God says to Moshe: don’t cook a kid in its mother’s milk. Moshe responds: Ohhhhhh! So you are saying we
should never eat milk and meat together. God says: No, what I said was, never cook a
calf in its mother's milk. Moshe responds:
Oh, Lord forgive my ignorance, What you are really saying is we should wait six
hours after eating meat to eat milk. God
responds: No, what I'm saying is, don't cook a calf in its mother's milk!!! Moshe says: Ok I get it, what you mean
is we should have a separate set of dishes for milk and a separate set for meat
. God says: Oy! Moshe, do whatever you
want....
It’s funny, but this joke almost
parallels a back and forth between Balaam and God from this week’s Parsha. The Parsha begins with King Balak of the
nation Moab observing the oncoming Jewish nation and fearing them. Balak sends messages to the local magician
and prophet, Balaam, asking Balaam to use his sorcery to curse the Jewish nation
in the hopes that this would grant him some protection.
Balak’s messengers beseech Balaam
and offer him ample reward for coming with them to curse the Jews. Balaam says to them, “let me sleep on it and
I’ll tell you if God will allow me to go or not.” That night, God comes to Balaam and says, “Don’t
go with these Moabite messengers to curse the Jewish people, because they, as a
nation, are blessed. In the morning, Balaam
sends the messengers away.
But Balak persists, and he sends Balaam
more messengers of higher stature with larger bribes to entice him. Balaam tells them that it just won’t work no
matter how much they pay him.
Nevertheless, despite already being commanded by God not to go, he tells
the messengers to stay with him for the night and they will see if God will
speak to him again on this matter. And
that night, God came to him and said, "If these people have come to call
on you, you can go with them, but you may only speak the words that I will tell
you."Early the next morning, immediately upon arising, Balaam gets up to
go with these messengers and the Torah tells us that God is angry at Balaam for
going.
First God says no, then it seems
like God gives permission, and then God is angry at Balaam for going. At first glance this is all seems very
strange, but if we look deeper, we will see that we are not so different than Balaam
was in this situation. Clearly Balaam
wanted to curse the Jews. The only thing
holding him back at first was the word of God.
But, Balaam kept asking and
eventually, he got an answer which led him to believe that God was on board
with his plan.
Our sages are disturbed by the
inconsistencies they perceived in God's behavior. They draw from this episode a life lesson, in
tractate Makkos (10b) the Talmud says, "A person is guided down the path
that he or she chooses," citing this incident as a proof-text. The Talmud uses this as an example of free
will, and it even seems to suggest God's tacit permission or even assistance
for the choices we make, whether those choices are good or bad. Therefore, it is strange that God was angry
with Balaam for going with the messengers.
If God guides us down the path that
we choose, and in the case of Balaam, God even seems to give permission for him
to go, then why is God angry at him for his decision to go? This inconsistency in the text is something
which Bible commentators have struggled with for generations. In his book, Meshech chochma, the late
19th-early20th century sage, Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk describes the
difference between the two conflicting messages that Balaam received from God. He
explains, that the first message from God was very clear, "don't
go." While the second prophecy he
received from God was much more convoluted:
"If these people have come to see you...then you can go...but only
say what I tell you to." When
choosing between something clear and something less clear, Rabbi Meir Simcha
tells us, a rational person should always prefer clarity. Yet Balaam chose to ignore the earlier, clear,
message of God not to go, in favor of the more convoluted message which
supported his own desires. It is for
this reason that God is angry at him.
Balaam is considered to be one of
the wisest people and greatest prophets to ever live, he wasn't an irrational
person. So what led him to prefer the
unclear and begrudging permission of God over the explicit command, not to go?I
would like to suggest that it is at this point that the lesson of the sages
from makkot takes becomes more significant for us. The statement, "A person is guided down
the path that he or she chooses," is not a description of the nature of God;
it is not saying that God is the one who guides us down the path we
choose. Rather, it is a description of
human nature. Our minds have an extremely
powerful ability to lead us down any path that we choose; we can convince
ourselves of anything, regardless of what evidence is available to the
contrary.
