Parashat Balak - Looking Out at Goodness

I used to go to one of those shuls where everyone was in place 1 minute before the Shabbat morning service started. German influenced. Gotta love those Germans.

And when the service began it began with a terrific verse from this week’s Torah reading - Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yaacov - How great are your tents o Jacob.

It’s not part of our liturgy here. Probably because we are just a little quiet at the very beginning of services. That’s a shame - because it’s a great verse.

The story is that Bilaam eventually arrives at the camp of the Israelites - the people of Jacob. He’s been paid to curse them and off he goes a-cursin’

But when he finally arrives he lifts up his eyes and sees Israel and he says this;

 נְאֻם בִּלְעָם בְּנוֹ בְעֹר

Thus spoke Bilaam, son of Beor, the saying of the man whose eyes have been opened

מַה-טֹּבוּ אֹהָלֶיךָ, יַעֲקֹב

How great are your tents o Jacob.

So what did he see that impressed him so deeply?

I want to share two possible understandings.

One motivated by a book, and one motivated by Rashi.

Let me start with the book.

I’ve been reading the scripts of the original masterpiece documentary television series, recently updated. You may have been watching Civilisations, presented by Simon Schama and others - but I’ve been taken with the original 1969 series Civilisation, presented by Kenneth Clark. I referred to it in my weekly words - I did say there would be a test.

The original Civilisation has been knocked in that revisionist way in which things get knocked, but it’s bursting with tremendously interesting ideas.

Clark opens his masterwork trying to understand what civilisation is. He stands on the bank of the Seine surrounded by stunning beautiful buildings and asks what differentiates the savage barbarian beauty prow of a marauding Viking ship from the beauty of the buildings of what he considers proper civilisation?

In a word he suggests the defining property of civilisation is ‘permanence.’[1]

Wanderers and invaders, Clarke speculates, don’t look beyond the next meal or the next battle. And for that reason, he claims, it didn’t occur to them to build beautiful buildings, or write books.

A civilised person, says Clarke, must feel they belong somewhere specific in space and time. And for that purpose, he says, it’s a great convenience to be able to read and write.

It’s a shock, he says to realise how rare that gift was even in Medieval times. The great military general and Empower Charlemagne born in 742 learnt to read, we are told, but he could never write - too busy chasing the here and now to worry about recording anything for the forever.

Jews, on the other hand, have been big on writing, and reading, and learning, for a very long time. We feel we have an intimate connection to - if not place - then at least time. We play a transgeneration game where the quality of what we have is the quality of what we can pass on to the generations that follow.

So imagine this with me.

Bilaam is a man who is on the make, a mercenary purveyor of curses and blessings to whoever will line his palm with silver.

And when he sets off into the desert to the Israelite encampment he must be assuming he will encounter an  Am Noded, a wandering, nomadic, peripatetic people without commitment to civilisation.

But when he looks out at them - at us - he sees something different.

He sees a commitment to permanence, a commitment to civilisation. I’ll get to what exactly that might look like a little later. But he sees something that strikes him as good - maybe it was our commitment to what Clark considers civilisation, a desire to create for a term longer than even our own lives, a relationship with permanence reflected even in how we set up camp in the wilderness all those years ago.

I don’t think it could have been the buildings - after all the Israelites are travelling - there would have been a beautiful sanctuary in the middle of the camp, but the tents, surely, would have just been tents, ramshackle Succot.

In fact the markers of Jewish civilisation have only rarely and only temporarily been buildings, and more rarely still been buildings as beautiful as this one.

Today is the 17^th of Tammuz, the anniversary of the breaching of the walls of the Second Temple, the start of a religious journey reaches its nadir in three weeks time when we commemorate the destruction of the Temple. We are marking the beginning of this journey tomorrow morning - Shacharit. In three weeks time - POSTER

The Jewish civilisation has had a mixed track record with buildings - they tend to get destroyed. But we have never given up on our commitment to permanence; to building for the future with not bricks and mortar, but through a Masorah - a religious and intellectual and emotional traditional to be passed down from one generation to the next. We’ve built our civilisation out of a relationship with the written word - the Torah, and the books and stories and narratives that have unfolded from it over so many years..

The Jewish civilisation has been built out of a commitment to pass something on to the generations to come.

We believe we can survive, we will survive even despite anything. We always have. Perhaps that’s how we have survived when the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Persians and the Romans and even the Nazis have fallen by the wayside. We’ve structured our camps for the forever.

We’ve always looked beyond the immediate.

We’ve always built for the future.

Enormously proud of our Cheder.

