Parashat Balak

This week, as I write this D’var Torah, London is expected to reach 36°C. The air feels thick and heavy. I ask my dog whether she would like to go outside, and the look she gives me tells me everything I need to know. I have tried all the usual solutions: fans, closed blinds, frozen towels, altered plans. Yet the heat remains. And then, reading Parashat Balak in the middle of a heatwave, I find myself wondering whether I have something in common with Balak. It’s not that I am a king seeking to hire a prophet to curse my enemies. Rather, because when Balak is confronted by something he cannot control and that he is afraid of, he searches desperately for a way to make it disappear.

Many of us have approached climate change in a similar fashion. Growing up, climate change was presented as a future possibility, a disaster that would arrive if humanity failed to change its behaviour. Yet in the midst of another summer heatwave, it is increasingly difficult to imagine climate change as a distant threat. Like Balak watching the Israelites approach, we find ourselves confronting consequences that can no longer be ignored.

The parashah repeatedly emphasises the number seven. Balak and Balaam build seven altars and offer seven bulls and seven rams. Again and again, Balak attempts to secure a curse. Again and again, Balaam’s mouth opens to curse, and the curse is transformed into blessing. What can it mean to intend to curse, and to instead release blessings.

The environmental crises of our age can feel like sevenfold curses: extreme heat, floods, species loss, resource scarcity, anxiety, inequality, and uncertainty. Yet Parashat Balak suggests that the religious response to a curse is not despair. It is learning how blessing might emerge from it. The turning point of the narrative comes not with Balaam’s prophecies but with his jenny.

Balaam is a professional seer, a prophet for hire. In some of the rabbinic literature he’s a magician, or a diviner. If anyone should be able to perceive God’s messenger standing in the road, it is him. Instead, the person renowned for his spiritual sight, hired for his ability to see what others cannot, sees nothing. It is the jenny who sees everything.

The Torah pushes this animal intuition to its theological extreme. The jenny becomes a witness to truths that human beings overlook. Anyone who has lived with animals may recognise something of this moment. Animals often appear aware of things we have not yet noticed: changes in weather, unfamiliar sounds, subtle shifts in their environment. We can use them to show us the things we cannot see – like the windshield phenomenon which highlights how many fewer insects there are out at night now than there were in previous decades. That there are fewer bugs in the air at night is one of the first, everyday indicator that something is shifting in our climate.

For decades, scientists have warned about environmental degradation. Species have disappeared. Habitats have shrunk. Weather patterns have shifted. The signs have been visible. Like Balaam, we have often continued forward, convinced that our understanding was sufficient, even when we hit roadblocks.  Imagining that we would see the danger in front of us before it is too late, and would successfully avoid it. But, just like Balaam, we did not see the danger before we were forced to.

Balak sees his entire future, and the future of his people, as being threatened by these interloping Israelites. He recognises the powerlessness that he experiences as an individual, and calls on an expert who is understood to have a greater understanding of the mysteries of the world to help him. He recognises that he cannot control the reality that he and his people face, but he wants to try and minimise the harm by deflecting and diverting it as much as possible. But every time his hired expert opens his mouth to do his job, the opposite of what he was paid for emerges.

Balak’s entire project assumes that power consists in controlling reality. If reality is threatening, curse it. If a future appears dangerous, manipulate it. Balaam eventually learns something different. Acknowledge what is coming, even bless it. Embrace the change that is on its way.

The blessing Balaam offers that we remember the most is Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov, mishkenotecha Yisrael. How good are your tents, O Jacob; your dwelling places, Israel? Balaam’s blessing does not focus on military strength or political power. According to Sforno, the blessing actually concerns the communal and spiritual institutions that sustain the Jewish people. The tents and dwelling places of Israel represent spaces of learning, worship, and shared responsibility. What makes Israel enduring is not its ability to dominate others but its capacity to cultivate holy community.

This observation feels particularly relevant in an age of environmental crisis. Modern societies have often assumed that security comes through mastery: more technology, more extraction, more control. Yet climate change continually reminds us of our vulnerability. The answer to that vulnerability may not be greater domination but stronger communities. The Israelites were fleeing from Egypt, heading north for more fertile lands. Their path is and will be followed and retrodden in our lifetimes by people also fleeing the devastating effects of a burning planet. The societies they encounter will likely feel as threatened as the Moabites do this week in Parashat Balak when they see the Israelites approaching. More people mean more competition, greater scarcity, pressures on social and economic resources. Change is scary, often threatening. But it’s going to happen now, regardless of our wishes.

Parashat Balak teaches that blessing often arrives from unexpected places. The seven curses of a warming world cannot simply be wished away. Unlike Balak, we cannot hire a prophet to make an uncomfortable reality disappear. But neither are we condemned to despair. Change is scary and threatening; economic and social pressures are real. But, as Jews, we know that migration through necessity can also be a blessing too. We have been blessed to establish ourselves in communities around the world. We have been blessed to have been given the chance to model what learning from the exodus can mean, by supporting the vulnerable and needy, especially those who come to us seeking refuge from conflict or environmental disaster. When the world is burning, we need each other more than ever. Our interdependence, our shared responsibility to the planet and each other, our commitments to working together to minimise the most catastrophic effects of the heating world can all be blessings of relational joy. May we all be blessed with strong, loving and mutually supportive relationships that emerge even in crisis and develop a shared purpose that sustains them long after the initial catalyst has dissipated.

And may we all stay cool, hydrated, and not sun burnt.

Emily Carp, LBC rabbinical student