Psychologists often refer to this
phenomenon as confirmation bias, which is a tendency of people to favor
information that confirms their beliefs.
People display this bias in the way they subconsciously gather and
remember information selectively, or when they interpret information in a
biased way. Think of it as a scientific term for selective hearing. The effect is stronger for emotionally
charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Which means, that the more we want to need to
see something a certain way, the more likely it is that we will find reasons to
support our belief. Confirmation bias
manifests itself in every aspect of life.
Our brains have the spectacular
ability to convince ourselves that we’re right.
Did you ever wonder how there could be so many scientists, both
religious and atheist, whose understanding of science either confirms their own
faith that there is or isn’t a God? How
can the same facts prove opposing point of views? The answer is that all people interpret the
world around them to support their own points of view. This is what happened with Balaam. He so badly wanted to hear that he could go,
that he placed more significance in God’s reluctant and limited permission, than
in the earlier explicit command not to go.
We all do it. We do it to support
our religious beliefs, our political opinions, and most importantly in our
arguments with our friends and relatives.
Just to give a silly but true example.
Sometimes, our son Yonah, who’s almost 3, will ask to play outside when
it's raining. I’ll say, "Yonah you can’t go outside, it’s
raining." And Yonah will respond
with conviction, “No, it’s not raining.”
This is an extreme example, but I’m sure each and every one of us can
think of someone that we’ve spoken to, or have had a heated discussion with,
where we just can’t understand how this normally rational person can be so
irrational. And you know what? The other person was most likely thinking the
same thing about you.
It is a unique person who can always
see both sides of any argument; it takes a special gift to be able to
consistently overcome our need to be right.
Most of the time, it doesn't really impact us in a negative way. We disagree with someone, but we don't let it
bother us, we go through our day secure in the knowledge that we're right. Or we make a significant decision without a
second thought, comfortable in the wisdom of that choice. But the greater the
emotional investment, the more this effect comes into play. The more we care about a given issue, the
harder it is for us to see the faults with our own way of thinking. Or the more we care about the person we are
in disagreement with, the more difficult it can be to really listen to and understand
their perspective. When we really want
our spouse or our child to see our way of thinking, it’s harder for us to
listen to what they’re saying and respond to their needs.
The choices we make when there is
the highest likelihood of negative fallout are the ones that require the most humility,
introspection and reconsideration, but they are so often the ones that are the
most likely for us not to give further thought to, because of our own over-confidence.
Balaam reinterpreted the data that
he was receiving to reinforce his desire to do what he wanted. He was so blind to an alternative reality
that his donkey needed to wake him up. There
was angel blocking Balaam’s path with a drawn sword, the donkey that he was
riding on immediately swerved to the side, scraping Balaam’s knee to avoid it,
and Balaam is so oblivious that he hits the donkey for scraping his knee rather
than noticing the dangerous path he is going down. The miraculous needed to occur, Balaam’s
donkey needed to speak to him, for Balaam to see the error of his ways. Ultimately, Balaam’s bad decisions didn't
cause the harm he was intending. The
only negative impact his self serving obliviousness had was on his own
reputation and his scraped knee.
The reality is, that we have ability
to interpret and justify and really see as clear as day whatever we want. But being blind to reality, oblivious to the
counter-point, hurts us at least as much as it hurts the people around us. Confirmation bias isn't inevitable. The simplest way to correct for it is to be
aware of it. Once we are aware of it we can ask ourselves if we’re truly doing
what’s best or are we simply choosing what’s easiest for us. Any time that we find ourselves dug in deeply
on one side of an issue or an argument, all it takes is for us to take a step
back look at where we might be experiencing this bias, then we can grow, we can
listen more sensitively to the other side, and then we can make better, more
informed decisions.
May we all learn
the ability to go beyond ourselves in order to be better friends, spouses,
parents, siblings and children, and ultimately learn to be searchers of truth
and pursuers of peace in all of our relationships and interactions.
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