July 12, 2008 Sermon
SHABBAT PARASHAT BALAK
Last night one of the participants at our “Shabbat Under the Stars” evening at the Williams home said teasingly to some of us – but I suppose mainly to me – that “We never talk about politics at Beth Abraham.” It’s almost an old joke, how a congregation wants its rabbi to “make the Torah relevant” and “talk about current affairs”. But as soon as the rabbi gets “too political” – which means taking a position different from the complaining congregants – the grumbling turns into, “Why doesn’t the rabbi just talk about the Torah and keep out politics.”
Well, I think you know how I feel about that. First of all, we have to remember that politics is not just about endorsing candidates, but about how a community organizes and governs itself and how power and wealth within a community are distributed and maintained. The Torah is deeply about politics. How could this book which contains a detailed plan for the social organization of the Israelite community, the distribution of conquered territory, the foundations of a civil and criminal law code, the establishment of a judicial system and of a priesthood supported by public taxation through a tithe – this and so much more – how could it not be a “political” text? And how could it not evoke political commentary?
Today’s parsha recounts the story of King Balak of Moab and the gentile prophet Balaam (the one with the talking donkey who rebukes him for his cruelty) uniting to curse and defeat Israel. There are a couple of observations in the notes of our “Etz Hayim” Humash (p. 895) on this story which cannot help but remind us of issues we have to confront within our own current political sphere.
The first comment, from R. Haim Soloveitchek, brings to our attention that “the first mention of Balak does not describe him as a king. One account has him beginning as a courtier who seized the throne by manipulating people’s fear of Israel.” Now, I think it would be the wrong kind of “political reading” – completely inappropriate from a pulpit! – to compare one ruler who “seized the throne” with another ruler who ascended to power without the majority of votes in a disputed election settled by a widely discredited court intervention. That would be just a cheap shot. (Irresistible perhaps, but cheap.) But this idea from our commentator that power can be acquired or maintained by the manipulation of a people’s fear . . . well, that’s as important a political idea as we will find anywhere in all the great political and historical treatises through the ages. And it’s as relevant to us as this week’s passage of the new FISA law. Give up just a little more of your privacy rights or your civil liberties, and that will make you safe from “The Enemy”. Guaranteed! Creating an Enemy to fear? That’s the oldest scheme of every political scoundrel.
The second comment in our Humash, from Beit Ramah, asks: “Why didn’t Balak hire Balaam to bless his own people rather than to curse Israel (since he believed that ‘whom you bless is blessed indeed’)? He was so consumed by hatred that he forgot about his people’s needs and could only think about hurting his enemy.”
These two comments are from different sources, but they are intimately connected. The use of fear, and the demonization (or “cursing”) of an enemy, are common tactics for distracting a people from its own real needs, while those needs are ignored or denied. “Stop whining about your poverty, about your hunger, about losing your home,” says the fear-mongering politician, “We have a war on terror to fight; we have to protect our way of life.”
So how does this interloper Balak, who supposedly seized the throne by manufacturing a crisis of fear – how does Balak maintain his state of fear? Well, of course he calls in his version of the religious right, his version of the supposed “holy man”, the priest or prophet (Graham or Falwell or Hagee) who thinks he knows the mind of God. The one who can tell us for sure that 9/11 was God’s punishment for abortion and Katrina was God’s punishment for homosexuality.
Astonishing, that the one intentionally comic story in the Torah is about a religious prophet whose own jackass is able to make a fool out of him! Is there another figure in the Torah deliberately made to look like such a fool – and also so dangerous - as this holy man willing to make a buck by cozying up to the king? We know these Balaam’s very well.
So what do we have in our story? Balak and Balaam - a false king and a false prophet. How much of human history and human sorrow can be explained by this alliance of falsehoods - cruel power and bogus religion.
Our commentator says, “Balak was so consumed by hatred that he forgot about his people’s needs and could only think about hurting his enemy.” But the Torah’s “politics” teach us that the strength of a community, even including its military strength, is something internal, something that arises from justice, not from fear. If you want to be invincible under the protection of God, you don’t invest in your military industrial complex or teach your people to hate and fear others. You invest in the widow, the orphan and the stranger; you create courts of justice which know nothing of bribes from special interest money; you teach your people to trust one another and to love the Other, whether neighbor or stranger, as yourself; and you remember always, repeating it to yourself everyday, that you yourselves were aliens in the land of Egypt and know intimately the heart of the alien, the stranger, the foreigner, the Other.
Balak had no interest in that. The question is a very good one: If Balak really believed, as he professed, that the one whom Balaam blessed was truly blessed, why would he not ask that Balaam help strengthen Moab by bringing God’s blessing upon his Moabite people? Why seek the salvation of his people in a curse upon another people?
Well, the blessings of justice and peace are the difficult and even tedious work of honest people who really do believe in the righteousness of human beings and in the careful, painstaking work of resolving conflict among them. That is the model we have in Aaron, depicted by the rabbis as the preeminent man of peace, devoted to a constant shuttle diplomacy and negotiation between enemies to bring them together and resolve their conflicts.
And the blessings of justice and peace are the causes of selfless people, who really do believe in serving the community without exploiting that service as a path to wealth and power. That is the model we have in Moses, whom the Torah calls the humblest, most selfless man who ever lived, who wielded power without a thought for his own gain, or for the advantage of his own class or party. The power he wielded was never his own, and in a sense he was so selfless as to be almost transparent – that is, personally invisible – in his channeling of the commandments of God. Nothing in public service can be about personal gain, or it is not public service, just a sham of that. And we know all about that.
And the blessings of justice and peace are the causes of selfless people, who really do believe in serving the community without exploiting that service as a path to wealth and power. That is the model we have in Moses, whom the Torah calls the humblest, most selfless man who ever lived, who wielded power without a thought for his own gain, or for the advantage of his own class or party. The power he wielded was never his own, and in a sense he was so selfless as to be almost transparent – that is, personally invisible – in his channeling of the commandments of God. Nothing in public service can be about personal gain, or it is not public service, just a sham of that. And we know all about that.
But in our world, the Torah is still in the wilderness.
No politician – legitimate or illegitimate – will save us. No preacher or holy man – whether truly righteous or a modern day Balaam – will save us. Even Moses – all he could do was set the Torah before us. Before each heart of us, and before the collective heart of our community. “I set before you life and death,” God says. “Therefore, choose life.” “Choose!” That is the operative word. Each one of us has to make that choice, not once but again and again, at every instant, at every crossroad, at every turning point.
And the politics we can hope for then, the politics that arises from that messianic spark hidden in each of us, will finally be a politics of life, not death. We always seem to choose wrong, but earth and the purposes for which it was born – the purpose of unfolding human moral freedom toward righteousness and love – haven’t got much time left, haven’t got many wrong choices left. I don’t mean wrong electoral choices; I mean wrong choices about where to set our hearts.
And the answer to that, the answer to where we set our hearts is written there above my head. V’ahavta: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your might.” That’s it. You cannot love God with all your heart and then seek to curse anyone, hate anyone, trample on anyone, turn away from anyone’s need. Just the opposite. The love of God turns us directly toward everyone else’s need, opens us to that need. And the need of the sufferer is the field for us to act out our love of God.
Yes, it’s all politics. What would the community look like, the Torah community, in which every heart was a “v’ahavta” heart. We need to find out quickly, because the world will only survive when we do choose wisely, when we do choose life.
Shabbat Shalom.