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Parashat Balak 5782 — 07/16/2022

Parashat Balak 5782 — 07/16/2022

Beginning with Bereishit 5781 (17 October 2020) we embarked on a new format. We will be considering Rambam’s (Maimonides’) great philosophical work Moreh Nevukim (Guide for the Perplexed) in the light of the knowledge of Vedic Science as expounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The individual essays will therefore not necessarily have anything to do with the weekly Torah portion, although certainly there will be plenty of references to the Torah, the rest of the Bible, and to the Rabbinic literature. For Bereishit we described the project. The next four parshiyyot, Noach through Chayei Sarah, laid out a foundational understanding of Vedic Science, to the degree I am capable of doing so. Beginning with Toledot we started examining Moreh Nevukim.

Bamidbar 22:2-25:9
At the end of last week’s consideration of Rambam’s approach to understanding movement with respect to Gd, we looked at the anthropomorphism of Gd’s Face. This leads naturally into Moshe’s request to “see Gd’s Face” and Gd’s denial of that request, because a human being “cannot see Gd’s Face and live.” However, Gd does offer to let Moshe see His “back.” What does that really mean? Here’s what Rambam has to say:

The Sages have likewise considered that the “face” mentioned in the verse is that of Gd, may He be exalted. Though they have mentioned this opinion while setting forth legends that are out of place here, this affords some corroboration for our view. Accordingly, the third person of the possessive suffix figuring in the Hebrew word His Face refers to the Holy One, blessed be He. The explanation of this, according to what I think and to what occurs to me, is that Moses, peace be on him, demanded a certain apprehension – namely, that which in its dictum, But My face shall not be seen, is named the seeing of the Face – and was promised an apprehension inferior to that which he had demanded. It is this latter apprehension that is named the seeing of the back in its dictum: And thou shalt see My back. We have already given a hint as to this meaning in Mishneh Torah. Scripture accordingly says in this passage that God, may He be exalted, hid from him the apprehension called that of the face and made him pass over to something different; I mean the knowledge of the acts ascribed to Him, may He be exalted, which, as we shall explain, are deemed to be multiple attributes. When I say He hid from him, I intend to signify that this apprehension is hidden and inaccessible in its very nature. Moreover every perfect man – after his intellect has attained the cognition of whatever in its nature can be grasped – when longing for another apprehension beyond that which he has achieved, cannot but have his faculty of apprehension deceived or destroyed – as we shall explain in one of the chapters of this Treatise – unless divine help attends him. As Scripture says: And I will cover thee with My hand until I have passed. The [Aramaic] translation of the Bible, when rendering this verse, does what it customarily does in similar cases. For in every case in which it finds that a thing is ascribed to Gd to which the doctrine of corporeality or some concomitants of this doctrine are attached, it assumes that the nomen regens has been omitted and considers that the ascription concerns something expressed by a term that is the nomen regens of the genitive Gd and that has been omitted. Thus when Scripture says, And, behold, the Lord stood erect upon it, it translates; The glory of the Lord stood arrayed above it. Again when Scripture says, The Lord watch between me and thee, it translates: The word of the Lord shall watch [between me and thee]. This occurs throughout the translation of [Onkelos] peace be upon him. He does the same thing with regard to the dictum of Scripture, And the Lord passed by before his face, which he translates: The Lord caused his Indwelling to pass before his face, and he called. Thus according to him it was indubitably a created thing that passed by, he considers that in the expression, his face, the possessive suffix in the third person refers to Moses our Master. The interpretation of before his face would accordingly be: in his presence, as when Scripture says: So the present passed before his face. This too is an excellent interpretation that may be approved of.

Rambam uses unusual language in discussing Gd’s Face and Back: The explanation of this, according to what I think and to what occurs to me. In Rambam’s halachic works, when he uses the phrase “it appears to me” to introduce a halachic conclusion, it means that he can find no Talmudic source for this opinion. I would suggest that that is his meaning here as well, except the range of sources that Rambam would reference for an opinion like this would be broader, encompassing aggadic works as well (i.e. homiletical works and works that explain deeper levels of meaning within Scripture).

Now the meaning of “seeing Gd’s Face” and “seeing Gd’s Back” are certainly issues of long standing, and have been the object of discussion among commentators both before and after Rambam. Mostly they focus on the different expressions of Gd in creation, as we also see in our passage, where Gd’s Face is pictured as passing before Moshe. Here, however, we are talking about the nature of Gd’s Face, not what it does. And here, Rambam takes an Aristotelian approach. If he was not the first Jewish thinker to use this approach, he is certainly the first major one.

As we have seen, to the Aristotelians, intellectual comprehension is the highest form of knowledge. Thus, Moses, peace be on him, demanded a certain apprehension – namely, that which in its dictum, But My face shall not be seen, is named the seeing of the Face. When we see someone’s face, we say we have seen that person. The face is associated with the essence of a person. When we are embarrassed, we hide our face so nobody can see us, as it were. We turn our face towards someone when we accept them and draw them in, and we turn our face away when we are angry with them. So seeing the Face means an apprehension of Gd’s essence.

