The above verse is recited as one enters the synagogue for worship. Yet how many worshippers realize that it is a quote from Balaam Ben-Beor, a gentile communications expert, who is hired into the service of Balaak, King of Moab, who is in a state of panic facing the advance of the formidable Israelite army into neighboring Moab? King Balaak didn’t “get the goods” – the mudslinging campaign against the God of Israel that he’d “ordered” – for which he raised altars in three locales in the middle of the desert. But Balaam could only utter the words that the Israelite God had placed on his tongue, and the words that exit his mouth are thus not what the king ordered.

The opening lines of Balaam’s speech became an echo of Jewish consciousness down the centuries, and like King Balaak, our Sages understood them to be blessings. Yet from a modern perspective, I have to wonder whether Balaak didn’t actually accept “the goods” that Balaam brought.

– Thus spoke Balaam in his first message. For generations, this verse has been considered a promise of ensuring the specialness of the Jewish people – which the other nations lack – and its eternal continuity, which is not subject to the laws of history that apply to the rest of the nations. But today, specialness has become rebranded as supremacy, and separateness as a decree of fate, and the disregard for the gentiles…well, that’s way too much to cover in this space. It’s not only the Palestinians over whom we impose our military might, but also the planet that we’ve defaced, the refugees that we’ve abandoned, and the weaponry that we sell to oppressive regimes.

And speaking of weaponry, Balaam’s second message ends with

This chilling verse too is interpreted according to tradition as a blessing: as a promise of military might, with prey and blood as a metaphor for economic and yes, even spiritual supremacy. Yet all of the Talmudic debates cannot whitewash the ironic claim of our ethical superiority and our national addiction to militarism; certainly not these days, when vengeance has become policy, and leaders turn the blood of the fallen into political capital.

And, in Balaam’s third message,

which seems as if it’s indisputably a blessing, our Sages showed us that an ever-so-slight play on words can change the course of history. In Midrash Tanchuma, a Land of Israel midrash from the 9th century, we read:

And indeed, apparently we have sinned: Our tabernacles have indeed enslaved us; inflation is out of control, and so is poverty.

Is this the vision revealed to Balaam from the top of Peor?

Perhaps what can be seen from one angle isn’t visible from another. Perhaps from a distance, the tents of Jacob actually appeared to surround the tabernacle with goodness and blessings. But from up close, a true prophet’s eyes can discern signs that the eyes of the masses would rather ignore.

In July 1934, 90 years ago this month, Haim Nachman Bialik died in Vienna, where he’d gone to seek medical treatment. Before departing from Palestine, he made his last speech at Ohel Shem, the cultural center that he established in Tel Aviv (Ohel means “tent”; not tabernacle, and not “grand hall” or “auditorium”).

In what followed, he laid out the symptoms of the yishuv’s malady, among them those that are painfully familiar today, such as exploiting refugees (then from Europe, now our “internal refugees” in the north and the south) to hike up housing prices. Indeed, the entire real estate bubble, which somehow continues to swell, was termed by Bialik “profiteering”:

But what pained Bialik more than anything was the collective Jewish megalomania that eventually takes over with every new round of sovereignty over The Land, and thusly ended his speech:

Thus Bialik left for Vienna, where he died as a result of post-surgery complications, and returned to Palestine in a casket. Balaam Ben-Beor finished speaking, and went back home. And here we are, with the blessings and the curses, with the symptoms and the malady, while our spin doctors – our modern-day “communication experts” – sharpen their proverbial nibs and charge into battle. Perhaps for a change, for the first time in 3,000 years, we won’t give in to either generalizations or divisiveness, nor to either flattering or debasing speech. Instead, let’s listen to our inner voices, let’s meet each other’s gaze, let’s find a tabernacle in our hearts’ intentions, let’s open wide the entrance to our tents.

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