Balak 5767

It's well known that Bil'am is considered the paragon of evil by Jewish tradition. It's also a common experience that a read through this week's parashah hardly depicts Bil'am as such an evildoer - he is a sorcerer who is somehow somewhat conversant in engaging Hashem, who tells those who come to summon him that he'd like to oblige, but he can only do what Hashem tells him to do. After repeating this caveat, he goes, meets Balak, performs the rituals necessary to invoke Hashem, and blesses Israel, as Hashem instructs him. What's so bad about that, other that a little self-interest?

Rashi helps us see deeper into the text, teasing out the clues to Bil'am's real character by carefully exploring precisely what he says and how he says it. He uses as his guide the statement in Avot, chapter 5:19: Anyone who possesses these three traits is a disciple of Avraham, our father; (one who possesses) three opposite traits is a disciple of Bilam the wicked.
1: A good eye
2: A low spirit
3: A lowly soul
- these are the traits of Avraham our father

1. A narrow eye
2. A high (i.e., haughty) spirit
3. A wide soul
- these are the traits of Bil'am the wicked.

Rashi proceeds to find textual indication of each of these damning traits ascribed to Bil'am. The traits of both Avraham and Bil'am are described in almost tangible terms, with physical or quasi-physical attributes qualified by modifiers drawn primarily from the world of physical measurement and dimensionality. We can translate these terms into more familiar ones fairly readily. Avraham's traits are generousity, humility and temperance. Bil'am's traits are avarice/envy, pursuit of glory and rapacious desire. These very traits are singled out by Bar Kappara when he states: "Envy, (pursuit of) Glory, and (seeking to indulge) Desire take one out of the world". I understand this to meaning that these are the kind of traits that lead one to assess a situation with complete disregard for even the most obvious indications that one is 180 degrees wrong in one's assessment, as though one is in a world of one's own.

What's interesting in comparing the traits of Avraham and Bil'am is to note what's wide and what's narrow. The word tov, translated above as "good" (good eye), often means "big", "wide". What's wide and big with Avraham is the organ that senses that there is a reality outside of one's own life. The eye opened wide allows that world into one's life, making its claim and impacting one, and thus, the prideful and lustful capacities of the soul, ever ready to misstate the claims whence they spring, are kept in check. When the eye is close to a narrow slit, admitting only the select data which conforms to one's prejudiced conceptions of things, then there is no counterweight to the reassertions of the nefesh, that component of the soul most closely associated with our physicality. Nefesh actually means life, or more precisely, the life that flows through the throat as breath and pulse, so vulnerable, so constricted, so desirous of expansion.

But constriction begets constriction, and Bil'am, wanting to close his throat to the blessing welling up within him at G-d's behest, brings down calamity upon himself and his house, whereas Avraham, always ready to open his throat and praise Hashem and bless His creatures, reaps blessing from all the world.

In the words of this weeks antagonist: "How wide-open are your protective shelters, O Israel..." Let's open our eyes in wonder and invitation, so we may open our throats in song and holiness, and our spirits may soar to heaven.