Seeking Goodness Is Seeking Truth
Parashat Balak, Numbers 22:2–24:13
Dave Nichol, Ruach Israel, Needham, MA
Recently at dinnertime, as the family sat around the table, the question came up, “Why do parents think more highly of their own children than others? Does that reflect bias?” And, the implication, “If so, is that bias . . . ok?”
As a dad, I naturally jumped at the opportunity to wax theoretical as long as my kids would listen, but aware that I only had about fourteen seconds, I also tried to be concise. My answer (doubtless since-forgotten) was that it is natural, healthy, and even truthful for parents to have this kind of bias for their children.
I tried to explain it so that a nine-year-old would at least give me a couple sentences before tuning out: parents have a front-row seat to all the awesomeness of these small humans they are entrusted with. If every person is endlessly, mysteriously, profoundly beautiful, parents are often the ones who have the best opportunity to see it up close. This is as it should be: everyone should have a cheerleader or two! A person—the very image of God manifest—should not be hidden under a basket, but have someone to appreciate them.
After all, if the Mona Lisa is in a forest with no one to see it, it may still be beautiful, but it’s a shame. Similarly a human being, each of whom is a treasure of infinite worth and wholly unique, should be loved and appreciated accordingly. This is why community—family in particular—is so important.
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In this week’s parasha, Balaam, a kind of freelance prophet, is retained by Balak king of Moab to curse the Israelites as they travel to Canaan. Balaam may be a pagan prophet selling his skills to the highest bidder, but he can’t just curse or bless apart from God’s involvement. So, intending to curse, he pronounces blessing on the Israelites not once, but four times. Intending to be a tool for Israel’s destruction (for a nice stipend), he finds himself a herald of Israel’s ascendance.
The story is funny on many levels, but it’s not clear how we are to understand Balaam. Is he a buffoon whose attack on Israel backfires? Some kind of evil sorcerer who is out to get the Jews? How is he even a real prophet?
One way to make sense of him from a literary perspective is as a foil for Abraham. Both are prophets from Mesopotamia (22:5) who have some kind of relationship with God despite coming from a pagan people. The Sfat Emet (R. Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, Poland 1847–1905), however, identifies the contrast that the Torah may be accentuating:
The Mishnah says that whoever possesses the three characteristics of a good eye, a lowly spirit, and a humble soul is a disciple of our father Abraham, while one who has the three opposite characteristics is a disciple of wicked Balaam (Avot 5:19). Our sages here reveal to us that Balaam was the precise opposite of righteous Abraham.
This fits with their comment on the verse, “What may I curse that God has not cursed?” (Num 23:8). This wicked man sought out the precise moment of divine wrath, of which it is said: “the Lord is wrathful each day” (Psa 7:12). But this wrath lasts only for a moment, since it also says: “The compassion of God is all day long . . .” (Psa 52:3). The entire goal of the wicked is to find that [moment of] wrath.
The righteous, by contrast, seek out the good will of Heaven. “As for me, my prayer is at a time of goodwill” (Psa 69:14).
The Sfat Emet alludes to a tradition (mentioned by Rashi on Num 23:8) that the essence of Balaam’s abilities was knowing the moment when God is angry, and leveraging that knowledge to secure curses upon others. Because God’s wrath is so infrequent compared to his compassion, this is actually quite a skill! The prototypical Abraham story, on the other hand, is when he enjoins God to spare Sodom if there are righteous people living in it.
The symmetry is remarkable: Balaam keeps moving to different mountaintops to get a different view of Israel, seeking out an angle from which Israel offends God (e.g. Num 23:27–29). Conversely, Abraham repeatedly raises the possibility that there may be some righteous souls in Sodom, haggling until God agrees that ten righteous people is enough to spare it. Where Balaam seeks out the negative angle, Abraham manages to find the positive.
What is striking, however, is that the people described by Balaam’s words—the words of one whose “eye has been opened,” who hears God’s speech (24:3–4)—doesn’t quite match the quarrelsome, complaining people from the last several parashiot. God is not “capricious” or prone to changing his mind (23:19), but is this vision from God even . . . truthful?
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We can find a recipe for becoming “disciples of Abraham” in the interpersonal realm by looking at another passage in Mishnah Avot (1:6) where R. Joshua Ben Perachia enjoins us to judge everyone “with the scale weighted in their favor.” At face value this seems ironic at best: what’s the point of “judging” if you’re going to manipulate the scales? Doesn’t integrity matter? What about truth?
The sages have much to say on the importance of speaking truth, and they don’t always come down on the side of naively blabbing what we believe to be true in the name of “integrity.” But I see this more as an expression of humility: recognizing our own limitations in knowing and judging truth. What in fact devalues truth is to imagine that we have tamed its complexities and are best positioned to be its arbiter.
And thus Joshua b. Perachia’s enjoiner to give others the benefit of the doubt, perhaps even radically. If there was a way Yeshua was radical in interpersonal relationships, it was in how he gave people chances, and saw them as whole people regardless of their past (or current) failings. Virtually his last words before dying were giving the benefit of the doubt (“they know not what they do”) to people who were literally in the process of killing him. Should we not follow suit and give the benefit of the doubt to others, even to a radical degree?
I don’t advise putting yourself in dangerous situations or letting yourself be taken advantage of. But in situations where we have little at stake, we should be aware how much choice we have in how we perceive others. With a little awareness and effort, we can choose a different angle to see them, consider their perspective’s merits, and think about how we might act if our situation were different. Most likely the only thing that holds us back will be our fear of what truths we might uncover about ourselves.
Balaam sought angles that made our ancestors look bad, but he underestimated God’s love for his people. This love is like—or better, the model for—the love of a parent for their child. As such it is not easily taken advantage of. Certainly no one knows a child’s foibles better than a parent, and yet . . . why should the flaws outweigh the beauty and magnificence of a human soul? Who can say a person’s value is significantly diminished because their weaknesses differ from our own, or bother us more?
Balaam calls himself one whose eyes are open (24:3–4), and certainly we seek to have open eyes. Yeshua teaches, however, that the eye is the lamp of the body, and that our eyes should not be simply open, but good (Matt 6:22). His dying words make sense if seen in this light, as the kind of thing a parent would say.
And so, let us become disciples of Abraham and imitators of Yeshua. That is to say, lovers of—and cheerleaders for—our neighbor, mindful of the deepest truth: that in all their imperfections, each person remains an endlessly beautiful reflection of their Creator.