All upstairs learning, celebrating, building for our permanence.

Exactly as it should be.

Presenting prizes at end of service - hope you will share your support of how we are still building for our future.

Maybe what Bilaam saw is that marker of Jewish civilisation - permanence -in the construction of the Tents of Jacob.

But what, exactly would that look like?

That’s Rashi’s question

His comment is a little terse.

What was it that Bilaam saw that was good, asks Rashi?

על שראה פתחיהם שאינן מכוונין זה מול זה:

He saw that the tents weren’t set up to face into one another. It wasn’t possible for one person to look in at the tent of the other.

I had always understood Rashi to be claiming that our commitment to privacy was ‘Tovu’ the good thing Bilaam saw.

As if there was something particularly impressive about privacy.

Turns out I shouldn’t have underestimated Rashi.

Here’s the Midrash Rashi had in mind when he penned his commentary.

It’s from a late collection, Tanhuma Yilamdeinu;

‘Back in Egypt even though there were those who worshipped false gods, even still the people still observed prohibitions against adultery. And when they came out of Egypt they were Tzanuah - modest, each one in their own tent - so Reuven didn’t gaze out on the wife of Shimon and Shimon didn’t gaze out on the wife of Reuven. And even when there were 600,000 in the wilderness, this is how they did modesty. No-one placed the opening of their tent infront of the tent of their fellow. And when Bilaam looked out and saw Israel dwelling in her tribes - [this is what he praised.]

The point of the tents not facing one another is not to stop you looking in on me.

But to stop me looking in on you.

It’s an act of self control.

I know there is a gender critical read of the Midrash and, for the sake of stating the obvious let me clear that I’m not at all interested in the notion that a husband owns their wife, but let me let that go and instead take this as a Midrash which suggests that the thing that is good is the exercise of self control over peering salaciously and greedily at our fellows.

What Bilaam saw was not a nation of acquisitorial net-curtain twitchers, but a nation committed not to covet. The modesty here is a sense of security with what one has - I’m reminded of one of my favourite teachings in Pirkei Avot -

Eizeh Hu Ashir - who is rich - HaSameach B’Helko - the one who is happy with what they have.

It’s a much more moving understanding of the meaning of this much abused term - Tzanuah -

Bilaam is a man motivated by money.

He’s allowed money dangled before him to lead him astray.

And he turns up at the Israelite encampments to see a people who aren’t chasing after what they don’t have - certainly not chasing dishonest acquisition.

It’s a captivating image. What would it be to set up my tent in such a way to send out a sign that I’m happy with what I have - I’m Sameach b’Helki?

We could all do with sending out a message into this battered world that we are happy with what we have.

So two thoughts about the nature of what Bilaam saw that so moved him to utter that majestic verse - Mah Tovu Ohaelecha.

Perhaps he saw something about a commitment to permanence, a commitment not only to build a civilisation, but to pass that civilisation on from one generation to another. Perhaps he saw, in the arrangement of ‘Tzanuah’ modest, non acquisitorial, tents a commitment not to covet that which belongs to our fellow.

Maybe these two ideas are nothing other than alternate ways of expressing the same thing. The person who sees something and wants to grab it immediately is a person who lives in the moment. The person who lives with a sense of permanence wants to build something to pass on. They don’t hunger after their fellow’s possessions because they want to be part of a stable society that doesn’t descend into a dog-eat-dog free-for-all.

A desire to build a Jewish life for the future and a commitment to self restraint are perhaps the great markers of our Jewish life.

And they are indeed, great.

---

[1] P.20

Seeing God

I want to give this Sermon, my first since back here at New London since the birth of our son, in honour of Harry.

Good luck little one, you'll need it.

 

--

 

I feel a certain sympathy for Bilaam, whacking away at his donkey while we, gentle readers, know far better.

 

It's a bit like watching poker on television – we know how the cards have been dealt.

We know there is an angel, standing, sword drawn, in the way.

It's only Bilaam who doesn't get it, who can't see.

 

And I'm drawn the point at which God opens Bilaam's eyes – vayigol adonai et inei  Bilaam.

 

The Rabbis^[1] feign surprise – what was he previously blind? – they pretend to enquire

No, they respond – it's just done to tell you that what the eye sees is a power held by God.

 

This year, this week, this Rabbinic comment reminded me of what is surely the most powerful articulation of the miracle of childbirth in Rabbinic Judaism. It's from Kohelet Rabba^[2]

 

It was taught; at the time a babe is formed in the womb, there are three partners in its creation; the Holy Blessed One, its father and its mother.

