The Secret of Jewish Strength
For a leader living in Biblical times, before the era of sophisticated intelligence gathering, modern spy satellites, and NSA electronic surveillance, preparing for war included calling on a prophet to give insight into the nature and character of the enemy.
In our Parsha, Balak, king of Moab, does just that. Balak is afraid of being attacked by the children of Israel, so he sent for the Prophet Bilam:
“He sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor, to Pethor, which is by the river of the land of his people, to call for him, saying, "A people has come out of Egypt, and behold, they have covered the "eye" of the land, and they are stationed opposite me.
So now, please come and curse this people for me, for they are too powerful for me. Perhaps I will be able to wage war against them and drive them out of the land, for I know that whomever you bless is blessed and whomever you curse is cursed."
Balak asked Bilam to come curse the Jews, but he also wanted to understand the nature of the Jews. Who were they? What was the secret to their strength? What were their weaknesses? The curse, Balak hoped, would be more than just a mystical weapon but rather, it would serve a practical purpose as well. A curse is an attack on the personality of the person being cursed; the prophet hired to curse was expected to identify character traits worthy of curse, the king would then have a better understanding of the enemy, and would seek to exploit the enemy's character weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the battle.
This story of Bilam, then, is a story about the character of the Jews; how G-d perceives them, how they perceive themselves, and how the nations of the world should, and ultimately will, perceive them.
In the first series of blessings, Bilam is addressing the fear which caused the Moabites to hire Billam to curse the Jews in the first place. The Torah describes the fear as follows:
“Moab became terrified of the people, for they were numerous.”
Addressing this fear, Bilam responds:
“Who counted the dust of Jacob or the number of a fourth of Israel? May my soul die the death of the upright and let my end be like his."
Moab feared the Jews “for they were numerous”, Bilam responds: who cares about their number? “Who counted the dust of Jacob”? Their strength is not in their physical numbers. Do not look at the “dust”, at their materialistic elements, because their “dust” - the body which G-d formed of “dust from the ground” - is not the secret of their success, or source of their strength. Their strength is their spirit, which, unlike their “dust”, can’t be measured.
Billam is honest enough to admit that, despite all his prophetic powers, he is unable to grasp the precise nature of the Jew’s strength, because the power of the Jew is completely different than Bilam’s understanding of power.
The conventional meaning of power is the solidification of one's existence. The strength of the Jew, by contrast, is their ability to be like their patriarchs and matriarchs, to be like a flame yearning to escape the confines of the candle, to lose its confining existence and to become one with the Divine oneness. The Jew’s strength is his ability to defy his own ego and to sacrifice for someone else. The strength of the Jew is his understanding that the true existence is not himself but rather it is G-d.
Bilam wants to describe their power, but he cannot grasp or explain it, so he does what prophets do when they have a message too deep for people to understand: he offers a parable.
“I see them from mountain peaks, and I behold them from hills.”
While the straightforward meaning of this verse is that Bllam was standing on a mountain peak gazing at the Jewish camp, Rashi, uncharacteristically, ignores the straightforward interpretation and interprets this verse as a parable.
Rashi explains:
I see them from mountain peaks: I look at their origins and the beginning of their roots, and I see them established and powerful, like these mountains and hills, because of their patriarchs and matriarchs.
Their strength, says Billam, is a strength, not of numbers, not of physical might, but rather of spiritual fortitude which they inherit from their patriarchs and matriarchs.
In the next series of Blessings, Billam continues on the same theme, this time directing his words to the Jews themselves:
“How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!”.
Jacob and Israel are both names of the Jew. On weekdays, when the Jew is immersed in worldly matters, struggling to make the world a holier place, the Jew is called Jacob, as Jacob is the name that alludes to the struggles with Esau. On Shabbat, when the Jew retreats from the chaos of worldly struggles and returns to his natural spiritual environment, spending the day on matters of the soul, he is called Israel. For the Jew, on Shabbat - prevailing and becoming a ruling minister - the meaning of the Hebrew word Israel - over the struggles of the past week.
Billam is telling the Jew: “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!”, your “Jacob”, your weekday, your involvement with the material is beautiful. But you must remember that it is only a “tent”, it is only a temporary state. You are in the tent to fulfill a purpose. It is not your natural home.
“Your dwelling places, O Israel!”. Your Israel, your soul-nourishing Shabbat, is your dwelling place. That is who you are. That is how you should self define. That is your essence.