Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: Bilaam -- An Epic Tradgedy

I guy at the locker room was singing a couple of bars of "I feel pretty" from West Side Story.  (It's guy/locker room humor.  I don't why people say that girls mature faster than boys; men pretty much reach their emotional maturity by three years old -- long before women.)  I noted that West Side Story was basically Romeo and Juliet done right.  The best Shakespearean tragedies follow the tradition of classic Greek tragedies in which the hero/heroin start high on the wheel of fortune (sigh... no, not the game show) and are lead to fall to the ultimate low (death) by some small character defect.  The deaths in Romeo and Juliet are due to stupid accident (a lost message).  West Side Story fixes that an remains (in my book) a classic; telling an epic story beautifully and being the only musical drama.  (I am not counting opera as music.)

I think we tend to picture Bilaam as an amalgam of Rasputin, Charles Manson, and the Wicked Witch of the West; but not that friendly.  That is a mistake.  It is certainly true that Bilaam was arrogant, lusted for the pleasures of this world, and hated anyone else's successes.  However, that is all "l'fi madreigaso" -- according to his level.  Bilaam was a navi HaShem whose ability to have clarify into ratzon HaShem rivaled (and in some ways even surpassed) that of Moshe Rabeinu himself.  The Torah ha'K'dosha even allows Bilaam to refer to HaShem as "elokai" -- my G-d.  Even the avos ha'k'doshim did not have that privilege in their lifetime.  When you think Bilaam ha'Rasha, you should think Mother Theresa ha'Rash'ah or Bruce Wayne.

The medrash says that a king heard about Moshe Rabeinu and wanted to know what he looked like.  Lacking a Mishkan Cam, he sent a famous artist who was renowned for his ability to capture the very essence of a person on canvas.  (Yes, I good with the anachronism.)  The artist came back with a most hideous picture and the king wanted to have him executed.  First, though, he decided to travel himself to see Moshe Rabeinu.  He brought the painting and, after seeing the nearly divine countenance of Moshe Rabein, the king showed him the painting.  Moshe Rabeinu responded, "Yes; that's me."  When the king balked and said that he could see that the great Moshe Rabeinu was nothing like that hideous creature depicted on the canvas, Moshe Rabeinu replied simply and truthfully, "I have worked on myself."

Bilaam ha'Rasha did not work on himself; he lost everything and he even knew that at the end.  With all that, he never changed; and epic tragedy and calamitous loss.

None of use get to choose the midos that make up our character when we are born.  None of us gets to choose our situation in life.  We have but one choice, which then acts as the basis of every single choice we make -- big and small.

hakol b'y'dei shamayim -- absolutely everything is directly manipulated by HaShem; chutz mi'yiras shamayim -- save one thing only: are you willing to recognize that HaShem created you, or will you persist in acting as though you yourself are a god?  And, no; there is nothing in between.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: Love in the Time of Corona Virus/Anxiously Awaiting the Mashiach

Two scenarios: Scenario I: A young boy awakened in the middle of the night, placed in the back of vehicle, told not to make any noise, and the vehicle speeds off down the highway. Scenario II: Young boy playing in park goes to see firetruck, turns around to see scary man in angry pursuit, poised to attack. I experienced and lived through both of those scenarios. Terrifying, no? Actually, no; and my picture was never on a milk carton. Here's the context: Scenario I: We addressed both set of our grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa". How did we distinguish? One set lived less than a half hour's drive; those were there "close grandma and grandpa". The other set lived five hour drive away; they were the "way far away grandma and grandpa". To make the trip the most pleasant for all of us, Dad would wake up my brother and I at 4:00AM, we'd groggily -- but with excitement! -- wander out and down to the garage where we'd crawl
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: David HaMelech's Five Stages of Finding HaShem In the World

Many of us "sing" (once you have heard what I call carrying a tune, you'll question how I can, in good conscience, use that verb, even with the quotation marks) Eishes Chayil before the Friday night Shabbos meal.  We feel like we are singing the praises of our wives.  In fact, I have also been to chasunas where the chasson proudly (sometimes even tearfully) sings Eishes Chayil to his new eishes chayil.  Beautiful.  Also wrong.  (The sentiments, of course, are not wrong; just a misunderstanding of the intent of the author of these exalted words.) Chazal (TB Brachos, 10a) tell us that when Sholmo HaMelech wrote the words "She opens her mouth Mwith wisdom; the torah of kindness is on her tongue", that he was referring to his father, Dovid HaMelech, who (I am continuing to quote Chazal here) lived in five worlds and sang a song of praise [to each].  It seems to me that "world" here means a perception of reality.  Four times Dovid had to readjust his perc
Post a Comment
Read more