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Tense and Swelling Faces


"Mah Tovu Ohaleicha Ya'akov, Mishkenoteicha Yisrael".
 How good are your tents, Ya'akov; your dwellings, Yisrael!

 These words, some of the first we utter each morning as we enter the Beit Knesset for Shacharit, are the opening words of the third and climactic blessing that Bil'am utters in place of the curse he was summoned from afar to place upon Israel. Though Bil'am was intent on cursing Yisrael one way or another, and sought some subterfuge through which to slip in a curse, Hashem placed His word in Bil'am's mouth like a bit in the mouth of a donkey, and compelled him to follow His original, unchanged instructions of blessing Israel. See Ramban, who explains that Hashem's consent to Bil'am's journey was predicated upon the latter's understanding that he may well end up blessing Israel in Balak's presence! So Bil'am knew he was going to be compelled to bless, and yet he went anyway, and uttered some of the most lofty praise of Yisael ever heard. Yet he still agreed to accompany Balak's messengers, he went through the motions of attemtping to evoke Divine favor for a curse, he suffered the indignities heaped upon him by Balak - why did he do this?

Let's look more carefully at Bil'am's words. After glimpsing only the edges of the people from his earlier vantage points, Bil'am casts his gaze toward the desert and sees the people dwelling by tribes. He takes in the marvelous precision of their array, each tribe encamped by its ancestral houses, each ancestral house by its families, and so on. So many people, moving from place to place, yet each time reconstituting a perfect web of human nexus points, a distributed network in which Hashem dwells as their focus turns to the Tent of Meeting in the center. So exact is the perfection that none of the entrances or apertures of any tend face any those of any other. A hive buzzing with communal activity yet preserving the privacy and the integrity of the individual. The ultimate in Kosher Feng Shui. The spirit of G-d fills Bil'am (Bechor Shor: against his will - he was hoping to utter at least his own curse, if not a divinely inspired one) and he utters his blessing.

"Mah Tovu" - How precise are the tents, the dwellings. Ibn Ezra says that the unusual verb, tovu, is a past-tense verb. Now in Hebrew, what we call past tense is not really past; rather it's a verb mood indicated completed action, called the Perect Mood. It usually is employed in conveying action in the past, but not always; sometimese it's used to show indicate a perfect state in the present. And that's thte sense in which Bil'am speaks: How completely good, clear, aligned are your lives, oh Jewish people - your private and public lives (for "tents" are interpreted by the Midrash as Batei Midrash; "dwellingplaces" as temples, sanctuaries and houses of worship).

Rabbi Ya'acov Yosef of Polnoye, author of the first book of Chassidus ever to be published - Toldot Ya'acov Yosef - and known in Chassidus as the Toldos, says that Bil'am shows himself here to be a false prophet:

"What is the difference between true and false prophets? True prophets appears generally as those who admonish, they reveal the blemishs and the faults and seek to break the unrefined character traits. False prophets, however, laud the people with their sweet lips, they see no shortcomings, everything is fine and perfect, nothing in need of repair. But it is actually the true prophets who reprove who truly love the people. For it was not because of his great love of Israel that Bil'am sang such songs of praise for Israel. The opposite is the case - he intended to persuade the people that they don't have to do anything, that there is no need to yearn to ascend to higher levels and states of being, they are all complete perfect as they are, blessed with all the good character traits and spiritual achievements. This is the difference between true and false prophets."


He did it! Bil'am managed despite everying to curse Israel. He managed to lure Israel into a state of smug self-satisfaction and puffery. And soon thereafter, we were downing the toxic cocktail of the Big Three - Idolatry, Sexual Violation and Murder. Every prophet but Moshe imparts his style to the language he uses to convey the Diviine message, and Bil'im twists Hashem's words by phrasing his blessing in the Perfect Mood. Moshe, however, toward the end of Devarim, states, "See I have placed before you Goodness and Life (on one hand, and on the other) and Evil and Death - choose! (life...) There's always a choice to ascend higher and by running up the down escalator, reverse its direction for the entire world, or to stay put on one's present level and end up below the basement.

Bil'am may have slipped in his curse-in-sheep's clothing, but we've had the last laugh. We invoke his words as we enter the Beit Knesset, asking Hashem as we come together in prayer, to take our own everyday human language, inadequate to express the truth of His transcendence ("If all the heavens were parchments, and all the trees quills, and all the oceans ink...") and convert them, via our ceaseless yearning, into a crown for His Glory. Then it is that Bil'am's blessing-curse is truly redeemed, as we are afforded a glimpse of how far we have yet to go, and we set forth anew each day on that path.

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