Would Bilaam’s Curses Even Matter? A Cautionary Tale for 2024

In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, analyzing the political and religious divisions of our era, Professor Jonathan Haidt says the reason we are divided is not because some people are good and some are evil. It is innate for all human beings to care about morality and righteousness. But our minds were designed for “groupish righteousness” – we are ultimately wired differently, and we connect to the morals of our groups. Therefore, it is “difficult – but not impossible – to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations” (370-371). He further says, “morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say” (366).

In a tangential story from the main storyline in the Torah, Balak invited Bilaam, a world class statesman to visit the kingdom of Moav. Okay, so Bilaam was perhaps more of a sorcerer, and unlike with Bibi’s upcoming visit, his visit was not to give a nice speech at the Capitol. Rather, Bilaam was summoned to “curse” B’nei Yisrael. Balak had a “moral” concern – the protection of his people. He saw a threatening group that does not fit his complexion of what is right and good in this world. Balak’s invitation hinged on Bilaam’s reputation of being able to successfully bless or curse whomever he wishes. Upon receiving this invitation from Balak’s messengers, Bilaam faces a great dilemma. This is God’s chosen people – can I go forward with this mission or not? After consulting God, who obviously warns Bilaam not to go, Bilaam declines the request. But then Balak sends even more dignified diplomats, I’d call them, to persuade him once more to take up Balak on his offer. At this point, God seemingly relents, with the condition that Bilaam will only be able to utter whatever God dictates.

But we have to pause this classic story here. Why does it really matter if Bilaam blesses or curses B’nei Yisrael? More pointedly, why does God care? Is Bilaam’s word God’s decree? If God doesn’t like what Bilaam says, can he not simply prevent Bilaam’s curses from being actualized? Furthermore, what is the significance of Bilaam’s blessings – what would those do anyhow?

Abarbanel grapples with this very same question. His answer is that it mattered less what Bilaam said and more what everyone else would hear.

It is unfathomable that the merit of the Avos and the merit of Har Sinai would disappear just because Bilaam says some words. But at the end of the day, his reputation was such that his blessings and curses were believed to be prophecy. If he curses B’nei Yisrael, that means B’nei Yisrael will surely end up cursed. If he blesses them, then they will surely be successful and prosperous. ואם היה בלעם מקלל את ישראל, היו גויי הארץ בוטחים בקללתו ומתאמצים להלחם בישראל על משענת קללתו – “And if Balaam were to curse Israel, the Gentiles of the world would place their trust in his curse and strive to fight Israel on the basis of his curse.” Abarbanel says that no,  Bilaam cannot curse B’nei Yisrael – but if the populace hears that B’nei Yisrael is cursed, they will be emboldened to attack B’nei Yisrael. Even if we would end up victorious, going to war would obviously not be a good thing. There would be a heavy price.

These words from Abarbanel jumped off the screen when I saw them. Because his description of the power of Bilaam’s words is not really just about the role of the words of a prophet or so-called sorcerer. They apply to anyone with influence. Our leaders may not be prophets to tell the future or sorcerers to influence the future, but their words matter. Their words matter because they have the power to uplift and unite or to incite and to damage.

The battlefront of the last nine months has not just been in Israel and Gaza. It has been in the media, social media, universities, city councils, not to mention our federal government. You have to wonder what a guy with a keyboard and a Twitter account can actually accomplish. Who cares what opinion is held and expressed by some ignorant guy sitting in his armchair? Who cares about the opinions of self-righteous college students? And frankly, I scoffed as I watched video clips of city council meetings at which protestors shouted their vitriol and at which votes were passed condemning Israel’s actions. What practical differences does it make if Boston or Cincinnati or Sacramento city councils call for a ceasefire – they’re not the ones setting our country’s foreign policy and are certainly not influencing Kenesset decisions.

