What Do We Really Want?
Parashat Balak
July 4, 2015

Evil confounds us. Why do we engage in evil? In Genesis 8:21 God proclaims, " 'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." Is that it? Are we naturally evil?

In this week's parashah, God first prohibits Balaam from working on behalf of the wicked Balak, and then allows Balaam to go. Does God change his mind?
In Numbers 22:20 God commands, "Rise and go with them," to which Talmud Makkot 10b responds, "Rava bar Rav Huna said, 'A man is led in the way he wishes to follow.'" In other words, our powers of rationalization to do what we really want, facilitate our sins.

Rashi contends in vs. 18 that Balaam's motive is greed, "'A house full of silver and gold": This shows us that he was greedy and coveted other people’s money. He said, “He ought to give me all his silver and gold, since he has to hire many armies, and even then, it is questionable whether he will be victorious or not, whereas I will certainly succeed.'”- [Mid. Tanchuma Balak; Num. Rabbah 20:10, trans. from Chabad.org]

To which Torah Temima says, "Everything is in the hands of heaven except for the fear of heaven," (Rabbi Hanina, Berachot 33b) "The Holy One, Blessed be God, saw the direction he wanted to go and permitted him to go there." Even though our fates may be determined for us, our moral qualities are our own determination.

It appears then that we sin because of an inner predilection to head in a particular direction, even when we avow something different. But we can choose.
Torah Temimah continues, "... Balak did not offer Balaam that he would enrich him with silver for his actions, he only promised him that he would honor him, as it says, 'for I will give you very great honor, and whatsoever thou say to me I will do; come therefore, curse for me this people.' (vs. 17) So why does Balaam answer him with money? Because it is known that "the desires of a man are frequent on his tongue to recall them." In other words, our words betray our real interests.

What do we learn? To look inside of ourselves before we respond to determine what our true interests and motives are. What do we really want? What is our real goal and predilection, and is that moral? Balaam's problem, the human dilemma? We are too willing to ask again and again to get what we really wanted to begin with, and then we rationalize that the others agreed with us because they went along with our desires. God followed Balaam's inner drive. Balaam didn't want to curse the Jewish people. He wanted the gold and silver he felt he could earn from Balak, and that colored his moral judgment and even made him betray the source of his power. May we not succumb to the same. Torah enables us to compare our internal desires to a morally unambiguous path, and decide for the good from the outset.