Podcast #76: Parashat Balak

The speaker begins by discussing the parasha Balak, which tells the story of a sorcerer named Bil'am who is hired to curse the people of Israel. The speaker argues that the main mitzvah, or commandment, of this parasha is to be a blessing rather than a curse. They discuss the power of human will and how even God cannot withstand it. The speaker raises the question of how we can prevail over God but often fail to bring about blessings. They suggest that the answer lies in our free will and the choices we make. The speaker also discusses the importance of bridging, or connecting with those who are different from us, as opposed to bonding, or connecting only with those who are similar to us. They argue that treating others with kindness and respect, even if they do not agree with us, is a core aspect of being a blessing. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. Shalom Atam. Shalom to everyone. We're back. We're back. And not that we ever went anywhere, but nevertheless we're back. And with an amazing, a magical, magical I think is the correct term here, magical parasha with a pagan sorcerer who is able to curse and to bless and is hired to come and curse Bnei Israel. Parashat Balak and the sorcerer is Bil'am. So Balak is the 40th parasha Elisha. You know it's rather painful to count the parashot because they also count the time from Simchat Torah, from October the 7th as we march through the Torah. We also march through the period of time that has passed since those painful events and they remain more painful. They don't become less painful. And right now the weather is sizzling hot and so is the political temperature, not only in Israel but in Europe and in the U.S. as well. In fact in South America, all over the world, political, political heat, not just summer heat. But Elisha, parashat Balak is amazing as you note, magical is the right word for a number of reasons. So Balak, the parasha, it's fairly long, it's 1450 words. It has, according to the Rambam, no mitzvot, which is unusual. Even Sefer Breshit has three mitzvot, be fruitful and multiply, circumcise your child and the puzzling one about the tendon that we need to remove. Only three mitzvot in Genesis, 610 in the rest of the books. And on average, parashat have between a dozen and fifteen mitzvot. According to the Rambam, no mitzvot in Balak. Who am I to disagree, but I disagree. I think there is an 800 pound gorilla of a mitzvah and the shortest possible mitzvah, as you note in your Rasha and it simply says, be a blessing, not a curse. That is the meta mitzvah, it's the mitzvah overriding all the other mitzvot, I think, and driving all the other mitzvot. And you begin your opening sentence in your Rasha, we're discussing the Rasha from your book, Ayyaka. And the opening sentence is a blockbuster. Let me quote, Parashat Balak tells us, once again, about the power of our will. Even God cannot, as it were, withstand human willpower. That's phenomenal, Elisa. If we wish something, if we do something, even God doesn't withstand what we do. And you give many examples. He didn't stop Cain from murdering Hevel. He didn't stop Adam and Havah from eating from the Tree of Knowledge. He doesn't prevent horrific things happening to blameless people. And in this Parashat, he doesn't prevent Bilam from setting out on a journey. And his goal is to curse rather than to bless. So, we are told to bless rather than curse, but at the same time, we are told to be humble because our plans so often do not come about, as John Lennon said brilliantly, life is what happens when you are making other plans. So, Elisa, let's talk about this. We have free will, but on the other hand, we are not masters of the universe, and we screw up so often, and our plans go awry. How does this work? How is it that we prevail over God sometimes, but very often, when we want to bless, it comes out the other way? Yeah, what a great question. What a great question. This question is so relevant right now. It's like in one of the previous conversations we had, you brought up the question, so, 7th of October, was that God's will? Is that God's will, or did that go against God's will? And there are many possible answers, and different days, I will personally offer maybe another different answer than what I'm going to say in a moment. But I just want to say before I do give a possible answer, that indeed, there's never one answer. Never, never. And actually, it's also the essence of what I'm about to say, that if we think there's only one answer to a question, then it's almost blasphemy. Why? Because there's a very, very famous quote, I'll quote it first in Hebrew and then translate it. HaKol Tzafui VaRashut Netuna, from the Mishnah. Now, HaKol Tzafui VaRashut Netuna, the way we translate it into English, will already give the definition and the interpretation. So, on the surface, the way people usually understand it, HaKol Tzafui, everything is preordained. Almost like there's a destiny. HaKol Tzafui, everything was already foreseen by God. VaRashut Netuna. And yet, there's a full freedom to act in any way you want to act. And this really sounds like a contradiction. How could everything be foreseen, and yet, there is free will to act differently from that which was foreseen by God. And it even says, HaKol Tzafui, everything is foreseen. There are no exceptions. So one beautiful, I think we've even discussed it in