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Parshat Hashavua

Balak -- God's Laughter: Making Fun of Balaam

Rabbi Uri Cohen

"If Jesus were to come today, people would not crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, hear what he had to say, and make fun of it." Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Mockery is a more powerful weapon than murder. True, murder tends to cramp the style of the murdered. But it does not necessarily weaken them; often their legacy and legend live on. Martyrs lose their life but inspire others to follow them (the luckiest martyrs get their own religion!). They can be alive even in death. Mockery, on the other hand, weakens the mocked and makes them look silly. The mocked lose their reputation and inspire others to abandon them. They can be dead even in life. As William Paley (1743-1805) put it, "Who can refute a sneer?"

With this in mind, we can understand the Talmud's proclamation, "All mockery (leitzanut) is prohibited except for mockery of idol worship (avodah zarah). "Since mockery -- or, as we call it today, cynicism -- is destructive, we may not use it against what is merely annoying, but only against what is evil. Make no mistake, though -- this permission is not limited to avodah zarah. Rav Hutner points out, "It is clear that this permission to mock applies to all the aspects of evil. It is definitely permitted to mock every bit of evil, and everything considered wrong." Why, then, does the Gemora formulate it in terms of avodah zarah? Rav Hutner answers that idol worship is the ultimate extreme of respecting evil, and mockery knocks down that respect. A different approach is formulated by Professor John E. Benson: "Our basic human problem is that we have a strange, uncontrollable desire to worship idols.We feel an inner need to trust something utterly, and we prefer something close at hand like wealth, another person or our nation. So we blind ourselves to the transient nature of all that exists in this world...We are caught in a circle of deceit. Now, it is this circle of self-deception that humor attacks...People who put on airs, who think they are bigger than they really are, deserve the shrieks of laughter that naturally arise from earth and heaven".

Heaven? Did he say laughter from heaven? Yes! In mocking evil we are fulfilling the mitzvah of vehalakhta biderakhav (imitating Hashem), since Hashem sets the example by laughing at our enemies! This is explicit in the second chapter of Tehillim: "Why do nations conspire, and peoples plot in vain? [Why do] kings of the earth take their stand, and rulers intrigue together against haShem and his anointed? [They say,] 'Let's burst their bonds, and throw their ropes off us!' He who is enthroned in heaven laughs; haShem mocks them." Professor Benson comments, "Here God the judge ridicules idolaters and self-serving people who foolishly arrogate to themselves divine prerogatives. Ignorance and pretensions of absoluteness are often the target of humor's arrows. Like a radar-controlled missile seeking its target, humor goes out seeking pomposity to puncture its balloon. And God's humor is no exception; it seems to delight in laying low the haughty, in humiliating the arrogant".

Understanding that haShem mocks our enemies can explain the existence of parashat Balak. After all, why couldn't the Torah summarize the story here the way it does in Devarim 23:5-6 and in Yehoshua 24:9-10 -- Balak hired Balaam to curse us, but because haShem loves us, He turned the curse into a blessing! Wouldn't that be good enough to get the point across? Even if you say that haShem wanted to share with us the beautiful blessings of Balaam, which take up part of Chapter 23 and most of Chapter 24, that still doesn't explain the detailed focus on Balaam before the blessing. And how about the story of the talking donkey (presumably the inspiration for the talking donkey in the movie Shrek)? According to Pirkei Avot (5:6), that was one of the few special miracles whose potential Hashem created right before the first Shabbat. Why do that miracle at all?

The answer seems to be that haShem chose both to make the donkey speak and to tell us the whole story in order to mock and ridicule Balaam. After all, as Professor Jacob Milgrom points out, if we were to read Balaam's story here without the donkey story (22:22-35), we might get the impression that Balaam is not such a bad guy! He piously proclaims over and over that he must submit to haShem's will and do whatever haShem wants. That's the public Balaam.The private Balaam, however, removes his mask and shows anger, violence and murderousness!haShem makes the donkey speak and then tells us the story so that we could see Balaam's true face - our enemy - and jeer at him in general. Milgrom spells out the details of the Torah's ironic portrayal:

"The goal of the episode is doubtless the humiliation of Balaam, evidenced by the strain of irony that runs through the entire periscope (and recognized by the midrash).

"Balaam, who desires to subdue Israel with words, cannot even subdue his donkey with a stick (Tanchuma, Balak 9).

"Balaam, who claims prophetic sight (24:4, 17), cannot see what his donkey sees three times.

"Balaam, who claims prophetic speech since the Lord puts words into his mouth (22:38; 23:5, 12, 16), is now matched by his donkey (v. 28).

"Balaam, who boasts that "his knowledge is from the Most High" (24:16), has to admit, "I did not know" (v. 34; Tanchuma, Balak 10).

"Balaam, who is the wisest of the wise, is bested in a verbal exchange with the most stupid of beasts (v. 30; Genesis Rabba 93:10; Numbers Rabba 20:14).

"Balaam, who wishes to slay a whole people with his words, can only kill his donkey with a sword (Numbers Rabba 20:14).

"Balaam, who would slay his donkey if only he could find a sword (v. 29), does not see the sword extended by the angel (v. 23)...