But we have learned over the last few months that none of this is just words. The more lies that are spread by the people with the most followers online or by the politicians that make the news, the more acceptable it becomes for anti-Israel activists to intimidate, harass, obstruct, and destroy. All of these people put together give chizuk to Hamas and Iran. They have literally thanked these radicals for their support. There is a pasuk in Yeshayahu that has become a popular song – אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵהוּ יַעְזֹרוּ וּלְאָחִיו יֹאמַר חֲזָק – “Each one helps the other,

Saying to his fellow, “Take courage” (Isaiah 41:6)! Ironically, this pasuk is referring to the encouragement people give to each other to do Avodah Zarah. Likewise, people who commit acts of hatred are often encouraged by those who spread hate. A leader or person with influence committing slander may not be initiating a prophecy, but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the normalization of this kind of speech energizes people to act as they have been.

Right after Shabbat last week, we heard about the attempted assassination of a former president and current presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Two major questions that are being asked are what were the shooter’s motives? And what happened to security – how could the Secret Service fail so miserably? We do not seem to really know what his motives were. He is not someone who had been posting online or politically active in a way that would suggest that he was incited to violence. With regard to security, that will obviously require a major investigation. But as Juliette Kayyem wrote in The Atlantic this week, “(But) regardless of motive, defending against political violence isn’t just about creating an adequate plan for a particular event. Political violence reveals deep cultural dysfunction, and that dysfunction is what our leaders must address. No security perimeter can shield our fractured democracy.”

Indeed, toxic rage has been part of our political climate for well over a decade, at least. I was listening to a Commentary magazine podcast earlier this week. In addressing the extreme polarization of our country, one of the hosts candidly confessed that both sides of our divide are responsible for the rising heat. A lot of insight can be found in an article from the other day in the Greater Good Magazine, authored by Jeremy Adam Smith and Zaid Jilani. Exhibit A: In 2022, political scientists Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe published a book titled, Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy. With data from two different national surveys, they found that 24 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of Democrats believe that it is acceptable to threaten public officials.

Exhibit B: Violence, and violent protests, are especially dangerous when there is a moralizing rationale for them. Ironically, researchers found that the belief that a protest was with regard to not a political issue but a “moral” issue was correlated to the degree of violence present at both BLM protests in Baltimore in 2015 and Charlottesville in 2017. It should be obvious that this can apply to January 6, 2021 as well as anti-Israel protests this past year. While the occurrence of political violence is relatively rare, any expression of it is already too much.

And Exhibit C: A 2017 Polish study found “frequent and repetitive exposure to hate speech leads to desensitization to this form of verbal violence and subsequently to lower evaluations of the victims and greater distancing, thus increasing outgroup prejudice.” Smith and Jilani then comment,

Taken together, these studies suggest that our political leadership—everyone from pundits on cable news to the President of the United States—would do well to avoid promoting the political tribalism that leads people to strongly identify with one group and demonize the other. They could also reduce the use of angry, contemptuous, and disgusted rhetoric to refer to political outgroups. And Americans everywhere could learn to rely less on the echo chambers of social media, where moral convergence and affirmation can fuel violence against people and property. Most importantly, we have to be able to stress civility and humanity toward the other side, even when it’s difficult.

The assassination attempt last week was alarming enough in its own right. But together with everything else taking place in our world, something has to change. It may start with our leaders, but our leaders are often a reflection of us. We are responsible for who we platform – whether they are political or intellectual leaders. And with the internet, one does not have to have a title of “leader” to be an influencer. This is on all of us. 

We may not be prophets on the level of Bilaam, but we all have the choice of Bilaam – we can use our words to enable and normalize rage vitriol, or we can use our words to enable and normalize civility. In the words of Jonathan Haidt, “when I was a teenager, I wished for world peace, but now I yearn for a world in which competing ideologies are kept in balance, systems of accountability keep us all from getting away with too much, and fewer people believe that righteous ends justify violent means” (The Righteous Mind, xx). Over the next three weeks, as we mourn the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash, let us choose to rebuild the peace symbolized by the Beit Hamikdash and choose to speak in a way that will build a stronger, more righteous society.