the past, the one beautiful, beautiful interpretation is, HaKol Tzafui, Tzafui doesn't only mean foreseen, or preordained. Tzafui comes from the word Litzpot, meaning to view, to see. Everything, in other words, everything is visibly possible. Or in other words, all options are possible. All the options. Infinity. All options are possible. VaRashut Netuna, and there's a freedom of choice to choose the option that you want. So in other words, since God is the infinite, then in God's world, everything is a possibility. Everything is a possibility. And we have the free will to choose which possibility we want to manifest at any point in time. And therefore, the Torah comes to instruct us. That's the word Torah. Torah means to instruct. The Torah instructs us, so of all the options, hey, you know, be a blessing. Be a blessing. Choose the option that brings most blessings. But note that you can also choose otherwise. There are consequences to other choices. There are, I'm not even so sure about punishments, but certainly consequences to every option that we choose. But every option has consequences. There are no options that don't have consequences. Even if we choose to bring a blessing, for example, we could have, if people are complaining about the damage in Gaza, the damage is severe, I know, I realize. But I think any other army in the world after October 7th would have done a lot worse than what Israel has done. It would have flattened Gaza completely. So much so, it would have even flattened the tunnels underneath Gaza and not sent one single soldier, not risk the life of one single soldier by doing so. But because we chose to protect as many innocent people as possible, so we don't just bomb Gaza and flatten Gaza, but we go according to a certain plan where we think the terrorists are hiding or where they're at. Why am I saying that? It's because even this option of doing our best to protect human lives, and I think people may not be aware of how much energy and thought goes out to spare civilian lives. Yes, civilians are always caught in the fire, for sure. But so much is done in order to save civilian lives. And there's a cost to it. The cost is that we haven't gotten sin war yet. We haven't gotten the hostages out. We've had a lot of soldiers who were killed in the war. So every option, I think we chose the option with the most amount of blessing in it. Well, it comes along with a price tag. So all the options are possible. Each one has consequences. But choose the one that brings the most amount of blessing. So you raise an interesting point in your drashah about these choices, these infinite choices that we have, Alisha. Let me quote from your drashah. Because we all have many identities, and each identity influences what we choose. I'll quote. For now, the faithful kibbutznik in me, the kibbutznik in me is still dealing with the issue of personal will. Kibbutz is a collective. Decisions are made collectively. And the collective identity of the group is very important. Versus that of the ideology of the kibbutz, the army officer in me is still attentive to orders from above, discipline in the army, carry out orders. And the Zionist Jew in me is still committed to the calling of our national revival. We all belong to multiple groups, our family, our spouse, our children, our synagogue, our community, our city, our neighborhood, our political identity, and so on. And each pushes toward a different kind of choice. I've been thinking about this this week, and reading up by a Jewish political scientist from Harvard named Robert Putnam. Bowling Alone. Exactly, Bowling Alone. You got it 25 years ago. He's written a new book, and the new book is very optimistic. He's discussing how we can avoid bowling alone. His point was that people have grown increasingly isolated and lonely for many reasons. And this has generated real trouble, a mental illness crisis, and political divisions. And he explains it so clearly, it's relevant for our parasha, I think. He says that there are two ways that you can connect with your surroundings, with your society. One is called bonding. Bonding is connecting with people who are like you. That's pretty easy. We do that in the hafta. It's wonderful. Bonding. The second way is called bridging. Bridging is connecting with people who are different from you. They eat differently, they dress differently, they believe differently, they have different values, different politics, and so on. Bridging is a problem. And I think we're doing more and more bonding as this loneliness increases. The politics of identity say that we do a lot of bonding and vote according to bonding and believe according to bonding. And bridging, forget it. It's hopeless. So I think this, when it comes to blessing rather than cursing, we are driven by our tribe and by our bonding rather than by our bridging. And the Torah is really clear about this. One of the lessons of the Torah, right? We are commanded to do bridging to treat the ger. Who is the ger? A stranger, someone who is not among us. And we are commanded exactly how to treat the ger. And I'm afraid we don't do very well with that in Israel or anywhere in the world with all the millions of migrants who are awfully treated. So I think this is a core issue in blessing rather than cursing. Yes. The bridging, how we treat those who don't agree with us, who aren't like us, don't look like us. Yes. It's a beautiful, beautiful analysis. Bonding versus bridging. The bonding is good. It's good. It's very good. That's what you have community for. But bridging is what it's called for. Bridging is the hard part. And that's very interesting. And I think that that's why we have God at the center of it all. Because when it says like, love thy neighbor, love the other as you would love yourself, it doesn't just end there. There isn't a period there. It says, for I am God. So I think that I'm writing it in the middle or towards the end of writing this week's Torah Shabbat. And it's going to be all about this one sentence in Bil'am's, one of his speeches, the words that God puts in his mouth. And it says, the nation, the Hebrew nation, will be set apart and will not consider the Goyim, which is a really interesting one. So I'm dealing with it in depth in the D'arashah. But I think that one of the things I'm trying to write in the D'arashah is how it's not about bowling alone. It's not about basically being with your own kin and excluding everyone else. And I'm examining a bunch of great Jewish sages throughout the ages, from Maimonides to Rabbi Yudalevi to Rabbi Sachs, whom we quote a lot. And it kind of suggests the exact opposite. It suggests the meaning of it, and you're welcome to read the D'arashah, this week's D'arashah, but the meaning of it is that we are unique in the blessing that we bring, that we give. Rabbi Yudalevi compares it to the heart. The heart, so the Jewish people are the heart. And the heart pumps blood into the entire body and all the other parts in the body. And the Jewish people are like the heart, the heart of the world, giving the world the book of books. What more can we say about the Jewish people being the heart? And so in order to give, in order to be the heart, you need to be unique. Because if the heart is trying to be like the toe, it cannot be the heart. So you have to be loyal to being the heart that you were meant to be. And you need to foster what hearts do. You need to be able to pump blood. You need to be a strong heart, etc. And don't try and be a kidney. Instead, yet, you have a unique role. But your unique role is to bring a blessing to the entire world. So, u'ba goyim lo yitrashab and will not consider, the goyim is not, ah, we don't care about others. On the contrary, it means, if the kidney says, hey, hey, hey, hey, why are you not more like me? Well, I don't want to be like you. I'm going to be uniquely the heart. If I'll be a kidney, I will not be a heart. So, being loyal to our role in the world, there lies our blessing to the world. So, being on the one hand, it seems like a paradox, but it's not a paradox. On the one hand, we are commanded here in this parasha to be unique and separated in order to bring our blessing to the entire world. And one of the things I write in the parasha is that it's really interesting that Jews were always at the forefront of universalism. Whenever there was like a movement towards universalism, it was always led by Jews. And Dafka the Jews, who we read in this parasha, are supposed to be set apart, preach universalism. Because the universalism is the blood that we pump. The blood is universal. It's the blood that we pump to all the other organs in the body. Interesting, Inisha, because to some extent, the column that I wrote this week mirrors partly what you said. Jews, Avraham Heschel, Rav Heschel, marched with Martin Luther King to demand rights for the Negroes. Jews led the battle in South Africa for the rights of blacks against apartheid. Jews led the Russian Revolution. Exactly. We are there, and that's how we've been a blessing. I have another take about Amna Vardad Yizhkon, two takes, very short. The first one is that, yes, Amna Vardad Yizhkon, we are unique in many ways, Nobel Prize winners and so on, because we think differently. But our holy book, Inisha, if you look at the Koran, if you look at the New Testament, if you look at the Vedas, the Vedic literature of Hindu, if you look at Buddhist literature, the protagonist, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, they're flawless. They're without fleas in the book. They're perfect, perfect. In the Torah, our great forefathers and foremothers, they're deceptive, they tell lies, there's filial conflict, there's deception, all kinds of stuff that goes on. In short, they're like us. Amna Vardad Yizhkon, we are unlike other nations. Our holy book tells it as it is, and I think that's part of its attraction. But the second brief comment about Amna Vardad Yizhkon, Elisha, there are people in Israeli politics on the right who have made this part of their ideology, to embrace it as a blessing. Amna Vardad Yizhkon, anti-Semitism, they don't like us, they're not going to trade with us, who cares, we'll survive by ourselves. Elisha, Israel is a wealthy country. We have gross domestic product, or income per capita, among the highest in the world, especially for countries without oil and gas. We have now, but it's not a major part of our wealth. We're wealthy because we have creative ideas, innovation, high tech, and we sell to the rest of the world. The rest of the world wants what we have to offer, because we are unique people in our creativity. If you give up that, if you don't have that, if we are not part of this amazing global architecture that the Americans created, we are sunk, Elisha. This is not part of the blessing, it really isn't. We need