Parashat Balak, Numbers 22:2-25:9

This Parasha has been generously sponsored by Steven Raiken, in honour of his beloved mother Ruthann Goldstein Raiken - Tammuz 14 (July 10, 2006).

Looking down from the heights is associated with many powerful events and emotions.

Asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory replied with the famous words "because it's there." The adventurer attempted this feat three times as a member of various British expeditions. Mallory went missing on his third attempt in 1924. Some 75 years later, an expedition found his body on Mount Everest.

Our attraction to heights dates back to ancient times. Mountains were thought to be the abode of deities. Offerings were made at "high places." The Hebrew word bamah refers to such places. (In Modern Hebrew, bamah refers to a stage. A closely related word, bimah, is the area in the synagogue where a service is conducted.

Commentators such as Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and Nechama Leibowitz have pointed out that Parashat Balak takes special note of high places. Balak, king of Moab, summons the prophet Balaam to place a curse on a people he perceives as a threat: the Children of Israel. Though initially refusing to do so, Balaam gets God's permission, but is told that he will only be able to speak words of blessing. Three times, Balak takes Balaam to high vantage points to gaze on Israel:

In the morning Balak took Balaam up to Bamoth-baal (The high place of the deity Baal). From there he could see a portion of the people.

Numbers 22:41

With that, he (Balak) took him (Balaam) to Sedehzophim, on the summit of Pisgah. He built seven altars and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.

Numbers 23:14

Balak took Balaam to the peak of Peor, which overlooks the wasteland. Balaam said to Balak, "Build me here seven altars, and have seven bulls and seven rams ready for me here." Balak did as Balaam said: he offered up a bull and a ram on each altar.

Numbers 23:28 -30

But under God's command, Balaam's vantage point made it impossible for him to fulfill the king's wish:

How can I damn whom God has not damned,
How doom when the Lord has not doomed?
As I see them from the mountain tops,
Gaze on them from the heights,
There is a people that dwells apart,
Not reckoned among the nations.

Numbers 23:8-9

Looking down from the heights can be associated with many powerful events and emotions. There is nothing more breathtaking than a view from a mountaintop on a clear day. Yet at the same time, the view from a height can also be disconcerting and even paralyzing, as Jimmy Stewart discovered in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Heights are places where God communicates with us. Mount Sinai comes to mind, but so does Mount Moriah, upon which God commands Abraham to offer his son on one of the heights that I will point out to you. (Genesis 22:2) Before his death, Moses ascended the heights to view the Promised Land. Moses went up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the summit of Pisgah, opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan; all Naphtali; the land of Ephraim and Manasseh; the whole land of Judah as far as the Western Sea; the Negeb; and the Plain — the Valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees — as far as Zoar. (Deuteronomy 34:1)

Recently in Canada, manmade heights have taken on a new meaning. Words are insufficient to describe the intensity of this phenomenon, so I will just state "the facts."

A few weeks ago, while driving on Highway 401, I noticed an ambulance on an overpass. I thought there must have been an accident, until I reached the next overpass which had a fire truck parked on it, as did the next overpass. The closer I got to Kingston, Ontario, the more crowded the overpasses became. Not only with official vehicles; there were crowds of people just standing and waiting. Soon, in the opposite direction a motorcade went by. At the center of the procession was a hearse carrying the body of Captain Richard Leary, Second Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry. Captain Leary had been killed while on patrol in Afghanistan.

The people gathered on the overpasses of Highway 401, aka the "Highway of Heroes," were taking part in a new custom, honouring fallen soldiers whose remains are brought to Canadian Forces Base Trenton and then transported from there to their final resting places. The rituals for this custom are very simple according to the blog Military Mom at Home:

Gather along the 401 between Trenton and Toronto (our Highway of Heroes) to honour our fallen soldier. He is coming home.

There is something deeply moving about these modern bamot (high places) – the highway overpasses, where people gathered to pay their respects. A utilitarian road built for speed and efficiency becomes a holy site.

In that instant, the traffic, the time, and reaching your destination as quickly as possible, lose all meaning. All that matters is that one precious soul be brought to his final resting place with as much care and concern as each individual can muster.

Regrettably, two days after this remarkable example of k'vod ha-met (honouring the deceased), it was reported that another Canadian soldier, Captain Jonathan Sutherland Snyder of the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, lost his life in an accident.

And so, as too many of these convoys sadly wind their way along Highway 401, people from neighboring towns gather on the overpasses and gaze on them from the heights, sadly acknowledging that one more selfless individual has joined a people that dwells apart.

Shabbat shalom,
MS

Parashat Balak

Science can help us to 'see' the majesty of all creation before which we can still stand in spiritual awe.'

