In the Torah portion of Balak, Bilam, a sorcerer and heaven prophet, is hired by Balak, the king of Moav in order to curse the Jews. Legend had it that whoever was blessed by Bilam was blessed and whoever was cursed by Bilam was in fact cursed. According to tradition Bilam was the spiritual counter force on the side of impurity to Moses. The Midrash relates that the nations of the world came to God and said that if they had a prophet of the magnitude of Moses they too could be as holy as the Jewish people; therefore God gave the nations Bilam as their prophet. We in fact see in his words some of the most glorious praises of Israel uttered in the entire Torah as well as extensive prophesies of the Messianic times to come.
In the written text there seems to be no sinister motives by Bilam; it is only in the oral tradition that an entirely different picture is painted. Yet, when examining the text closely one finds many subtle and not so subtle allusions to Bilam's true desire to curse the Jews despite his repeated claims that he can only say that which God puts in his mouth. This in itself is perplexing. Why would God choose such an impure vessel for such sublime praises and prophesies.
As discussed above, sometimes "the medium is the message." Just as the spark and lineage of Mashiach is revealed through very strange and mysterious circumstances - such as the daughters of Lot sleeping with their father, Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Yehuda seducing him and giving birth, the way in which Boaz comes to marry Ruth and the manner in which David is conceived - so too God uses the impure Bilam to reveal the highest of prophesies.
The Midrash relates that "God desired to have for Himself a dwelling place in the lower worlds." Usually we think of this as God wanting Divinity and spirituality to infuse all aspects of life and all matters of the physical world. The tabernacle in the desert and the Temple in Jerusalem represent this ideal. Here though a different aspect of God desiring a dwelling place in the lower worlds is revealed. Even the lowest of the low can be used to fulfill His will, can serve as an instrument of Divine Providence. God takes the cursed intentions of Bilam and turns it into blessing.
According to the Slonimer Rebbe, Balak and Bilam did not mind Israel learning Torah and doing mitzvot. What did terrify them though is for Israel to go into the land of Israel where they would be able to take every aspect of material reality, even the very dust of the ground and through the mitzvot elevate physicality to holiness and purity. They recognized that only in the land of Israel would the Jewish people be able to accomplish the very purpose of creation - to make a dwelling place for God in the lower worlds.
Rashi comments on Bilam's words: 'Who can count the dust of Jacob" to mean those mitzvot that actually use the dust of the earth, such as the rituals of the red heffer and the sotah. The Slonmer Raebbe explains that this was their greatest fear - that Israel through performing the mitzvot would be able to elevate even the dust of the earth to the spiritual realms.
The Slonimer continues to explain that Bilam's real intention was not just to curse the Jewish people but to challenge their being the chosen people and challenge the notion that spirituality should entail any limits or borders. For if so, then his world view and philosophy of reaching God through idol worship, magic and fulfilling his indiscriminate physical desires would be nullified. Let us not think that Bilam did not have an understanding of God or did not have knowledge of how to use and manipulate powerful forces of nature. He most certainly did. But the Torah had revealed a new formula of God consciousness and this threatened his belief that one could give license to all ones most base passions and still be "spiritual." This lesson is quite relevant and timely in our world today.
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Bilam, knowing the power of God, lived up to his words to Balak that only that which God put in his mouth would he be able to say. Even though it is clear that he would have loved to fulfill Balak's desire to curse Israel he knew enough of the Divine not to cross God. Therefore every time Bilam begins to speak in order to curse the Jews, God puts into his mouth only words of praise of Israel. Yet the Talmud reveals that for every blessing he in a sense was forced to deliver he infused them with evil intent. We are taught that every one of the blessings were in fact turned into curses at some point except one - "How goodly are your tents Jacob, your dwelling places Israel."
From this we can learn that depending on the intent and the attitude of both giver and recipient, blessings and curses can be quite relative. There are blessings that are truly blessings and there are so called blessings that are meant to be quite the opposite. Then there are curses that really are curses and apparent curses that are blessings in disguise. These transformations can happen suddenly or over long periods of time and their description and effect can even vary among different people.