to be part of the world, and I know companies now, really great companies, and there are major markets where they can't sell, just because they're Israeli. Now there are ways to get around that, and we're finding ways to do that. But Amna Vardad Yizhkon, however we interpret it, that is not a recipe for running a country. Believe me, it isn't. Right, right, right. Especially if we go back to the metaphor of the heart, which is not my metaphor, it's from Rabbi Uda-Alevi. Rav Kook really embraces this metaphor in a deep way, kind of suggesting if the heart is unique, but yet it pumps blood to the rest of the body, a heart that cannot pump blood, provide blood for the rest of the body, i.e., the world is no longer a heart. It loses its heartness. So we need the rest of humanity in order to be a blessing. We can't be a blessing if we are living in our own little ghetto. Absolutely. And there's another aspect, and you're mentioning the heart, which we sometimes regard as a place where emotions emerge. There's a new book by Misha Goodman, who is a brilliant writer. It's called Hayomashmini, The Eighth Day. It's about basically what do we do now, and he makes the point that we're not asking the right question, Elisha. We're asking what. What do we do? The question we should be asking is who are we as a people? Who are we as a people, meaning what are our core values? And those core values will determine what we do. And he makes the interesting point that we seem to be so divided now, despite all the slogans and the signs of united we will be victorious, et cetera, but we seem so divided. And he identifies the reason. The reason why we're divided is not as many believe because of differences in ideology. We're divided on an emotional level, on a level of the heart, a level of feelings. Religious, non-religious, ultra-religious, left, right, Sephardi, Ashkenazi. If you think about it, there's not that much ideology that separates us, but a great deal of emotion and otherness, and this lack of bridging. And that's difficult because it's so hard to overcome that. How do you overcome an emotion? We're told in the Shema to love God with all your heart and all your soul. That's an emotion. How can you command an emotion? I guess you can command it, but how do you carry it out when emotions are not entirely under our voluntary control? They come from a different place in our brain than the reasoning. How do we heal this nation that's so divided when it seems that many of the things that divide us that prevent this bridging seem to be on a level of what you might call the limbic brain, the reptile brain, the brain that functions according to gut rather than according to reason and rationale and values and thinking? Right, yeah. It's a great, great question. I remember, I recall a conversation I had with a previous boss that I had quite a few years ago, and I was blasting, I can't remember what the context was, but I was blasting the Haredi world over something. I can't remember what it was. And he said to me, he said, You know, Alicia, I want to recommend something to you. Never blast a fellow Jew. And I thought, that's an interesting statement. And he said, I said, you know, we really need to love all our fellow Jews. Now, it was kind of surprising to hear it from him because, I don't know why, it was just surprising, even though it did, it's not something that he walked differently from the way he preached. No, he was certainly loyal to that idea, but it kind of really took me by surprise. And I remember thinking to myself as I was driving back home, thinking, yeah, that's a really good point. It was really easy accusing the other, blasting the other. What if I took upon myself the mitzvah of loving all other Jews? And if I can, even loving all human beings, wow, that would be really wonderful. But let's start with loving all Jews. Let me take it as a mitzvah. Something is a mitzvah usually because it's hard to do. If it's easy to do, you don't need a mitzvah. It's a mitzvah that says breathe. You just breathe. I think you're absolutely right. It's almost like we can take from here, a mitzvah from Putnam saying kind of like bridge. Just make a point of bridging. And always trying to see how we fully understand the other side, it doesn't mean we have to eventually agree with them. It doesn't mean we have to side with them. It doesn't mean we have to be like them. But we're all, since love thy neighbor as yourself, for I am God, because God is at the center of it all, then it's our duty, our human duty to say, okay, if God is at the center of it all, at the core of it all, then I'm the one who's not seeing the full picture. I need to work on my own heart, as you said, the heart, and see the goodness in the other person and in the other Jew. Absolutely, Alicia. And I think this quality that you suggest is existential. It's not just important. It's not just nice to have. It's have to have. And let me explain. I'll go back to Darwin. So Darwin's Origin of Species talked about survival of the fittest, and animals and people and plants and everything that's alive compete for resources, and the most fit, the most suited, survives. And he was attacked by that. Where does that leave room for goodness? For goodness of the heart, for gratitude, for giving, for altruism. Where does that leave room? So he wrote a book, a whole book in response, called The Descent of Man, and he makes such a