Smart-ass talking donkeys may remind us more of the Shrek movie franchise than the Torah, but this week's portion of Balak features the original talking ass! This is the most famous episode found in our parasha named after Balak, king of Moab, who enlists the 'prophet' Balaam (בלעם Bilaam in Hebrew) to curse the Israelites. After much negotiation, Balaam sets off, but an angel of God prevents them from continuing on their journey. The ass sees the angel- while Balaam is blind to what is going on until his eyes are opened by God. This scene is comic -- a professional 'seer' (supposedly the best in the biz) cannot even see what his normally 'dumb' animal can perceive. Although the pun only works in English- by making the ass 'see' and 'speak' it is not 'dumb' in both senses of the word! It is the prophet Balaam who is dumb! A previous column explored the meaning of this story- with the conclusion that much like Aesop's fables are not historically accurate, but certainly true, the details of the Torah's stories may not be true, the eternal message is True with a capital 'T'.

Talking donkeys do belong in the world of fiction, not fact, and traditional commentators struggle with this breach of natural law. Of course, on the one hand, if God created the world, then why can't God create a talking animal? On the other hand, we believe the world operates according to certain principles that cannot be violated on a whim- even by God. The Midrash suggests that the mouth of Balaam's ass (along with the mouth of the well from last week and several other similar miraculous items) were all created before the conclusion of the first seven days of creation. In other words, although it seems that these items violate Nature, they were actually 'built in' to the fabric of the universe, and were part of the original cosmic plan.

The later, rational commentators used another approach: Maimonides suggests this was a dream. As evidence, they point out that Balaam doesn't seem a bit surprised at having a conversation with his donkey, as if this were a regular occurence! Luzzatto believes that Balaam simply understood his donkey's braying as if he were talking. After all, animals do communicate- and we don't have to understand that the donkey actually used human speech. The Hertz chumash concludes, "those who do not deem any of the above interpretations acceptable, should feel too deeply the essential veracity of the story to be troubled overmuch with minute questions about its details." Quoting Josephus, he adds, "in regard to its narrative, readers are free to think what they please." The real miracle was not so much in the ass 'speaking' as it was in the ass 'seeing.'

Of course, fundamentalists (of all religions) are loathe to concede that the Biblical text includes metaphor, or that problematic stories (e.g. Jonah and the Big Fish) are simply visions, dreams, or literary devices. Liberal proponents of religion have no problem reconciling the Creation story with the latest scientific estimates that the universe is around 14 billion years old (give or take a billion). Even many proponents of 'Intelligent Design' who reject Darwinian evolution admit to this age and reject the more fundamentalist position of the vocal religious Young Earth Creationists. But the YECs are not giving up without a fight; a recent, state of the art multimedia museum complex called the Creation Museum uses the latest in interactive technology to deliver the message that humans co-existed with dinosaurs, the world is about 6000 years old and the world created by God (as described in Genesis) is the world today.

However, a slew of recent books like Without God, The God Delusion, God is not Great, and How Religion Poisons Everything have all appeared on best seller lists, and the authors (Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens) attack what they see as irrational religious practices and superstitious beliefs. Their assault can be boiled down to two separate arguments. First, religious bigotry and prejudice is responsible for religious crimes against humanity. The second argument is that religious literalists actually are trying to subvert science and human reason. Liberal religion (not vociferously enough) tries to distance itself from both these accusations. It tries to reconcile science with religion, and when the two clash, liberal religion tends to come down on the side of science.

Unfortunately, we havesn't yet found enough articulate, well-thought out middle ground. Even the head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins, a religious Christian, is not successful in his book The Language of God which does little more than repeat the old attempts to prove the existence of God and render the unscientific bits of the Bible as poetry and allegory, and insist that the beauty and complexity of the universe convinces him of a God (and a Christian one, at that).

Those in the liberal camp trying to harmonize science and religion are fond of quoting Einstein: "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind," but his position was in fact much less positive: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly" and "I don’t try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."
And one more: "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion."

Einstein cautions us that religion without science is blind. Instead, when religion embraces science we can have the message of Balaam without a literal talking donkey. As Carl Sagan has suggested in his book, Pale Blue Dot:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is much better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander more subtle, more elegant? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Are religious followers blind as Balaam? Or are atheists blind to spiritiuality? Balaam is a symbol of not seeing the 'truth' before your eyes. But what is true? Is the angel of Adonai standing before us, and is it the atheist who is 'blind' to God's messenger, or is it the religious believer who is 'blind' to the evidence of science in his/her insistence that the donkey is actually talking?

Too often our religion is hijacked by extremists and zealots. At the other extreme, the secular sciences leave us cold and alone. What Dawkins and his cronies don't appreciate is that humans want to live their lives with meaning, and science is still unable, on its own, to provide a narrative that answers the big questions that in fact, by definition, it cannot ask: 'Why are we here?' or 'How should we live?'

But science can help us to 'see' by revealing the intricacies of the universe and the majesty of all creation before which we can still stand in spiritual awe.