OzTorah

Abbott and Costello, Flanagan and Allen, Balak and Bilam – comedy duos, all of them.

Balak and Bilam fit into the list because the Bible is not short of humorous situations and characters. I can actually think of a few more.

No wonder I suddenly burst out laughing when I read the Chumash. I know I have often said that God has a sense of humour, which I mean quite seriously, because when He sees the silly things that human beings get up to He either has to laugh or to cry, and I hope it is the first.

But He must also have decided that his Torah was not going to be all solemnity, and the drollness of the human story was not going to be left out.

So back to Balak and Bilam… and the donkey.

They are caricatures of human types. Not creations of fiction, since fiction is often less dramatic than fact. The donkey talks to its master, the king flies into a rage, the prophet wavers between the cheque book and the Holy Book.

The only ones who come out of it well are the people of Israel – and God Himself.

Bilam is called ha’gever sh’tum ha’ayin, which some versions render, “the man whose eye is opened” (Num. 24:3,15). Another translation is “whose eye is true”.

Since Bilam is a prophet, the text must be describing his capacity for prophetic insight – his ability to perceive with his mind’s eye.

However, the same Hebrew root can be understood as meaning closed, not opened. Some of the sages therefore thought that the Torah was telling us that Bilam was blind in one eye (since it does not say sh’tum b’einav, i.e. sh’tum in both eyes, it seems that he had a problem only with one eye).

Others said his prophetic capacity was defective until the moment when he “saw that it was right in the eyes of the Lord to bless Israel” (Num. 23:1) and when he “lifted up his eyes and saw Israel dwelling according to its tribes, the spirit of God came upon him” (Num. 23:2).

If we take this last interpretation, we learn that like all human beings Bilam does not immediately see the truth of a situation. He needs God to show him the real picture.

Q. Israel is often accused of being aggressive in its targeting of Hamas terrorists. Is there a Jewish approach to military attacks?

Car targeted in an Israeli air strike in Gaza

A. There is a well-known Jewish principle, ha-ba l’hor’gecha, hashkem l’hor’go – “If someone comes to slay you, forestall him by slaying him” (Sanh. 72a).

According to the Talmud, “The Torah stated (haTorah am’rah) this principle.” The Midrash Tanchuma finds the source in the verse, “Attack the Midianites and smite them, for they harass you with their wiles” (Num. 25:17). This provides authority for a pre-emptive strike to forestall an enemy when there are reasonable grounds to expect an attack.

Rabbi Moise Katz says, “We have here a criterion for determining cases of ba l’hor’gecha, namely: If a nation desires to annihilate Israel, and keeps advisers for that purpose, their mere presence is proof enough…

“Similarly, we may infer that the presence of an army, which could lead to an attack, is aggression of the ba l’hor’gecha type, so that the mitzvah of hashkem l’hor’go by surprise attack applies” (“Intercom”, Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, NY, Sept., 1968).

Destruction of the Temple, Francesco Hayez, 1867

It opens the Three Weeks of mourning during which we avoid weddings and other celebrations.

Why lament for the destruction of the Sanctuary three weeks before the tragedy actually occurred?

Because when you see the inexorable catastrophe unfolding you already feel the pain.

It’s like watching a person slowly die. The family are already feeling bereaved even though a miracle can always happen and the patient can have a new lease of life, for a while at least.

Another explanation is that though it all happened a very long time ago, we cannot pretend to be unaware that doom was approaching. We know the story; we feel again the anxiety and agony of the approaching tragedy.

The strangest paradox in the Torah is the parah adumah, the law of the red heifer (Num. 19).

When a person was ritually impure, a mixture of substances was sprinkled upon him, with the effect that the impure became pure whilst the pure (the officiating kohen) became impure. One and the same substance thus had two opposite effects.

The Torah simply calls this a “statute” – a law obeyed out of loyalty to God though its motive remains a mystery. It implies that religion does not need to be amenable to reason and logic.

There is something attractive about such faith. It reduces doubts. It provides emotional security.

Some Jews share this approach, but Judaism as a whole rejects it. It is more normative in Judaism to say God gave you the gift of reason and expects it to be used. Reasoning may not bring final answers, but you are not absolved from asking questions and grappling with them.

Judaism agrees with the saying, “He who will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dare not reason is a slave.”

The classical philosophers used to say, “God forbid there should be anything in the Torah which goes against logic.”

They would largely endorse the words of AN Whitehead: “Religious truth must be developed from knowledge acquired when our ordinary sense and intellectual operations are at their highest level of discipline. To move from this position towards the dark recesses of abnormal psychology is to surrender finally any hope of a solid foundation for religious doctrine.”

Does this mean nothing is true or to be accepted unless we have arrived at it by the use of the human mind?

That would negate the need and validity of Divine revelation. It would say, “God, I am not interested in Your word, only in what reason says is true!”

But that is to go much too far. Judaism believes the primary way to truth is through what God lovingly reveals to us. What our reason does is to enable us to reinforce our perception of the message and to try in humility to understand God’s thinking.

There will be times, as with the red heifer, when our thinking brings us to a dead end, when reason does not produce results. That is when we recognise the limitations inherent in being mortal.

There will be things and their connections which we will never be able to grasp. But instead of saying, “I believe because it is absurd”, we say, “I believe the Divine wisdom is infinitely superior to mine. I believe God expects me to apply my reason even to difficult things. But I know the limitations to my wisdom.”