brilliant, simple point. Natural selection, this is a quote from Darwin, natural selection operates at the level of the individual, individual plant, animal, human being. Civilization works at the level of the group. And a tribe ready to give aid to one another will be victorious. So at the level of the individual, sure, there's competition. But at the level of the group, the survival is not the competition, but the cooperation. It's such a simple lesson, it's ignored. His book, Descent of Man, is not regarded as that important. Everybody reads The Origin of Species rather than The Follow-Up. Descent of Man is more important than Origin of Species. And we need to read that carefully here in Israel, because cooperation among the tribe, amongst Jews, amongst Jews. At least the Jewish people abroad are under siege. We saw that in our trip to the U.S. and Canada. And Israel seems to be ignoring it. We have our own problems. But there was a time, I remember, when Jewish communities were attacked in Florida. We sent people there, we sent security people to help them, because we're familiar with dealing with such attacks. We need to unite the Jewish people, and we need to do bridging. And not just because it's the right thing or nice. This is existential. We're a small tribe, we Jews. We're 0.2% of the world population. We need to have cooperation and stick together, and we need to do bridging within ourselves. And unfortunately, not all Jews seem to agree with that. Right, and one of the challenges here, I think, is that we might say, and I see that within me as well, we'll say, well, if I accommodate the view of the other and won't fight against it or try to eradicate it, then there's a chance that he might prevail. For example, there was a poll that was done among the right-wing voters in Israel, where if Netanyahu goes, the next one who will get the most popular support is Ben-Gurion. Itamar Ben-Gurion, now, for you and I, this sounds like a catastrophe. This is a total, total catastrophe. And we've got to fight it every way we possibly can, meaning go against him and fight against his tendency. So what? Are we supposed to try and find something good in him as well and be able to accommodate him too? Well, if you do that, then he's going to be the next prime minister. And it goes back to what you said about Darwin, which I think was a very, very wise point that you made, that on an individual level, we can indeed fight whoever we want and assert ourselves and differentiate ourselves. At the end of the day, hating someone else and fighting them bitterly, I'm not so sure if it ever won any war, if it ever brought a victory. That's not the path to victory. Hatred is not the path to victory. And I really think that if we do our own inner work, it's the longer path, for sure, but that's the path that will eventually prevail. I agree, and perhaps we can end, Alisha, with a quote from your Dosha. As you end your Dosha, and you write, the giant wheels of life will turn. They will turn for goodness, and they will turn for blessing. I think we really need to truly believe in that in our hearts, because the opposite is unthinkable. And then you end with a little prayer, which I'd like to read, which is beautiful. May it be your will, our God and God of our forefathers and mothers, that our will align with yours. May the disparity between our will and yours be reduced, so that our deeds will bring blessing to the world, which you create every day anew. May our deeds strengthen life and not weaken it. And Alisha, surprisingly, this arises when I teach entrepreneurship, because entrepreneurship is driven by powerful desire, powerful will. The question is, will for what? And the simple answer is to create value for people, to make people happier, wealthier, smarter. But what does creating value really mean? The marketing guru of Apple defined this. He was the marketing genius who helped market Macintosh and make it a success. His name was Guy Kawasaki. He was in the jewelry business. He hadn't really studied marketing, but he was passionate about the Macintosh. And he said, four words, make meaning, not money. And the entrepreneurs that I work with almost all get it. They make meaning in their life. And you could interpret it as saying, by trying to make their will actually God's will, and God's will is we should be a blessing to the world. How better can you be a blessing to the world than by creating something that makes people happy or smarter, more knowledgeable or wealthier or longer-lived? How much more of a blessing can that be? And I've known people who have done that. And they get up in the morning and they do it every single day. So yes, Balak does, I think, have this powerful meta-blessing. Choose life, not death. Choose to bless rather than curse. It's really easy to say, boy, is it hard to do in so many cases. Yes, yes, so may we all live according to this compass where we might not get there every day, but the compass will say bring blessing to the world. Bring blessing to the world. So simple. If only the world could follow that. Right, but instead of waiting for others to do it, we simply have to do it ourselves. Each person. Each person, yes, one person at a time. So Shabbat Shalom, everyone. Shabbat Shalom. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. Give us your feedback. We'd love to hear from you. Right, right, absolutely. Beit Roach, Shlomo. Beit Roach.