I want to share a story that reinforces this idea -- the
story of a man, who will remain nameless, a man who was living down in Florida
and noticed a store front that advertised ‘$100 cruise vacation’. What a great deal. He walked in and asked if the offer on the
storefront was real. The clerk behind
the desk said it surely was real. The
man handed over the one hundred dollars and asked when the cruise vacation
would depart – the clerk said, right now if you’re ready, please step through
this way. He crossed through the main
desk and as he did the clerk took a baseball bat and knocked him on the
head. When he regained consciousness, he
found himself floating on the ocean, in an inner tube, floating out there in
the middle of the wide ocean. He looked around
and noticed someone else floating in an inner tube – he paddled over there and
called out to the other, “Hey over there, do they serve a dinner on this
trip?” The other called out, “They
didn’t last year.”
This story reminds us to be wary of our assumptions and of
our expectations. What seems like a good
deal at first can quickly turn out to be anything but a good deal. It is of course ridiculous to think that a
full-fledged cruise vacation could ever cost $100, but we also know from recent
history that even full-priced cruises are subject to Noro Virus, engine
failure, and, in the case of the Costa Concordia and others, can be even worse
tragedies.
And expectations at full-price set the stage this week when
King Balak, King of Mo’av, brings out Bil’am the magician to curse the people
of Israel. Mo’av fears the Israelites
will rout them as they did to the Amorites, and Balak supposes Bil’am may be
able to prevent the disaster. In our
reading today, we chanted the third and final oracle Bil’am speaks regarding
the Israelites, and it includes the familiar words Ma tovu ohalecha Yakov mishkenotecha Yisrael – How beautiful are
your tents O, Jacob, your dwelling places O Israel.
While later Jewish tradition paints Bilam as an evil
sorcerer (kind of like Aladdin’s Jafar), and later Jewish tradition
demonstrates that his words, however they sound, show evil intent, it’s pretty
clear here that he’s offered now, for the third time, abundant blessings to
Israel rather than curses.
The Or Ha’chayim, Rabbi Chaim ben Moshe Attar, tries to
explain that Bilam’s blessings really are curses but Balak simply cannot hear
the curses in the nicely phrased poetic words.
With due respect to the Sages, the point of the story here is to show
the divergence between what Balak expected and what Bilam actually did.
Balak says to him, “I called you to curse my enemies and
instead you have blessed them three times over!” (Numbers 24:10)
Bil’am frustrated Balak’s expectations, not once, nor twice,
but three times over.
Think about a time when each of us has faced a similar
dilemma. We take a car to get repaired,
and then either the repair itself fails or something else breaks down soon
after compelling us to return to the body shop.
Or more poignant for us, when we receive news about a health test or
diagnosis – what do we hope to hear? Can
we ever be prepared for bad news? Why
is it that people may even struggle with hearing good news when fully expecting
the opposite?
I recently heard from a hopeful parent – she and her husband
had been for many years seeking to adopt a child, and were prepared and ready
to adopt this summer when they learned just yesterday that the birth mother
decided to keep the child instead of giving the child up for adoption.
During this election season we are subject to candidates and
parties who raise our expectations. We
often hear, “On my first day in office I will…” and fill in the blank. We all know that legislative priorities are
important but that creating and guiding legislation through the democratic
process often takes longer and involves compromise.
Still, we must always strive to meet high expectations with
the best of ourselves. God asks us in
the wilderness to take upon ourselves laws and practices that are neither easy
nor convenient, especially for people on the move. God does this knowing that once we settle in
the Holy Land we will likely get too settled, too comfortable and the urgency
of nation-building and the first exciting part of the journey, the honeymoon
period, will end and we will regress.
In fact, in the same parsha we read today the people
regressed the moment after Bilam praised the people and showed how we would
triumph over our enemies. It turns out
the “enemy” is within – we might one day overcome Amalek and Kenites, but the
danger of falling back on old patterns, of looking to other gods to worship,
statues, local deities, idols – all these easily accessible divinities are easy
and less demanding than the invisible God of the universe who not only asks for
our faith and trust, but also for us to live a life of justice and
compassion. As we’ve seen in bloody
reality lately, this demand is tragically flouted by many religious extremists.
But to ask a significant amount from the people then and now
is the only way to encourage us to strive, to stretch and to grow.
And what better time to re-emphasize this message than as
the 3 weeks leading to Tisha B’Av get started this Sunday with our observance
Sunday of the Shivah Asar B’Tamuz fast, the fast that recalls the sieges of
Jerusalem that led to the destruction of both Temples, destructions that our
tradition remembers not as the result of overwhelming enemy force but as the
result of our people not striving earnestly enough to live up to one of the most
significant and central expectations God sets for us – Ve’ahavta li’re’acha
kamocha, you shall care for your fellow human being as yourself.
And, of course, we should never purchase a $100 cruise
vacation.
Shabbat Shalom.
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