One of the greatest compliments that can be paid to a person is that their insides are like their outsides. What one says is what one means, pure and simple. We all know that this is much easier said than done.
A famous Sage was known as Nachum Ish Gam Zo, "Nachum [the one who said] 'this is also for the good.'" He turned every possible obstacle into a potential blessing. The Talmud likewise coined an idiom: "All that God does, He does it for the good." It may not be readily apparent, it may take hard work to eventually see it, but it will at some point be revealed to be good.
Other people don't have to work as hard. Once a man went to the Seer of Lublin and complained that he was having a hard time dealing with a string of setbacks in his life. The Seer advised him to go to Reb Zusha of Annipoli who could teach him how to deal with suffering. When the man entered his broken down cabin he told him the reason for his visit and Reb Zusha, who known to have experienced great poverty, was taken back as to why the Seer would send anyone to talk to him about how to deal with suffering, as in his own eyes God had only been good to him and given him exactly what he needed.
We are taught that the result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was that what had once been clear and defined lines between these two forces became blurred and mixed together. There is hardly a good that has no seed of its own undoing and a curse that has no possibility of being turned into a blessing.
Upon having a disturbing dream one can declare before three people that one has had a "bad" dream, to which they reply three times "It is a good dream!" This approach comes from the fact that when Joseph interpreted a dream, the Torah relates that the dream would happen according to the interpretation. The way we see things is the way they are; the force of positive thinking is that strong.
Therefore the antidote for Bilam in our own lives is to be determined to see the good in everything and to purposely turn adversity and challenge into good and blessing.
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After his many attempts to curse the Jews, Bilam suggests one more way to try to curse the Jews - get them to sin and in effect they will draw a curse down upon themselves. This is the underlying understanding for the last incident in the parsha when the women of Moab entice some of the men in Israel to harlotry and idol worship (Numbers 25:1-9). A plague breaks out in the camp threatening to engulf the entire camp and only the actions of Pinchas turn the tide.
After God turns all the desired curses of Bilam into blessings, including the exclamation that God "has not beheld sin in Jacob, nor has He seen perverseness in Israel," how can we understand the people of Israel falling so low. We can actually learn a number of very important concepts relating to the nature of sin and our enemies from this incident.
Certainly God, who is Omnipotent and knows the past as well as the future, recognizes all the failings, sins and weaknesses of the Jewish people throughout the ages. Yet, still the Torah states that God does not see sin in Israel. Sin, which comes from the word in Hebrew, chet, "to miss the mark" is a superficial, transient state of the soul. The soul is created pure, connected intimately to its Divine source, while its natural state is one of holiness and innocence. Yet, when confronted by the physical reality of the world, the body and the animal soul, it often fails to maintain its pristine state and falls into all sorts of desires, illusionary pleasures and does not properly assess its own purpose in life. Despite this, God does not see sin as effecting the very essence of the soul, though its effects are many times harmful to the extreme and leave a very deep impression. Teshuvah always has the power to return the soul to its true and natural state.
Since we are directed to imitate the ways of God, we too must learn to view others in the same way, knowing that a person's actions, no matter how hurtful or destructive, do not reflect their real inner intent and being. We need to learn to separate a person from their actions in a way that if we object, oppose or even condemn another's philosophy or concrete deeds, we can do it a way that does not condemn the essence of the person. This is no easy feat and serves as a great lesson in discernment as well as compassion.
This incident also reveals the true reality of our "enemies." Opposing forces manifest themselves in our personal lives, as well as on a national level, according to the opening we give for those forces to enter. One needs to be quite careful with this idea as it can lead to many false perceptions, but in this and many other places in the Torah we see that our enemies are there in order to point out our own weaknesses and failings. The classic example is soon after leaving Egypt the Jewish people were confronted with a lack of food and water. In response they complained and questioned "Is God among us or not?" The very next verse states: "Then came Amalek and fought with Israel…" Exodus 17:8). Amelek represents the arch enemy of the Jew, not only physically, but spiritually as well. The connection between events is quite clear, but it is further pointed out that the numerical value of Amalak equals suffek, "doubt," the very question of faith that brought them against Israel.
