Thursday, July 21, 2016

Cheat Day - Reflections on Parashat Balak 5776

(Numbers 22:2-25:9)

If Bilaam the Sorcerer ever wrote a memoir, it might have been entitled Mass Murder for Fun & Profit

He claimed to be a prophet of the One True Gcd, yet his dearest ambition was genocide, the destruction of the Jewish People. His strategy was pretty darn clever; he understood that if he could drive a wedge between the Jews and their Divine Benefactor, their destruction was all but assured.

The jury's out on whether this guy had legit supernatural powers, or whether he was just a third-rate con artist and a first-rate self-promoter. I'm inclined to the latter. He reminds me of a much less benign version of Whoopi Goldberg's character in the movie Ghost. In the film, Oda Mae Brown is a fortune-telling hustler who (as much to her surprise as anyone else's) has a most unexpected and very authentic supernatural experience.

So in one of the most delicious ironies in all of Scripture, the A-lmighty uses the mouth of the evil Bilaam, not to curse the Jews as was his dearest intent, but to compel him to utter four mellifluous, poetic blessings in praise of the Jews.

In the second of these, Bilaam says:
He can see no iniquity in Jacob, nor perversity in Israel; the Lord his Gcd is with him, and he enjoys the friendship of the King. - Numbers 23:21
Wait just a minute. No sin in Jacob? No perversity in Israel? Did we not just read four of the most difficult Torah readings (BeHa'alotecha, Shelach, Korach, Chukat) which are object lessons in sin and rebellion against Gcd? Gcd Himself says we tested His patience ten times in the desert. How do we square up our serial misbehavior with what Gcd is channeling through the recalcitrant tongue of Bilaam?

True story: earlier this week, one of my co-workers created a particularly delicious new flavor of smoothie, and offered me a taste. I declined, of course, because it wasn't kosher (derp). She thought about that for a split second and said, "Oh, come on, it's just a sip. Don't you ever get a cheat day?"

From the perspective of a total outsider, one who doesn't understand the arcane rules I live by, the question might seem natural enough. But to myself I thought, what a curious (and curiously non-Jewish) question!

Although I smiled and simply responded "No," at that moment I had a blinding flash of insight to our question.

To have a "cheat day" from keeping the mitzvot would be like taking a day off from breathing. Belief in Gcd and the willing, obedient performance of His mitzvot goes to the core of our personal, communal and national identity. The notion that rules are meant to be occasionally bent or broken is utterly foreign to us. The idea that you only really begin to live by breaking rules may be the stuff of folk songs, but it is not our reality. 

To the contrary, the mitzvot aren't a burden, they are the very definition of who we are. Ki Hem Chayeinu, the mitzvot are our very lives.

By integrating the mitzvot into our understanding of Self, by having sworn Na'aseh V'Nishmah as we did at Sinai, and by committing to do and hear these mitzvot anew in each generation, we place ourselves in a different league than other peoples, a people impervious to indelible sin.

The Or HaChaim says on this verse that, because of the sin of Adam and Eve, evil (rule-breaking) became ingrained in humanity. Not so the Jews, not so those who enter the Covenant of Sinai. When we sin, it is a superficial stain, damaging but not permanent. This is a qualitative difference between the Jews and the other nations.

So yes, we Jews are a stiff-necked people, and we do mess up, and sometimes quite spectacularly. No human is perfect. But what makes the Jews so precious in the Eyes of Gcd is that we have adopted His rules as our own, and when we falter, we quickly get back up and resume our service to Gcd. Keeping the mitzvot saves our hides every time. That is why, despite our failings, Gcd perceives no indelible sin in Jacob.

Bilaam was neither the first nor the last who thought he could sever the bond between the Jews and Gcd. He thought he had a shot because he didn't understand the nature of the mitzvah-bond between Gcd and the Jews. He just assumed that the Jews, like everyone else, must surely have the occasional Cheat Day.

In the end, Bilaam got his licks in; he may have won a battle, but he failed in the larger campaign to destroy us. And until the Messiah arrives, the Bilaams of the world will continue to take their shots, but they will always fail. So take heart! The bond between the Jews and Gcd is unbreakable. As the verse states:
But despite [the punishment and exile I will visit upon them for their sins] I will never completely reject them and obliterate them - for I am Hashem, their Gcd. - Leviticus 26:44
Shabbat Shalom.

To see an earlier blog on Parashat Balak, click HERE.

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