"In truth, Balaam is depicted on a level lower than his donkey: more unseeing in his inability to detect the angel, more stupid in being defeated verbally by his donkey, and more beastly in subduing it with his stick whereas it responds with tempered speech. The lampooning of Balaam, then, serves the purpose of downgrading his reputation. It aims to demonstrate that this heathen seer, who was intent on cursing Israel without God's consent, is in reality a fool, a caricature of a seer, one outwitted even by his dumb beast. "Believe it or not, Milgrom's list is not exhaustive. Professor David Marcus devotes two pages to the ironies, two pages to the parodies, and three pages to the ridicules of Balaam in the donkey story! It's also possible that haShem intends us to read the conversations between Balaam and Balak as a comedy mocking them.

One possible lesson from all this is that making fun of our people's enemies is legitimate and even praiseworthy. We do it on Purim when we react to the name of the genocidal Haman with gleeful noise. And Mel Brooks does it in his movie and play, "The Producers." Without trying to find humor in the Holocaust, Brooks focuses on ridiculing the Nazis. By channeling his self-proclaimed hatred for the Nazis into mocking humor, Brooks does to our recent enemies what haShem did to our ancient enemy Balaam.

NOTES

1. William Paley, Moral Philosophy, Vol. ii. Book v.Cf. Milan Kundera, The Joke (1967; tr. 1982), part 6, chap 18: "No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches."

2. Talmud Bavli, Megillah 25b.Despite the word "prohibited," it's possible that this statement is one of piety and not halachah; cf. Sdei Chemed, kelalei haposkim 16:12 (Vol. 9, p. 188).However, Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim, chapter 5, condemns mockery as one of the main obstacles to spiritual accounting (zehirut).

3. Rav Yitzchak Hutner, Pachad Yitzchak, Purim, 1:1 (pp. 27-28).

4. Ibid., 1:4-5 (pp. 29-30).

5. John E. Benson, "The Divine Sense of Humor," Dialog: A Journal of Theology, Vol. 22 (Summer 1983), p. 194.

6. Psalms 2:1-4.haShem mocks in 37:13 and 59:8 as well. Although the Gemora refers to haShem laughing happily (Bava Metzia 59b) and playing (Avodah Zarah 3b), Divine laughter in Tanach is mocking.

7. Benson, op. cit. The Gemora (Shabbat 30b) says haShem laughs at evil people in this world, and laughs with righteous people in the next world.

8. Jacob Milgrom, The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (Philadelphia: JPS, 1990), pp. 469-470.In citing from Milgrom, I've changed the word "ass" to "donkey" in accordance with the Gemora's instruction to use euphemistic language (Pesachim 3a).

9. Compare the following commentary by the Chassidic Rebbe, R' Yitzchak of Vorki (cited in Midrash Chakhamim). On the question in Pirkei Avot (5:19), "What's the difference between the students of Our Father Abraham and the students of Balaam the Evil?," he challenges: "This is problematic. Why doesn't it say 'between Our Father Abraham' himself 'and Balaam the Evil' himself? Why say 'between the students'? In truth, when it came to the difference between Our Father Abraham and Balaam the Evil himself, not everyone would be able to recognize their essence. This is because Balaam the Evil was a hypocrite, and portrayed himself in the image of Our Father Abraham; it would appear to people as if God made this one parallel that one. Whereas the difference between their students would be recognizable: Our Father Abraham's students separate for innocence, and Balaam the Evil's students separate for evil. "Notice that Pirkei Avot there cites a verse comparing Balaam's students to "people of bloodshed and deceit."

10. ibid. However, according to the midrash, haShem actually gave Balaam back some of his dignity, by immediately killing the donkey."God cared for the dignity of that villain, and did not allow it to be said that this was the animal which had shamed Balaam" (Numbers Rabba 20:14).

11. David Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah: Anti-Prophetic Satire in the Hebrew Bible (Providence: Brown University Press, 1995), pp. 32-39.

12. I don't remember where I first heard this suggestion, but ever since then, when reading those back-and-forths, I imagine that Balaam is Abbott the straight man, and Balak is Costello the excitable man. Try it!

13. cf. Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf, The One Hour Purim Primer (Baltimore: Leviathan Press, 1995), pp. 25-26: "There is also another side to laughter. It cuts things down to size...Haman built a gallows upon which to hang Mordechai, and suddenly Haman himself is hung on those very gallows. The thirteenth day of Adar had been decreed as a day of destruction for the Jewish people; and in a flash it became a moment of salvation. Purim is a time for tapping into the power of laughter. We realize that no matter how bleak things seem, we must never give up hope. And when we dress like our alter ego, like a couch potato, a beauty queen or president of the United States -- we laugh -- and cut our nemesis down to size."

14. Mel Brooks has been quoted as saying, "Me? Not like Germans? Why should I not like Germans? Just because they're arrogant and have fat necks and do anything they're told so long as it's cruel, and killed millions of Jews in concentration camps and made soap out of their bodies and lampshades out of their skins? Is that any reason to hate their [expletive] guts?"

15. On the other hand, one could argue that as long as there are still Holocaust survivors who suffered because of the Nazis, any such humor is inappropriate.