab, opposite Jericho, near Beit Peor, the place where he will die (also see , 25, and ). And he has grown distant from the people, with whom he once so strongly identified but from whom he will soon part ways. This is a new generation; they don’t share his past in Egypt, and he won’t share their future in the Land. He’s been increasingly impatient and even angry with them, and less effective in reaching them.

It is not a stretch to imagine Moses plagued with doubts about his legacy, his authenticity, and his character: “What have I really achieved? Will the people be able to sustain the vision without me? Has my service been true and my motivation pure, or have I used my spiritual gifts for my own gain? What does my anger and frustration with the people say of me? Have I loved the Israelites enough and genuinely served them?” In short: “Am I a true prophet and servant of God, following in Abraham’s footsteps, or merely an unworthy parody?”

One need not be a student of Freud to connect such doubts to a dream about a “heathen” prophet, who

• sees the Israelites only from afar, and whose name (Balaam) suggests belo am—“one without a people” (see );
• is told by God to go forward and is then stymied by impassable roadblocks;
• is revealed as a buffoon when he is bested by a talking donkey; and
• repeatedly offers words which fail to “take.”

Perhaps most challengingly, the dream may reflect uncomfortable questions and feelings about God. Recently, Moses has twice tried to follow God’s instructions, but to disastrous effect: sending spies to the Land (), and taking a rod to draw water from a rock (). Both incidents resulted in divine wrath, and a decree forbidding first the people, and then Moses himself, to enter the Land. So here, God seems inconsistent in dealing with Balaam, telling him to go forward, then being angry when he does.

Or perhaps Moses identifies even more closely with the donkey, a mute creature made to speak by God, whose complaint of being mistreated reads perfectly as a fantasy dialogue between Moses and God after Moses has struck the rock:

In other words, if the story of Balaam and Balak is actually Moses’s dream, it is a dream emerging from a crisis of faith: faith in himself, in the people, in God and God’s ways, and in the ability of human beings to connect, understand, and serve. It emerges from a fundamental anxiety: Not am I blessed or cursed, but am I bringing blessing or curse? Are my life and effort for the good? And reading it thus not only explains the bizarreness of the story, but opens important teachings for us.

First, by revealing the full humanity of Moses, with all of his doubts, fears, mixed motives, and anxieties, the Torah simultaneously offers comfort and conveys responsibility. We need not judge ourselves harshly for our own self-doubts and anxieties, but neither can we use them to excuse a failure to move forward. Such concerns and anxieties don’t disqualify us from leadership or service. On the contrary, self-doubt and introspection are hallmarks of authentic service; we should worry, instead, if we ourselves (or our putative leaders) lack such doubts.

Second, our parashah is no longer a story about a wicked man whose evil designs are thwarted by an interventionist God. Instead, it portrays righteousness as the courage to struggle with one’s dark side, to face one’s fears and doubts. If it is true that every character in a dream represents the dreamer, then God here is not a supernatural being but an aspect of Moses himself—the divine spark in him, able to illuminate his own inner challenges and impurities and to transform them.

At times we all are—or fear we are—Balaam. We have mixed motives, we get full of ourselves, or we are seduced by money and power. We push in the wrong directions, grasp at the wrong things, and sometimes fail to see what even an ass can see. We may doubt our ability to make a difference, doubt that good will ever triumph. But somehow—through our own efforts in confronting and managing the worst within ourselves, in combination with opening ourselves to being transformed in ways we can’t quite understand—somewhat mysteriously and in spite of ourselves, we may turn even our curses to blessings.

The publication and distribution of the 91���� Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (��”l) Hassenfeld.

Prophecy among the nations fascinated and terrified ancient Jews. It must exist: If there is only one God, God of the whole world, why should divine inspiration be limited to the members of one nation? There is no reason that God cannot speak with the Greeks through an oracle or the Arameans through seers just as he spoke to the Israelites through their prophets. But while prophecy among other peoples testifies to the universality and all-encompassing power of God, does it not also challenge the uniqueness of Israel?

The figure of Balaam, well-known among both Jews and non-Jews, presents an opportunity to think through this challenge. (The Aramaic “,” an eighth-century text from , tells us that on the eastern side of the Jordan, too, Balaam was a figure of great renown, whose ancient words were inscribed on a temple wall.) Already in the Torah we seem to hear three different ways of thinking about Balaam, and these three ways continue throughout the Hebrew Bible and into later Jewish thinkers.