The Torah promises in many places that if we do the commandments and create a Torah society as it should be, God would protect us from all our enemies. Obviously, when confronted with enemies it does not mean we should not fight back because it some way we must deserve it, therefore it is meant for us to lose. But it does mean that there is a deeper spiritual lesson that accompanies our enemies or other hardships in life and it is our job to try to discover the root cause and rectify it as we defend ourselves.
As I mentioned this is a very sensitive area of understanding and takes much thought, but we must know that all our actions have physical and spiritual effects, many which come back to haunt us. God chooses his means of teaching us according to His own account and therefore our enemies throughout the ages have their own rectification according to their deeds. It does not justify the actions of our enemies, nonetheless the antidote to Amalek and Bilam is to rectify the roots causes as we confront their various forms in our lives. This is what is meant by Moses sending Joshua to fight Amalek with the sword, while he stood at the top of the hill in prayer throughout the battle. This type of war can only be fought on both fronts at once if we ever hope to defeat our physical and spiritual foes.
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At the height of the licentious scene when Israel was lured into a virtual orgy by the women of Moav, Zimri, a prince of the tribe of Simon takes Cozbi, a princess of Moav and publicly challenges Moses. He then takes her into the Tabernacle where he has sexual relations with her. The whole scene is so out of control that even Moses and the elders are frozen as how to react. Pinchas takes the initiative and after receiving permission from Moses takes a spear and kills Zimri and Cozbi, thus stopping the plague that has begun to consume the camp.
According to the Arizal, at the critical moment when Pinchas decided to act, the souls of Nadav and Avihu, the two sons of Aaron who died when they brought incense that was not commanded in the Tabernacle, entered into him, giving him the strength he needed to step forward alone and kill Zimri and Cozbi and thus avert total destruction.
Immediately we see that Nadav and Avihu were able to rectify their own fault of not requesting permission before bringing the incense through Pinchas who did ask permission if his proposed act was the correct thing to do under such circumstances. Further, their own pure intention of zealousness in wanting to draw close to God found its correct channel in the zealousness of Pinchas who acted only for the pure motive of wanting to save Israel.
The spear that Pinchas used is called a romach, a word that only appears this one time in the five books of Moses. The numerical value of romach is 248, the number of positive mitzvot and the number of limbs in the body. From this we learn that Pinchas acted with a total sense of being, he was able to join together all his intellectual, emotional and psychic energies to accomplish one specific goal. As a reward Pinchas is rewarded in the next parsha with a covenant of peace from God, the only such covenant ever mentioned in the Bible. The word peace, shalom, also means whole, complete. His reward corresponded with his deed - he acted from a total unified sense of purpose and was rewarded accordingly.
Nadav and Avihu also acted with a desire to give of themselves totally to God, yet as the various Midrashim tell us there was a slight hint of arrogance and aloofness in their attitude to others. They never married, held themselves as special and spoke out of place before their father and Moses. Though they truly were on a very high level of spirituality these blemishes acted against them at their peak moment. Through Pinchas they were able to act from pure motives with no trace of ego involved, thus fixing their own blemish.
The Tamud states "Pinchas - this is Elijah." Elijah, who ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot, was transformed into a heavenly being whose presence became eternal. Thus the fire that Nadav and Avihu longed to bring before God reached its fulfillment in the fiery chariot of Elijah. Although the act of Pinchas lasted but a few moments, his soul began a process that ultimately lead him to eternity. This is a very important teaching for all of us regarding the potential of singular acts to take on an eternal effect. Our mystical tradition teaches us that all our actions affect the upper worlds and can create energies that last a life time, or for many generations, or in such a case as Pinchas, can transform the soul so fundamentally as to give birth to a transcendent eternity. In the Divine realms past, present and future are all happening at the same time. So too the soul, rooted in God, can, when concentrating and actualizing all its potential, achieve eternity in one act, in one moment.