Its father implants the white in the child – the brain, the nails, the white of the eye, the bones and the sinews.

Its mother implants the red – the blood, the skin, the muscle, the hair and the black of the eye.

And the Holy Blessed One, may God's name be blessed, places ten things within the child. And these are they; the soul, the spirit, the lustre of the visage, the ability to see, the sense of hearing, the speech from the lips, the strength of the arms and the legs' ability to walk, wisdom, understanding, counsel and intellect and might.

And when the time comes to pass, the Holy Blessed One, takes back His part and leaves behind the parts of the mother and father before them. And the father and mother weep.

 

I want to talk about weeping, about seeing, about childbirth and about God.

 

So, here is Bilaam, one moment looking at a path ahead and being blind as to the reason for the stumbling blocks and the next seeing with eyes newly opened ….

 

We say every morning

Blessed Are You God pokeach Ivrim – who gives sight to the blinded.

The Hebrew pokeach, suggests something being peeled away, like a cataract – bringing into focus that which had been a blur.

Making distinct that which had impenetrably fuzzy.

 

It's a great blessing.

It reminds those of us who have never had to consider physical blindness of the gift of our sight.

But more than that, I believe, it reminds us of something spiritual.

 

Kol Haolam culo- say the Rabbis -  bhezkat sumim, ud she hakadosh baruch hu megalei eineyhem^[3]

All the world, every bit of it, is considered blind, until the Holy Blessed one opens their eyes.

 

None of us see until our eyes are opened.

Not even Bilaam.

Indeed Bilaam's encounter with the Divine on the derekh, his meeting with God on the way, is almost a motif of the Bible.

 

An example from the passage we read on the first day of the New Year.

Hagar sits cradling her son, dyeing from the lack of water until

וַיִּפְקַח אֱלֹקִים אֶת-עֵינֶיהָ וַתֵּרֶא בְּאֵר מָיִם

And God peeled back the blindness from her eyes and she saw the well of water.

She's sitting blinded until that revelatory moment.

Her ability to see a well which, we are given to believe, was there all along requires the direct engagement of God.

To see is to experience the miracle.

 

What seems most remarkable to me, in those precious moments when I have experienced the peeling back of my own blindness, is the way that experience strips me of my grammar, my eloquence, my rationality.

This too is a motif of Genesis.

 

In another moment of revelation when Joseph finally reveals to his brothers that the great Egyptian vizier they have come to see is none-other than their own long-lost brother

וַיֹּאמֶר יוֹסֵף אֶל-אֶחָיו אֲנִי יוֹסֵף

And Joseph tells his brothers 'I AM JOSEPH'

 הַעוֹד אָבִי חָי?

Is my father alive?

--

 וְלֹא-יָכְלוּ אֶחָיו לַעֲנוֹת אֹתוֹ כִּי נִבְהֲלוּ מִפָּנָיו. 

And his brothers couldn't answer him because they were … the verb, nivhalu takes some teasing out – they are terrified, confounded, they are left stuttering in response.

 

This is what it is to see, finally, a reality hidden until revealed, as if by magic – revealed by means of the miraculous encounter with the Divine.

This is what it is to leave hezkat sumim – the presumption of blindness.

 

One last journey into the tales of our ancestors.

 

Jacob flees from the murderous intent of his brother Esau and falls asleep en route to Haran.

And there receives one of the greatest of all Biblical visions – a ladder set on the ground, it's top reaching the sky and the angels of God going up and down.

He wakes and again, his language is broken, you can feel, in the Hebrew the crashing impact of a moment's true sight in a lifetime's blindness.

 

וַיֹּאמֶר אָכֵן יֵשׁ יְקוָק בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה וְאָנֹכִי לֹא יָדָעְתִּי. 

Wow, there is God in this place and I, I didn't know.^[4]

There is a stutter, a breaking in.

Jacob is nivhal – confounded.

He has seen.

 

There are, perhaps, two great traditions of God-talk in our faith.

One, the tradition that dates back to Maimonides and the great Medieval rationalists.

This tradition of God-talk is philosophical, it is theology in the true meaning of the term – the science of the divine.

This tradition of God-talk is committed to rigorous sober intellectual analysis.

 

But this dry, philosophical discourse has nothing to do with the experience of Bilaam, the sudden insight of Hagar, the confounding of Joseph's brothers or the experience of waking in the morning and knowing that God was indeed in the very place where I set my head to rest.

These Biblical encounters are connected to a totally different kind of God-talk, a shattering, ineffable, impossible reality that one only knows, that I only know because on those rare moments when my life has been most precious, when I have felt most alive, I too have seen.

