Balak hires Bilam to curse the children of Israel. Frustratingly, for Balak, Bilam does not do so. On the contrary, G-d forces him to bless them four times, which is rather poor customer service.
After the third time, if you have ever been on hold with a recalcitrant utility provider, you can really understand the depths of Balak’s pain:
And Balak became angry with Bilam, and he clapped his hands together! And Balak said to Bilam, “I called you to curse my enemies and you have gone and blessed them three times now!” (Num. 24:10)
One of Bilam’s blessings or praises is difficult for us to understand at first glance:
“How can I curse one that God does not curse? How can I bring wrath upon one with whom God is not angry? Because I look upon them from the mountains; I study them from the hills; they are a people that dwells alone and they will not be included among the nations.”
This is such a strange blessing. Granted, we relish and appreciate our special role as the chosen people, but we have known so much pain from our separation. It is possible, perhaps, that had we been accounted for among the nations, we would not have suffered from the Holocaust? The Spanish inquisition? Pogroms? Massacres of dhimmis in Saudi Arabia? Tach v’Tat? The Crusades?
A rather painful and recognizable note sounds when we read Rashi:
Amongst the nations they shall not be counted- …Another approach: when the (children of Israel) are happy, no other nation celebrates with them…but when things go well for the nations (the Children of Israel) feast with each and every one….
Rashi sings a tune that we seem to know all too well. We may think of times when the people of Israel played the patsy and outstretched their arms to those in need only to find that those they joined or helped were unavailable to answer the phone when the name “Israel” appeared on the caller ID. Perhaps, then, we would have preferred the blessing of being a little accounted for amongst the nations.
But we will make the case for Jewish loneliness. With your forbearance, we will make the case by resorting to the dramatic climax of Shakespear’s Merchant of Venice. There appears a gorgeous meditation on the qualities of mercy:
“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.” (Act 4 Sc.1 190-195)
So says Portia – at that time portraying a legal expert named Balthazar – in the play. Shylock the Jew, however, demands not mercy but justice. He shall have his pound of flesh. Portia, pretending to be a legal scholar sent to advise on the matter, awards him just that. However, she also says that he forfeits his life if he should enforce the rule. Should an “alien,” which Shylock is, make an attempt “direct or indirect” on a citizen’s life, he forfeits his own, along with all of his property. Ultimately, the parties are merciful. Shylock is not forced to give his life or all of his fortune. Instead, Shylock can keep half of his fortune provided he converts to Christianity. So do Mercy and Justice clash in the Merchant of Venice. In the end, all receive only mercy.
Thus, mercy is greater than justice, Shakespeare tells us, as he simultaneously reveals that mercy is reserved only for those who are like us. What kind of mercy is this? We often hear this message, in school, in books, on the walls of museums, that we must be kind to everyone because we are all alike. We share characteristics, qualities, humanity, feelings, goals, pursuits, cultures, loves, whatever. This is the theory we find in Merchant. For Shakespeare, mercy is based on sameness.
There is value in this perspective. People can be cruel to people they perceive as different. A sense of difference can be easily translated into a malignant moral hierarchy. And so, we must teach children how, in the end, we are all the same, all equally deserving of civility and kind treatment. But it must also be said that this view does not include a path of kindness and peace and tolerance toward those who are not like us. People who are perhaps radically different than we are. What shall we do for them? We might want to warn them: If you are not the same, then watch out.
That is precisely the poisonous mercy doled out in The Merchant of Venice. Yes, mercy for the merchant, who not only keeps his flesh where it belongs but gets half of Shylock’s fortune as well. But Shylock the Jew – he gets mercy only after conversion to sameness. In order for him to receive mercy, he must first acquire a baptismal certificate, which Heinrich Heine, a German Jew who converted to Christianity, famously called “the ticket of admission into European culture.”
The French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas famously critiqued this approach to ethics. It is egotistical, instructing us only to extend our hands to those who are like us. And it is terribly reductionist. Instead of treating each person as a unique, irreducible whole, we lop off any characteristics and habits they have that don’t remind us of us; we refuse to greet them for who they are, instead forcing them into a box to be like us. Only then, do we feel obligated towards them.
It is here that we return to our parsha, where Bilam’s blessing is now clear and obvious to us. Bilam says we are alone, we are different. Though all people are made in the image of G-d, we are distinct in so many ways that make us justifiably proud. Yet, we have no cruelty for those who are different from us. On the contrary, what we have is moral responsibility.
G-d tells Avraham Avinu that He chooses him so that “all of the nations of the world will be blessed through him” (Gen. 18:18). We are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, meaning, Sforno tells us that we are to act in a way that inspires the world to borrow from our own unique wisdom, found in our agreement with G-d.
And so, we need not be the same. We are greeted in our lives by so many people from within our community and without, like us and unlike us, and in order to treat them well, we do not need to say to them, “We are the same, you and I. There are no significant differences between us.”
On the contrary, we can say, “Look how marvelously different we are! Though we are all made in G-d’s image, not one of us is the same! Perhaps, in fact, our differences dwarf our common ground. No matter; G-d values your place in the world and I will do so as well.”
We dwell alone, so often. But we will produce no crimes because of it. Instead, we meet the Other and greet them kindly. When we encounter them, perhaps we see mostly that we are unlike one another. But in meeting them, we find that they demand nothing short of courtesy and sometimes our help. If we can be like that, we will deserve high praise indeed.
