Dvar Torah: Balak - What is a blessing?

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life?

Say yes, say yes 'cause I need to know
You say I'll never get your blessing 'til the day I die
Tough luck, my friend, but the answer is no!

Why you gotta be so rude?
Don't you know I'm human too?
Why you gotta be so rude?

These are the words to a recent popular song by a band called "Magic!"  

In this song, the young man asks his girlfriend’s father for his blessing on their engagement and marriage.

He is asking, as we say, for her father’s blessing.

Our tradition loves giving blessings.  

The Rabbis teach we should strive to say 100 blessings day.  

On Shabbat we give blessings to our children, to each other, May God bless and keep you.

Throughout the week, outside of services, we make blessings on occasions when we see a rainbow, hear thunder, when we see beauty in the world.

When looking in our parsha this week at the blessings Balak recites to the people of Israel, we begin to think about the idea of blessing.

What exactly is a blessing?

Is it a compliment we give to someone else?  Is it a ‘good wish’?  Is a blessing always positive?  Or is something more going on when we pronounce words of blessing to another person, toward nature, toward God?

Though Balak’s words of blessing to the Israelites sound positive to our ears, as we will see, the Rabbis believe them to be curses.  

Rabbi Abba Bar Kahana teaches, All the blessings of Billam became curses when the Holy Temple (in Jerusalem) was destroyed – except for the blessing which praised the synagogues and the Houses of Study, for these we have to this very day.”

We know this particular blessing, ma tovu ohalecha Yakov mishkenotecha Yisrael.

It sounds as though words of blessing can only be true if they reflect something about our world even as they suggest a reality that we hope for, that we strive for, that we dream about.

And each blessing, whether to a person, to nature, to God, reflects a relationship – We cannot give a blessing in a vacuum, and we do not bless ourselves.  A blessing recognizes the inter-connectedness of each of us to each other, to the earth from which we were created, and to God, the Source of Life itself.

Each time we make a blessing, we reaffirm the relationship.

We notice that the first word of many blessings is Baruch – this word is in the passive voice, we say to God, You are blessed – We might have expected the blessing formula to begin with “We bless You, God”, but it starts by saying, in effect, God, You are blessed by us, through us!  

We are tied together each time we offer blessing, tied together to the recipient of the blessing – together, as Rabbi Lawrence Kushner calls it, in invisible lines of connection.

But are the blessings of Bilaam really hidden curses?

There’s always an element of uncertainty in a blessing.  We hope and pray that our blessing will come to be, that the words and the actions that follow them will raise us up, open us to happiness, to experiences that will enrich us, but we do not know the future.

A blessing, then, is an intention, a hope, a dream – grounded in reality but also pointing toward the unknown, and so, Rabbi Abba bar Kahana’s teaching is striking, since with the destruction of the Temple the reality for the Jewish people changed, and our lens for seeing Bilam’s words as blessings changed as well.  

Blessings involve mystery but they are not magical.  When we bless someone for good health we know that the words and prayers themselves, for example, cannot heal disease, but by offering up a vision of healing, we create hope, we create community, we send out positive energy into the world that was not there before.

It’s for this reason that I find it puzzling and troubling that when Bilaam follows God’s instructions to follow Balak, King of Moav, that immediately afterwards God is angry at Bilaam for going along.  

Though Balak wants Bilaam to curse the Israelites, Bilaam only will follow God’s command, he says as much in the previous moment.

Why is God angry at Bilaam?

God is angry at the perception, that Bilaam rises early to follow Balak and so seems to be intent also on following Balak’s instructions to curse the Israelites.

Should the motives of one who blesses be at issue?  Do we question the motives of those who offer blessings, why they’re doing it, what is their goal?

The lesson of our parsha is that we offer blessings because that’s what we’re designed to do – we naturally reach out beyond ourselves, seeking relationship, seeking meaning, trying to create a world that reflects our values but often stymies us when we see it fall short.

In the song we started with, the young man asks for his father in law’s blessing – the other lesson of our parsha is that we can continue to become more generous blessing-givers – this week let’s give, in our own words, a blessing to someone, a friend, a co-worker – a blessing out to those in need of help and support in the larger community around us, and a blessing to God – and this particular blessing need not be rosy like Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? – when we bless God we can also challenge God saying that as partners with God in creation the world isn’t yet the way it should be, and it’s time for us to join hands, from us finite beings to the Infinite One, to join hands and shine the light of blessing out.