Now Torah says this is not possible: A man cannot see My Face and live (Ex. 33:20). If we take the intellect to be that which discerns differences, then it is clear that intellectual apprehension alone cannot plumb Gd’s essence, which is Unity. The mind, however, can transcend all duality and settle down to a state of Transcendental Consciousness, which may be a kind of direct apprehension of Gd’s Unity, certainly more than the intellect is capable of. This may be pure life, but it cannot be described as “living,” because life is lived in activity, and the state of Transcendental Consciousness is devoid of any activity. I think this is a first level of “seeing the Face.”

The deeper level of “seeing the Face” that is available to a human being is in fully matured Unity Consciousness. In Unity Consciousness the experience of Transcendental Consciousness is not only on the level of the mind, but has expanded to include all perception. Unity pervades the entire universe, visible and outside our range of vision. Not only do we experience Unity inside, but outside as well. Since Gd’s essence is unity, perception of the whole creation as permeated by Unity is a higher level of “seeing the Face.” Nevertheless, since we say that Unity pervades creation, there is still some created value there. This is because we still have a human nervous system, albeit fully purified and refined, we have not yet reached the full value of “seeing the Face.” We cannot see Gd’s Face and live within a human body. Apparently that is only available after the fully realized human being has sloughed off the human body and merged completely with Gd.

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Commentary by Steve Sufian

Parashat Balak

“Balaam” means “swallowing up the people, the kinsman.”

“Balak” means “empty, desolate.”

Why would any parents give their children these names?

Perhaps the parents meant that Balaam would be the Ocean of Joy and would view all with Love, as kinsmen. Balaam would swallow their limits and reveal the Ocean within them.

Perhaps the parents meant that Balak would be the Transcendent Wholeness in its Appearance as Blissful Emptiness.

Such a hope was not fulfilled: Balam and Balak travelled the path of greed and brought out the negative meanings of their names.

In this parshah, we are reminded that Gd is always protecting us, blessing us: by doing our best to follow His Will, this Protection and Blessing becomes clearer and more livable in our daily life. Balaam, though requested by Balak, king of Moab, to curse Israel could only speak what Gd gave him to speak and that was blessings for Israel. Although Balaam was forced to give a blessing, he would have been happier to curse and tried to find ways to do so.

From our side we can be armored in purity and receive and give only Blessings by behaving like Moses who served Gd with all his heart and soul in leading Israel to high spiritual consciousness and to the physical Promised Land,

Or we can behave like Balaam, always holding something back so we can make a personal profit if at all possible. According to Jewish legend, Balaam was made a prophet so that the non-Jewish nations could not say, “If we only had our own prophet, like Moses, we could also have served Gd well.”  But Gd abandoned him and he lost his status as a prophet after his advice to Balak to set up the conditions of harlotry and idolatry that would tempt a people too weak to resist – despite the blessing they had so recently received.

This parshah shows us that we need to be alert: We really need to be following the straight path and we cannot forget that our good life is a gift from Gd for being good people; we cannot sharply depart from the Path of Virtue. Hardly a moment after Gd blessed Israel through words he put into the prophet Balaam’s mouth, the people are sinning with harlots from Midian and worshipping their gods—abandoning Wholeness for partiality.

Key in the blessings of this parshah are the words, “Ma Tovu, ohalecha Yaakov, mishkanotecha Yisroel”: “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, thy dwelling places, O Israel.”  This is the prayer we recite when we enter the synagogue. And these words Gd put into Balaam’s mouth instead of the curse that Balak, king of Moab, wanted Balaam to speak.

Balak means “Destroyer”; Balak, the king of Moab, sends messengers asking Balaam (his name means “no nation,” he does not serve a nation, a whole: he is a prophet that can be hired by individuals to bless or curse) to curse Israel as they pass through Moab.

Balaam replies that he can only speak what Gd puts in his mouth to speak and try though Balak does, Gd puts only a blessing for Israel in Balaam’s mouth.

This is the comforting side of this parshah: The warning side is the sinning with harlots and worshipping their idols, actions which result in a plague and Moses ordering each of the judges in the community to slay two wrong-doers to stop the plague.

The parshah ends with Pinchas, grand-son of Aaron, slaying an Israeli prince along with the harlot he took into his tent in full view of the community.

Though we can hardly take such action today to end plagues and immorality in our community, in the world, we can do our best to live good, pure lives so that our community, our world, is blessed by Gd flowing through us and everyone feels comforted by this Blessing.

Our congregation can and is creating a world in which Gd’s Presence is becoming more visible (perhaps not in the mainstream news) but in everyday life and setting up the conditions so, as Rabbi Tuvia Bolton likes to say when ending his commentary on the weekly parshah: “Moshiach Now!”

Baruch HaShem.