Experiencing Eternity: Balak

Experiencing Eternity

D’var Torah for Parashat Balak

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Sally and I have been enjoying a mini-vacation the past few days.  In conjunction with a family b’nai mitzvah celebration in Phoenix, Arizona, we went out to Los Angeles to visit some friends of mine from way back.  We’ve all traversed not only quite a few miles on our journey, but practically a lifetime.  Once children, now it is our children who are practically grown, some married and with children of their own.

As we sat and reminisced, we realized how different our lives turned out from the expectations we had years earlier.  Life is a journey of great expectations but even greater surprises.  There are turbulent times and calm times, times of peace and times of war.  There are times when chaos seems to rule, and other times when calm returns as though it never left.

En route back to Phoenix from LA, we stopped for the night at Palm Springs, a resort town long favored by many Southern Californians.  Early the next morning, we rode the Aerial Tramway up the San Jacinto Mountain.  It’s a spectacular ten-minute ride in a rotating tramcar, up sheer cliffs that surround a miraculously green and lush canyon nestled in stark rocky formations that rise as high as 8500 feet and more above the San Andreas Fault.

Up at the top there are hiking trails and views that are so stunning they take your breath away.  Some of the surrounding peaks have served American Indians as sacred grounds for thousands of years, and one can certainly understand why.  Sitting on a rocky ledge overlooking the vast valley below, I looked all around.  I listened to the wind rushing through the sweet smelling Jefferson pines.  About a mile from the tram station, it was just me and nature, with no one to disturb the harmony and beauty that encompassed me.

Far below, I could see Palm Springs.  It was beautifully laid out, its streets and avenues lined with greenery, its subdivisions forming neat geometric patterns—so unlike the rock formations and untamed peaks that surrounded me.  It looked so beautiful I immediately thought of this week’s Torah portion—Balak (Numbers 22:2—25:9).  Balak was a Moabite king who, upon seeing the Hebrew nation advancing close to his borders, grew so afraid that he hired Balaam, an old and blind seer (the pun is the Torah’s) to cast a curse on them.  Yet, viewing the tents of the Israelites from the high mountains above them, Balaam was inspired by God to pronounce one of the most beautiful descriptions of Israel ever uttered, one so beautiful that it serves to open our daily morning services.

“How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel!”

From such a distance, conflicts and problems seem to disappear.  One sees, instead, the calming order and harmony that exist—if only from afar.  Borders, wars, hatred, conflicts, jealousies, these all vanish when viewed from the heights.

Sitting between heaven and earth, I could understand Balaam’s exultant song of praise.

How often are we, like Balak and Balaam, blinded by our passions, by our possessive mistrust of our fellow humans, by our fears, doubts and anxieties.

The story of this week’s portion teaches a lesson we can all learn from.  As we journey along the paths of our lives, we tend to look in one direction only.  Most often, and quite sensibly, we look down at the road under our feet.  When we lift our eyes, it is to see who’s next to us, or what dangers might be lurking around the next bend.  When we look up, we see the sky, the stars, the sun and the moon, each of which tells us something about the time and direction in which we are headed.

Rarely, however, do we glance in all directions at once.

When we do get the opportunity to do that, we see ourselves in a totally different way.  Our eyes are opened so that we perceive simultaneously the time and space we occupy.  The objectivity that such a view gives us can tell us much about ourselves.  Tiny against huge trees and mountains, even smaller in the larger perspective of valleys and continental divides, with our imagination we can soar as high as clouds and even higher.  The rocks of the San Jacinto Mountain Range may be millions of years old, but the few passing moments I spend here count, too.  In the larger perspective, a lifetime is infinitesimal; yet within that span, we are part of an eternity that is without bounds.

It is that which Balaam, the blind seer, comprehends at last.  The king who ordered him to curse the People of Israel was overcome by fear and dread.  Yet from the heights where the venerated prophet stood, what Balaam saw was order and design, patterns within patterns, all harmonizing with eternal, sacred forces.  Balaam understood that Israel was no mere coincidence, no momentary fluke of history.  From every perspective, from every direction, his eyes opened so that everything he saw was beauty and harmony.

Every once in a while, we all should make the effort to see ourselves from such an objective vantage point.  We too, then, would understand better our role in this amazing experience we call life.  We too would learn to appreciate more the beauty that surrounds us.  We too would become attuned to the hallowed voice that surrounds us, to the sacred message that fills all us as it does all space and time.  And when we do that, we too will be able to exclaim, as did the ancient seer Balaam, How beautiful is the place we stand on, how lovely is this moment we live in!

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman