Balaam and the Avengers

As I had a couple of requests to see this sermon I gave this past shabbat in New North London I thought I would share it here. If this isn't your thing, the latest chapter of Radiance is also up today.

    Anyone who knows me, will probably not be surprised to hear that on May 3rd I spent over 14 hours in a cinema in Times Square, watching a Marvel Movie Marathon. Starting with Iron Man at 11 am, this epic day of movies culminated in the first US screenings of the Avengers starting at midnight. Featuring heroes taken from 5 separate movies, the Avengers was a major ‘crossover’ event, uniting characters from different films into one epic blockbuster.
    But apart from my love of all things comicbook, why am I telling you about the Avengers? Well it seems to me that this weeks sidra, parashat Balak, may have been one of the original crossover stories, where characters from outside the Bible intrude on the regular story of the Israelites journey through the wilderness.
    Not since pharaoh plotted to wipe out the Jews in Egypt have we had such a behind the scenes look at what other’s think of the Israelites, and no parasha spends as long on this outsider perspective as Balak does. Indeed, it’s only the final 9 verses, dealing with the sin of Baal Peor and Pinchas’ zealoutry that finally return us to the camp of the Israelites. This week is the story of three characters - Balak, the king of Moav, Balaam, the prophet, and God - Israel are merely the backdrop.
    Yet why do I call this is a crossover story? Well it turns out that Balaam is the earliest character in the Bible for which we have an outside reference - in the Deir Alla inscription, found in 1967 and apparently dating from the 8-9th century BCE. According to this inscription, Balaam Son of Beor, the prophet of the gods, woke in the night weeping, telling the people that a goddess was threatening the land. Whether he was a historical figure or not, it seems that the prophet Balaam son of Beor was well-known outside the Bible. And now here he is, the great Balaam, inside the Bible - but what’s he doing here?
    To answer this question I want to look in more detail at the most famous part of the story - when Balaam eventually goes out to curse Israel, God sends a ‘malach adonai’ as an adversary against him (the word used is leSaten, the same rood as the word Satan or Satan, something we shall return to later). But Balaam, the great prophet, who consults with God every evening, is unable to see the angel standing in the way, with an outstretched sword in his hand. But Balaam’s donkey can. The donkey swerves off the road to save his master, and is rewarded by two thrashings from Balaam, furious that his donkey keeps going off the path. Then the angel stands in a narrow place, with no room to swerve to the left or right, and so the faithful donkey simply stops, no matter how many times Balaam hits him.
    Eventually, God causes the donkey to speak. “Am I not your donkey?” he says, “upon whom you have ridden your whole life up to today? Have I ever behaved like this before?” And Balaam says simply “no”, before God opens his eyes and the prophet sees the angel for himself.
    A strange story, with many puzzling features but I want to ask about Balaam’s sudden lack of sight. Why was the apparently great prophet, suddenly unable to see the angel opposing him? What was going through Balaam’s head?
    The situation that Balaam found himself in was politically and ethically rather difficult. Balak, the king of Moav himself, had sent his greatest princes to secure Balaam’s curses for the Israelites, promising great honours and financial rewards should he succeed. And yet, God first tells him not to go with them. When Balak sends even greater messengers, Balaam asks God again - to be told that he can go,
וְאַךְ אֶת הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר אֲדַבֵּר אֵלֶיךָ אֹתוֹ תַעֲשֶׂה:
    Only that which I say to you can you do.
    So Balaam gets up early, saddles his own donkey, and heads out. We can imagine the kinds of thoughts that were running through Balaam’s mind at this point - perhaps he was thinking of all the honour that Balak would bestow upon him, or what he might do with the gold. Perhaps he was wondering why God had changed his mind, and what the outcome of the whole affair would be. But I think that one thing Balaam was not thinking about was the people he was about to try to curse. I think Balaam was too wrapped up in himself to see anything clearly, too concerned for his own honour to even be thinking about what he was doing, certainly not of Israel, the intended victims of his curse. Balaam was living his own story, unaware of the journey of the Israelites whose path he was about to cross.
    Now in the world of the Bible, animals don’t speak - at least once we get past a certain snake in the garden of eden - and yet here we have a donkey not only speaking, but seeing more than the great seer himself.
    Balaam’s talking donkey is the clearest example of the need for outside voices, hearing from those removed from the situation. Balaam is wrapped up in his situation, unable to see the enormous threat that looms before him. Only when he listens to an outsider, a creature not even human, can he really appreciate what’s going on here. That he is a part of a much larger story, and that the author of that story is not himself, nor Balak, but God. Only that which God says can be done.
    In a book so full of Israel’s mistakes, as is the book of Numbers, Israel too needs an outside opinion, and that’s what the crossover event achieves. It takes a non-Jewish prophet to recognise the greatness of the Israelites. While they may grumble and complain, rebel the authority of God and Moses, nevertheless Balaam can say “Mah tovu ohalecha ya’akov, mishkenotecha yisrael”, how good are your tents o Jacob, your dwellings o Israel.
    The world we inhabit is more like parashat Balak than the rest of the Bible, more like the Avengers than Spiderman. The world is full of billions of narratives crossing and intersecting with each other, with hundred of peoples and nations inscribing their stories in the annals of history. While we may have a special interest in our own story, our personal journeys, the ongoing trials of our people, we know that we are far from the only protagonists in the world.
    Shmuel, the sage of the Babylonian talmud, had a principle that reflects the multicultural world he lived in. In masechet Shabbat (32a) we read that: “Shmuel would cross a bridge only when a non-Jew was upon it, saying, Satan has no power over two nations [together].”
    Here Shmuel is recognising that just as Balaam required an outside voice to overcome the angel, acting as a Satan, so too we need outside voices to overcome the adversaries within us. This is the great value of interfaith work - learning from others teaches us about ourselves, it holds a mirror up to our beliefs and values, and challenges us to say if they are really eternal, really true, really good.
    This is one of the reasons why I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to spend two years teaching religious studies in secular schools in Manchester. Not only did it give me a chance to share the richness of the world’s religions with my students, but it opened my own eyes to the treasures they contain, and my torah is stronger because of it.
    Sometimes we get too absorbed by ourselves and our own journeys to notice how our choices impact others, sometimes we become like Balaam, thinking of our own advancement and success without consideration of those who will be hurt by the decisions we are making. Whether it’s our close family, our friends or colleagues - we must remember that while we are the protagonist in our own story, we are also crossing over into many others, myriad threads woven together in the tapestry of life.
    The closest we can come to true perspective then, comes from recognising the voice of the other, hearing their point of view and using it to reflect on our own. Then perhaps we can recognise that the ultimate author of our destiny is not ourselves but God, and only that which God says shall be done.