I have known, I have felt, in my soul.

 

These are moments when, just like our ancestors, I've been confounded, nivhal, lost in enormity of what I have seen.

 

It's a little weird, this experience of the numinous.

We, those of us who have been touched by these moments of revelation can seem a little bizarre, a little unhinged.

 

There is a fabulous moment in the Book of Samuel when King Solomon seems to be touched by the experience of the Divine – and the good King dances over the hills and

'Then the people said to one another, what has happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul off with the prophets?' (I Sam 10:11)

The people think their otherwise all-wise and serious monarch has lost it.

It's dangerous, playing with prophets, seeing with the spiritual cataracts removed, experiencing the confounding presence of the Divine.

 

I spoke with my brother yesterday afternoon and told him what I wanted to speak about today.

He was worried for me, worried that you, dear friends, might think me a bit unhinged; a little too 'off with the prophets' for a sober community such as this.

I hope he is wrong.

No doubt I will find out at Kiddush.

But I don't really care.

Rabbis should talk about the experience of God from the pulpit.

And in any case, I'm a new father.

And my experiences these past weeks, and most especially the experience of being present at the birth of our son, have been experiences of being broken into, experiences of having the blinkers of rationalism peeled away, experiences of leaving hezkat sumim, the presumption of blindness that afflicted Bilaam, that afflicts us all.

 

Harry was born at home.

It was Josephine, me and a couple of midwives and when this gorgeous, wrinkled, pink bag of skin and bones emerged alive, and healthy, a baby boy.

As he arrived in his mother's arms, in my wife's arms.

And as I held the two of them for the first time, I saw.

I was confounded.

I was unable to put a sentence together.

I tried to thank the midwives and all I could do was sob at the miracle I saw, the miracle folded into the tiny body before me.

 

And all the joy and happiness collided with all the fears and fragility.

And I saw.

And I was confounded.

 

There are three partners in the creation of a child

And the Holy Blessed One, may God's name be blessed, places ten things within him. And these are they; the soul, the spirit, the lustre of the visage, the ability to see and the sense of hearing, the speech from the lips, the strength of the arms and the legs' ability to walk, wisdom, understanding, counsel and intellect and might. And when it comes to the time to pass, the Holy Blessed One, takes back His part and leaves behind the parts of the mother and father before them. And the father and mother weep.

 

We weep at the beginning and we weep at the end.

Maybe this is the real meaning of that special morning blessing, the one that that praises God pokeach ivrim who opens up the eyes of the blind.

Maybe it's a prayer about the way true sight leads us to tears.

Maybe it's a prayer about the ability to cry; to cry tears of joy when we are lifted higher than any rational discourse can lift.

Maybe it is also a prayer about the ability to cry, to experience the bitterness of loss, deeper than any philosophical discourse can explain.

Maybe this is a prayer about the ability to be confounded, broken in on, lost.

This ability to cry is what lifts our lives beyond the humdrum and into the miraculous.

 

I had another powerful experience this week, at a Bet Din.

We had a number of candidates for conversion come before us.

It is always an incredibly intense day. These are people for whom being accepted into the Jewish community is immensely important. It's a very sacred and often a very emotional space.

One of the candidates, not anyone associated with this community, came from abroad.

Her English was poor, and she said something about prayer I hadn't fully understood.

I wanted her to clarify.

'How did' I asked, 'she understand the notion of 'One God?''

 

There was a pause, she started to cry and eventually said, 'It's everything.'

And I cried too.

If this was a Talmudic tale it would continue vtikabel otah miyad – and you should receive her immediately.

Because she got it.

And through her getting it, I got to share in what she had seen, understood.

And we received her immediately.

 

These experiences don't come often in a life.

But they are the deepest experience of faith.

 

And yes there are other ways to commit to Jewish life.

There are other ways of doing God-talk, the philosophical, rational theology of Maimonides and those who trace their approach to the Divine to the great super-rationalist of our tradition.

 

But we should never be afraid of the moment of bursting through.

We should never be afraid of the experience of true sight in all its confounding, blinding, dumbing enormity.

 

For it is in these fleeting moments of the experience of the world, as it truly is, that we come to know God.

 

May they come to us all.

 

Shabbat shalom

 

---

^[1] Tanhuma 10, Bmidbar Rabba 20:15

^[2] Kohelet Rabbah 5:12

^[3] Torah Shleimah footnote to Bmidbar 22-169 citing 'b'leket'

^[4] Using the translation of Fox who makes the 'redundant' anochi central to the experience of awakening.