To recall, the biblical story of Balaam tells that the Moabite king Balak sent for the great seer to come curse the people of Israel in the wilderness. Balaam protests that he can do only what God ordains. After a nighttime revelation from God, he confirms that he can come, but will only be able to say what God allows him to say. On the way to Balak, Balaam’s donkey—but not Balaam himself—sees an angel of God blocking his path. When the donkey finally speaks and edifies its owner, the angel reiterates that Balaam can only say what God wants him to say. Finally, Balaam and Balak go to site after site, mountain after mountain overlooking the camp of the Israelites, and at each site Balaam has sacrifices offered and then utters an oracle in praise of Israel. Enraged, Balak sends him home, and each goes his own way.

How do we assess the character of Balaam in this story? On one end of the spectrum we get the fool of the donkey episode. Balaam here is obtuse, short-tempered, and, most of all, revealed as an incompetent prophet: even his dumb donkey can “see” better than he can! An intermediate portrait emerges from the frame story. Balaam insists that he cannot cross God, that he can say only what God wants him to say—but this sounds very much like a check on his power, not a virtue. He does not bless Israel because he identifies with God’s will, but because he is powerless to go against it.

Finally, there is the Balaam of the oracles. Here we hear soaring rhetoric in praise of Israel and meet a prophet of brilliant poetry who sees the best qualities of the young nation. His praise is so incisive and buoyant that we still quote him on a daily basis—it was Balaam, after all, who first said, in his third oracle:

How fair are your tents, O Jacob /
Your dwellings, O Israel!
Mah tovu ohalekha Ya‘akov /
Mishkenotekha, Yisra’el. (24:5).

Balaam’s first two oracles are no less laudatory:

As I see them from the mountain tops /
Gaze on them from the heights /
There is a people that dwells apart /
Not reckoned among the nations //
Who can count the dust of Jacob /
Number the dust-cloud of Israel? /
May I die the death of the upright /
May my fate be like theirs! (23:9–10).

Lo, a people that rises like a lioness /
Leaps up like a lion /
Rests not till it has feasted on prey /
And drunk the blood of the slain (23:24).

This Balaam who presses his soaring eloquence into use in praise of Israel is the one who does us the most pride. But he also challenges our covenantal bond with God by his very existence! What is special about Israel’s relationship with God if Balaam divines God’s will and speaks on God’s behalf with even more power and elegance? There may be no prophet like Moses in Israel, but there is one greater among the nations!

Fortunately for the Israelite sense of self, Balaam’s character comes quickly crashing down after this peak. In , we learn that Balaam was responsible for the sin the Israelites committed with the Midianites at Baal Peor. Perhaps more importantly, Joshua later reinterprets the oracles in light of the story, arguing that Balaam tried to curse Israel, but God changed the curses to blessings (Josh. ).

The question of the foreign prophet still exercises us because it taps into a deep question about the relationship between God and Israel. The more power granted to Balaam, the more valuable Balaam’s praise becomes – but the less unique Israel is. By demoting Balaam to a fool or a second-rate seer, the monogamous covenant between Israel and God is affirmed, but his own words become less significant. These dilemmas are not resolved in our parashah, but they are explored here.

that in addition to the Torah, Moses wrote “the section of Balaam” (BT Bava Batra 14b). In , the claim is even more explicit: “Moses wrote the five books of the Torah, and then went back and wrote (veḥazar vekatav) the section of Balak and Balaam” (JT Sotah 5:6). If the uniqueness of the story of Balaam is unmistakable, its significance is no less so. Telling the story of the historical character of Balaam is also a way of thinking through our own standing in the world and in the eye of God.

The publication and distribution of the 91���� Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Half a century ago, the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski summed up the situation in his small book, The Key to Heaven (Grove Press, 1972), when he imagined Balaam’s perspicacious and faithful ass pronouncing, “In the final analysis, I’m the most injured party. My master suffered only a moral unpleasantness, but my rump still hurts” (p. 28).

This biblical farce, however enjoyable, pokes fun at the gentile prophet and in doing so reveals the Bible’s anxiety about Israelite exceptionalism. If God speaks with the gentiles, we might ask, how are we Jews special? God spoke with Adam and Eve, to be sure. But they lived a long time before Abraham, father of our faith. God also spoke with Noah.  reports that Noah lived ten generations after Adam, right in the middle of pre-Abrahamic times. As Midrash  wryly comments about Adam and then Noah: “There is no shame when a King consults with his gardener . . . or his ship’s captain.”

