Balak - The Power of a Bad Eye
Numbers 22-24
Summary: Balak the Magician knows the power of looking for people’s flaws and shortcomings. We’d be wise to know it as well.
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As the Israelites rolled though ancient Mesopotamia, handily defeating the great Sichon of Emor and the mighty Og of Bashan and their respective nations, other local rulers took notice. Anyone whose armies were less formidable than those of Emor and Bashan would have every reason to fear that they wouldn’t stand a chance in the face of the Israelite army, to say nothing of the Israelite God. Only a fool would suppose to mount any kind of military defense against the pending onslaught. Other strategies would have to be used.
Balak, the king of Midian/Moav, knew this quite well, and he was smart enough to use a different tactic. His weapon of choice was a man named Bil’am. Bil’am was known throughout the land as something of a magician or sorcerer or the like - someone who could wage war in the non-physical plane. One can imagine him as something of a shaman with a reputation for efficacy and power. He was Balak’s last and only hope.
The particular tool that Bil’am would use was his eye. He was known to have an “evil eye” - an ability to look at someone and to find what is flawed and broken about them, and this very seeing had actual metaphysical impact. It would create an opening, a landing-point, for whatever negative forces were available and could be brought to bear.
As strange as this sounds, consider just how much concern there is in the Jewish tradition about the evil eye. There are a wide range of “superstitions” available to ward off the evil eye: some wear a red thread on their wrist; others are sure to hang hamsahs in their homes. Some, on hearing good news, say pu pu pu; others spit after doing so. People have various customs about not announcing pregnancies or telling how many children they have - all in the service of not attracting unsolicited attention from someone who might not be as happy for me as I am for myself.
It’s not always best to be seen like that. Sometimes it is best to not be scrutinized, to avoid someone looking at me and counting my blessings for me and doing the math and trying to figure whether I deserve it or not, or if they deserve my blessings more than I do, and if they do, then an “evil eye” has been cast, and countermeasures must be implemented.
And that’s just from people in my neighborhood who might be jealous for one reason or another. They might not even be able to control themselves - maybe they’ve had a hard time conceiving, or their kids are not so easy to raise, and they look at my kids happily playing at the playground, and then, unplanned and unpremeditated - bam! Evil eye.
But Bil’am is a whole other level. He is casting his evil eye about, actively looking for my flaws and shortcomings so that judgment and severity and negativity have somewhere to take root and grow. If he can do his thing without mitigation, it will cause serious problems. Once Bil’am makes his way to King Balak, he is taken to various locales so he can cast his evil eye upon the people, and he does. And yet, nothing happens. Why?
Bil’am, by means of his critical gaze, was in fact successful in finding a place where judgment and severity and negativity could take root. So, why didn’t his evil plan work? The reason they didn’t take root was no failure on his part - it was because God decided not to emanate judgment and severity during that time. The Talmud tells us that God ordinarily emanates that judgment and severity for 1/58,888 of a moment of every day. Meaning, for the remainder of the day, which is about 99.9999% of the day, it’s all simple love. But for that one moment, that love is expressed as judgment and severity. And Bil’am actually could figure out when that moment was! And if he could fix his evil gaze on someone and expose their imperfections exactly at that moment, then that judgment and severity would have a place to take root in the world, and painful things would happen. So, during the time when Bil’am was at large and casting about with his evil eye, God didn’t emit that judgment and severity for even that 1/58,888 of a moment. 100% pure simple love, all the time. Bil’am’s evil gaze went nowhere.
So, why doesn’t God just erase the 1/58,888 and make it 100% simple love? That would be ideal, right? Wrong. It would actually be a disaster. It’s a terrible idea. That little bit of judgment is definitely needed. It plays an essential role in mitigating the excesses of unchecked indulgence and complacency. Without it, a person would think they are perfect and have no reason to take a hard look at themselves. People would make big choices without thinking it through, assuming their instincts were perfectly honed. And that would lead to a different kind of disaster - as it does, at the end of this week’s Torah reading, when the Israelites somehow think it’s a good idea to debauch with the daughters of Moav, and they suffer a terrible plague.
The hard truth is we need to be seen in our fullness - warts and all. It is essential that we allow what is not yet perfect about us to be seen alongside what is fabulous about us. Judgment within love is healthy and healing. If we are to learn a lesson from Bil’am, who constantly looks for something not-yet-perfect within us so he can cause us harm, the lesson is NOT to leave those not-yet-perfect parts not to be seen. The lesson is to allow our full selves to be seen, warts, too, but with love and respect and support.