Is Love Blinding? Do you see the faults of the people You Love? People fall in love, and when they do, they are blind to the faults of their beloved. They are oblivious even to faults that seem obvious to others. Such is the intoxicating power of exhilarating love. Inevitably, however, the lovers awake to reality. They learn that, spoiler alert, the person they love is human and, like the rest of us, is imperfect. How do they respond then? Some resent the faults; some learn to make peace with them; others feel betrayed, deceived by the blinding love. In this week's Parsha, Billam, the greatest gentile prophet who was hired to curse the Jews, tries to remind G-d of the faults of his beloved Jewish people; alas, he fails completely. In his frustration, he declares: He {G-d} does not look at evil in Jacob, and has seen no perversity in Israel; the Lord, his God, is with him, and he has the King's friendship. (Numbers 23:21) What is the meaning of "He does not look at evil in Jacob?" There are three interpretations of the verse, each representing a deeper level of love. Rashi begins by directing it to the Targum Onkolos's Aramaic translation of the Torah. According to Onkelos, it is absurd to think that G-d sees no iniquity in Jacob; after all, the Torah is full of episodes where the Jewish people are less than perfect. Instead, Onkelos explains that the verse refers to the most severe sin, the sin of idol worship. He does not look at evil in Jacob: According to the Targum {Onkelos it means: I have looked. There are no idol worshippers in Jacob}. According to Onkelos, G-d certainly sees the faults of the Jewish people, yet he can still love us because we are free of idol worship, the severest of all sins. Rashi, however, introduces a second interpretation, a deeper level of love, which he refers to as "beautiful": Another interpretation: Its literal meaning can be expounded beautifully. The Holy One, blessed is He, does not look at evil in Jacob. When they transgress His word, He does not deal punctiliously with them to scrutinize their wicked deeds and their iniquity in violation of His law. According to the second interpretation, we, of course, possess faults, yet G-d chooses to not focus on them. No one is perfect, but when people love each other they focus on each other's positive qualities and choose not to direct their attention toward the negative qualities. And finally, we reach the deepest level of love where there is no need to look away from any part of the other person. As the Rebbe explained: He does not look at evil in Jacob: The reason G-d does not look at the evil in Jacob is because He looks at the Jew as having already fulfilled his potential to reorient the animal concerns of his consciousness (his animal "soul") toward Divinity. He thus transforms the animal soul into a positive force in his Jewish life, harnessing its raw power to pursue its interests in the service of his higher, Divine consciousness (his "Divine soul"). (Adapted from the Rebbe by the Kehot Chumash) The third level of love is deep enough to allow us to view every aspect of the other person through the lens of love. For when we look at the other person's fault, we see not the current incarnation of the fault but rather the potential of the deeper connection and positive growth that can emerge from it.
ב"ה