It bears notice that in Islam, Noah (Nuh in Arabic) is counted as a prophet. In rabbinic Judaism, the medieval midrash Seder Eliahu (Rabbah 26 and Zuta 10) counts Noah’s son Shem as a prophet, too. The passage is worth quoting, as it leads us back to Balaam:

Shem prophesized for 400 years to all the peoples of the world, but they did not listen to him. From that point onward Eliphaz the Temanite, Zophar the Naamathite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Elihu son of Barakhel the Buzite, and [their long-suffering conversation partner] Job of the land of Uz [were prophets]. Balaam ben Be`or was the last of them all. There was no matter whatsoever that the Blessed Holy One did not reveal to Balaam . . . Balaam ben Be`or was even greater in wisdom than Moses. (Seder Elihu Rabbah 7)

Since that same midrash refers to Moses as “the father of wisdom” and “the father of prophets,” this is an astonishing claim. Balaam was greater than Moses! As the rabbi of that midrash later explains it, the reason God sent these prophets to the gentiles is so they could not complain they were not also given the opportunity to accept the Torah.

Notwithstanding that dubious explanation, we must contemplate what it means that the Torah itself, as well as the rabbis interpreting it, acknowledge the fact that there are prophets who are not Jews. This challenges the persistent myth of Jewish exceptionalism, which conveniently ignores that this same Torah teaches us that the One and Only God of the universe created all of humanity and loves all of God’s creatures equally.

Yes, we recite in Friday night kiddush (and on other occasions), “asher bahar banu mikol ha’amim—[We praise you God] Who chose us from among all the peoples.” But given the monotheistic imperative that we all worship one and the same God, I prefer to recite (as I learned at the Jerusalem Shabbat table of our late teacher Rabbi Jacob Milgram ��”l): “asher bahar banu im kol ha’amim—Who chose us, along with all the peoples.”

Which brings me back to Balaam. Can one then not reasonably say: There is no God but God, and Balaam, too, is God’s prophet? I acknowledge that some of my scholarly colleagues have interpreted certain rabbinic midrashim about Balaam as referring to Jesus (e.g. Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud, Princeton 2007). What’s confusing about this equation is that Jesus was Jewish, not a gentile like Balaam. But what if Midrash Seder Elihu, composed in its final form in the ninth/tenth century CE under Islamic rule, is thinking of the preeminent non-Jewish prophet of his time: Mohammed?

Could one then not reasonably say that there is no God but God, and Balaam/Mohammed is God’s prophet? Articulating such a statement does not make me a Muslim. But it does make me a monotheist who recognizes, as have the Bible and centuries of rabbis before me, that there are prophets among all nations. The One God speaks to all of God’s peoples, each in their own chosen status, be they Jews, Christians, Muslims, or for that matter, adherents of other, non-Abrahamic religions. Perhaps that is the lesson Balaam teaches us in our own strife-filled day, when he offered his aspirational prophecy millennia ago: “Mah tovu ohalekhah Yaakov—How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel.” Our dwellings are truly goodly when we live together with respect and blessings for our fellow human beings.

The publication and distribution of the 91���� Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

Yet in fixating on the split-second impulse of Moses’s lost temper, we miss out on a broader leadership lesson. I would like to shift our focus to Moses’s inability earlier in the narrative to take in stride the relentless complaint of the thousands in his charge. The people were thirsty, tired, scared, and fearful of the big changes that lay ahead; with discomfort and anxiety reaching unbearable heights, they accuse Moses of making their lives worse by taking them from Egypt: “If only we had died with the death of our brothers before the Lord . . . Why have you brought the congregation of the Lord to this desert so that we and our livestock should die there? Why have you taken us out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place . . . ” (3–5). Certainly, Moses must have felt despondent, unappreciated, and furious, as “Moses and Aaron moved away from the assembly to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and they fell on their faces” (6).

We can craft a leadership timeline that already was doomed to end poorly the moment Moses reacts to these harsh words by falling on his face. Moses’s job as a leader is to know that the People are worried and scared, and then to do what the People cannot do —to take the long view and see the big picture. To say, “I know you are thirsty and scared, and I am finding a solution. I am sorry you are suffering. Hang in there, and I’ll get back to you”—and then to walk away and find that solution, understanding that the people might not ever appreciate his efforts. Moses was challenged to rise above the complaints, but instead he takes them personally, as evident when he calls the congregation together in front of the rock “and he said to them, ‘Now listen, you rebels, can we draw water for you from this rock?’” (10).

Perhaps God punished Moses because despite seeing all of his phenomenal leadership qualities, God did not trust that Moses would be able to take the long view that was needed to transition the People to the state of autonomy and freedom that awaited across the Jordan river. Anyone who has ever led a classroom, a teen tour, a parenting listserv, a board retreat, an organization, or a family meeting can relate to Moses’s tendency to feel overwhelmed, to want to run and hide when the challenge is set at a very high bar. And yet, leaders do not have that luxury; as Brené Brown states in Daring Greatly: “A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance . . . But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives” (4).

Moses might have had a different reaction, as he stood at the rock, had he held the deep knowledge that dissatisfaction is inevitable, as is the desire to go back to the way things were even if “the way things were” did not favor the collective best interest. He was an extraordinary leader, but in falling on his face and then naming the People as rebels, Moses allowed them to fill the “cheap seats” to which Brown refers and in the process sunk to their level. Perhaps God saw from his reaction to the congregation at their moment of complaint that despite all of his successes, he was not the leader to bring the People home.

We can learn leadership lessons from our parashah that will help us prevail in times of crisis of COVID and beyond, get ahead of short-term thinking, and always keep an eye on the big picture. The long view is not always understood or appreciated. As we saw from the People of Israel, it is often unwelcomed and outright rejected. Despite this, leaders need to hold steady and “stay in the arena,” as this steadiness can carry an anxious people through.

The publication and distribution of the 91���� Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

The contradictions in the narrative in its current form certainly spawned inconsistent characterizations of Balaam, through the ages. The Rabbis of the Mishnah, for example, emphasized Balaam as evil—they called him “Balaam the Wicked”—and proclaimed that he, and his followers, forfeited the world to come (Avot 5:19). The midrash Seder Eliyahu Rabbah (Ish Shalom ed., p. 142), on the other hand, credited Balaam with having greater wisdom than even Moses! In this commentary, I highlight another aspect of the narrative presentation of Balaam. The literary parody in the scenes of Balaam and the donkey, evidently a self-contained literary unit, is worthy of independent treatment. In the final analysis, we will explore the significance implicit in the mockery of Balaam and in the fact that the Balaam story is made up of originally conflicting traditions.

Returning to our storyline, Balaam was commissioned by Balak to curse the Israelites because he believed Balaam to be a sorcerer, able to alter future events. In truth, however, Balaam was not a sorcerer, but, rather, a diviner. He could not change the future; he only aimed at predicting it. For biblical Israel, and according to normative Jewish practice to this day, sorcery, that is, all forms of witchcraft, was and remains forbidden (see Deut. 18:10, BT Sanhedrin 67b and corresponding codes). In the Bible it was even punishable by death (Exod. 22:17). Although not an Israelite, Balaam could still communicate authentically with the God of the Israelites, since he was a diviner and not a wizard. But, as we shall see from our analysis of the donkey episode, even a diviner could be seen as sinning before the Israelite deity.

After being hired by Balak, Balaam set out on his donkey to view the Israelite encampment and pronounce his curse. Along the way, God placed an angel bearing a sword on the road, but only the donkey could see the angel. When, due to the roadblock, the donkey went aside, Balaam beat his donkey. This happened three times until the donkey spoke [!] to Balaam and rebuked him. The angel became visible to Balaam, at which point he rebuked Balaam for beating the donkey who had, actually, just saved his life (22:22–35).

The fundamental mockery of Balaam is obvious. The one perceived to be able to control the Israelites with words could not even control his donkey with a stick. The one who claimed to be a seer of the unseen could not even see what his donkey saw (and was right in front of him!). The one who is the wise among the wise was beaten in a spoken exchange by the dumbest of animals. In the end, Balaam did not curse Israel; only blessings spewed forth from his mouth.

What exactly does the narrative mock? Certainly, the purpose of this plot is to disgrace Balaam. But why? As a diviner—and not sorcerer—was he not able to communicate with and execute the will of the Israelite God? As the rabbinic tradition reads it, Balaam’s quick acceptance to set out on the journey demonstrates that Balaam was, in fact, intent on cursing the Israelites (see Rashi to 22:20). It seems, therefore, that the donkey episode comes to caricature Balaam and any other seer, for that matter, who, even with authentic access to God, sets out to do evil. In short, even those with access to the truth can attempt to do harm. As we see from the ending, the plan was foiled. Ultimately only the will of God, the blessing of the Jewish people, prevailed. What are we to make of the fact that this same sinister seer was intertextually cloaked in the robes of the righteous? Is there a lesson to be drawn from the editorial activity in the biblical text?  

