Shabbat Balak

Wednesday, 05 July 2006

Balak

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and friends are tremblingly making their way through a forest, sent by Oz to get the broomstick of the Wicked Witch, when they come across a sign that says “Witch’s castle this way — I’d turn back if I were you.”

Balak, a king, frightened of the power of the Israelites, is like Oz. He’s too scared to do the dirty work himself, but asks a sorcerer, Balaam, to curse the Israelites, in return for wealth and honour, because “…I know that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed.” The sorcerer tries to wiggle out of it, but Balak insists that he try

Balaam, once he decides to go at all, rides on his donkey trying to get to Balak. But the donkey sees something Balaam has not, and shies away from it. Three times the donkey does this, three times Balaam hits the donkey, until the donkey gets really annoyed and starts to talk. “What have I done to you, that you hit me like this?” Anyone who has seen Shrek knows how annoying a talking donkey can be, but in this case, the donkey is seeing “the sign”. The sorcerer knows that he won’t be able to curse the Israelites — like Dorothy’s friends, he’s finally seen the sign, but like them, he ignores it. Unfortunately for him, the outcome is not a good one. Balak insists that Balaam try to curse the Israelites, but Balaam is physically unable to do what Balak wants.

So in two cases, the one who is powerful does not listen to the one who has less power. (Balak does not listen to Balaam, nor Balaam to his donkey.) What in society encourages those who have high status to ignore those without it? Whatever the reason, sometimes we forget that those who have less - less status, power, money, intelligence — can be just as insightful as those who have more. We ignore them at our peril — as both Balak and Balaam learned.

Walt Whitman, a much neglected American poet, believed in listening to “the small man,” to animals, to nature. He felt we should constantly look at what was around us with changing vision, and learn from the experience, not worrying about what others think of us.

He said:

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,
… and a grain of sand, and the egg
of the wren,

…And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd…

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”

Dorothy and her friends — human, non-human and animal — refused to believe that those with power were always right, and by working together, ignored the sign and won anyway. As Balak and Balaam (and Shrek) teach us, it often turns out that talking animals can talk sense, if we have the sense to listen.