Certainly, the intertwined contradictory narratives about Balaam—presenting him at times as a saint and at others as a sinner—teach an important lesson. Like the contradictions evident in the integrated narratives of Balaam, at times there are ideas presented to us in a faithful looking package that only once unraveled reveal layers of challenges and affronts to Judaism’s tenets, values and aspirations. Beware: there are no small number of contemporary threats to the core values and tenets of Judaism packaged and repackaged as authentic and compatible with Judaism. These can take many different forms and are not limited to the contemporary occult. I refer to evil ideologies and tendencies—including political extremism, racism and intolerance—masquerading as Jewish values. We would be well advised to beware of these contemporary “sorceries” and their representatives; those attempting to veer us away from the righteous path. If we always remember our primary allegiance—the singular truth of the God of Israel—we too will only spew forth from our mouths a Torah of blessing, moderation, and equality for all.

The publication and distribution of the 91���� Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

—Steve Earle, “God is God”

Anyone who is an aficionado of late night comedy shows with a strong dose of political and social satire such as Saturday Night Live or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver knows full well that comedy can be a very serious matter indeed. But can sacred narratives of the Torah be comedic? And if so, should we take that comedy seriously?

Consider the case of the gentile prophet Balaam and his talking ass in this week’s Torah portion, Balak. Is there a more absurd encounter in the entire Bible? Undoubtedly concerned that skeptics would use this episode to undermine the credibility of the entire religious corpus, our sages and scholars have worked overtime to rationalize this story and explain away its fairy tale quality.

In Pirkei Avot, we are taught that the mouth of the ass in the Balaam story was created on the Sabbath eve of Creation (Avot 5: 6). According to the commentary Tiferet Israel, this mishnah comes to teach us that God invested creation with the power to bring forth this and other wonders at the appropriate time. In other words, this miracle and others that we read about or even experience in life are not beyond nature, but in fact they are natural phenomena that only appear at particularly propitious times.

Maimonides—the rationalist philosopher par excellence—was clearly dissatisfied with this explanation. In his Guide for the Perplexed (II.42), he argued that the ass did not really speak at all but rather was seen in a dream. The Italian biblical commentator S.D. Luzzatto offers a different but equally rational explanation. Like Maimonides, Luzzatto denied that the ass actually spoke words. Instead, when Balaam beat the animal for not moving forward, the ass made plaintive sounds that implied protests. Balaam interpreted the braying as objections to the abuse he was heaping on the beast and he responded in words much as we might speak to a beloved dog or cat.

But what if the Biblical author does not want us to rationalize the story away but rather, like a great comedy sketch, asks us to marvel at its ingenuity and then take away a serious message?

As Robert Alter points out in The Art of Biblical Narrative (105), the very first word of the Balaam story is the verb “to see” (Num. 22:2), and that verb, with its notions of vision and perception, creates the unifying structure of this story. Balak, king of the Moabites, chooses Balaam to curse the Israelites because Balaam is considered the preeminent seer of his day. So it is a great irony that this seer cannot see that he has no power to curse a people whom God wants blessed. This point is driven home with satirical humor when Balaam rides off on his ass at Balak’s insistence to curse the Children of Israel. On the way, an angel brandishing a sword stands in the way of the ass and will not let it or its rider pass (v. 23). The animal can see the angel, but the seer cannot see it. When Balaam proceeds to beat the animal, God opens up its mouth so the ass can protest with speech. Balaam responds that “If I had a sword with me, I’d kill you” (v. 29)—further irony because the angel standing right in front of him has a sword in his hand, but Balaam, the great seer, cannot see it. Only when God “uncovered Balaam’s eyes” does Balaam see the angel and repent for mistreating his animal (vv. 31–35).

This story presents high comedy with a stinging rebuke. Balaam had awesome powers of prophecy (the Midrash [Sifrei Devarim 357:40] compares his prophetic gifts to those of Moses) but he could not see that those powers were useless unless they were employed for good purpose. Perhaps the lesson here is that prophecy is not a gift bestowed on a chosen few but rather an inchoate ability that many possess to see what others refuse to acknowledge.

Years ago when Harlem was one of the poorest and most neglected parts of New York City, I used to ride the subway to 91����, which is only a few blocks south of Harlem. On the subway walls were posters that read: “When you get to 125th Street, look out the window. Give a damn.” Those posters reminded me of the lyrics written by Paul Simon: “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.”

The absurd story of Balaam’s ass comes to teach us this very serious point: we must take the blinders from our eyes, perceive the truth no matter how discomforting, and then use our vision to turn curses into blessings.

The publication and distribution of the 91���� Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).