The Torah Perception:
Wholeness

                Versus

The Other Perception:
Randomly Connected Parts

The Torah perception of the universe as a single whole is exemplified in Balak, our parsha this week.  The other perception, a universe of randomly connected parts, is exemplified in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, a highly respected professor of mathematics and logic at Oxford University in England.  A priest by training, he would preach sermons in the church.  His daily schedule was wonderfully organized, he did not drink excessively, and was particular about his elegant attire, as befitted the strictly proper Victorian culture of his era.

For some reason, children fascinated him, to an extreme and puzzling degree, and it was for them that he wrote his little children’s stories, which eventually became renowned throughout the world.  Carroll’s literature has become the foundation stone upon which most children’s stories published in the last few hundred years are based, drawing upon the content of his books.

The fact that the author of Alice in Wonderland was an expert in philosophy and mathematics is not insignificant.  Hundreds of interpretive research essays and books have been written in an effort to extract philosophical and mathematical allusions from Carrol’s work.

In his book, he attempted to describe a world without boundaries of space and time.  These are the two dimensions on which the existence of nature, man, and beast is based.  The author of Alice in Wonderland must have had a highly developed imagination, free of impediments and boundaries, to be capable of depicting an existence free of these dimensions.

Yet lo and behold, our parsha this week describes a world that also contains no real restrictions of space and time.  Elements of witchcraft run riot in Balak.  Past, present and future intermingle.  Human dimensions fluctuate and interchange, according to the capricious human heart.  Animals converse in a friendly and pleasant manner with humans, angels and celestial creatures are actively and tangibly involved in human affairs.

In fact our parsha is remote from the rowdy, boundary-lacking depiction in Alice in Wonderland.  What separates them is the Torah’s principle of perfection: The universe is not constructed of distinct and separate parts, nor is it an arrangement of layers, one on top of the other.  It is all one solid piece.  It is a perfect creation by the Creator of the universe, Who is its sole and solitary Creator.

This spares the world the need to deal with the model of the outer crust, the external layer of existence comprised of laws of mathematical logic, perfectly organized, wonderfully logical, so tightly and perfectly ordered – a pin could not get into it…

A perfectly ordered world is inapplicable to real experience; it exists only in books of mathematics and logic.  In practical terms, the world gets its science – which presumes to draw upon order and logic and homogenous method – from mathematics, but in reality, science finds it difficult to explain simple phenomena, such as the idea of entropy, physics’ second law of thermo-dynamics, which points to a process of disintegration that attacks almost every one of the materials of the elements of nature.  Science finds it difficult to offer an explanation as to how, despite the law of entropy, the world has managed to exist these thousands of years.

Let us examine for example the relationship between the body and the life force, otherwise known as psychosomatics.  Medicine to this day has not a word to say in explanation of this basic fusion.  Most of the diseases of modern man originate in the encounter between body and life-force.  Medicine does not begin to have access to this fundamental problem despite its apparently astounding technical advances.

Technical advances in medicine may actually have an inverse relationship to health care; there has been a retreat from the broad understanding of all aspects of human health.

In self-defense, science has pointed to its success in lengthening the human lifespan, but for some reason neglects to mention that this lengthening of life has not advanced the quality of life.

Leaving one’s house, one is never certain one will return, and not get caught in a road accident.  Senseless, logic-free wars decimate millions of lives, yet life goes on as usual.  “Each man follows his own interests” in his presumptuous ambition to unite and consolidate the “civilized” world into a “global village,” while science boasts its localized expertise.  This expertise in a single detail comes out of a blatant and criminal disregard for the area immediately bordering it, its immediate neighbor.  So with medicine, and so too with the research in every field, and we are not referring only to the obvious phenomena. 

The outer crust, the external layer described above rests upon the layer below it, which is covered with a blanket that appears to separate the two layers, but really it is as full of holes as Swiss cheese, and the two layers carry on a dialogue and mutual relations and reciprocal influences, albeit unofficially.

The conscious world is led and even controlled by the subconscious below it.  The world of dreams, from the lower level is influenced as well by the world of imagination, and both of these acquire a holding for themselves in the outer world, without the conscious mind knowing about them or being able to control them.

Thus has enlightened man arranged for himself to receive a ticket to enter the world of the imagination.  This is an unofficial ticket, such that it allows him to “dance at two weddings” simultaneously.  Elegant and polite and perfectly proper at the table, and crawling with witcheries, urges, demons and ghosts under the table, and no one utters a murmur because they are ignoring the reciprocal influences that inhere between the two layers.

An entire, virtual Laundromat of words has been created in order to bestow an official entry upon certain individuals among the vermin that populate the lower world.  All this comes out of a need to express the primal elements that lie at the infrastructure of one’s personality, out of the distant past that continues to torment one in the present.  For this reason one is unable to relinquish the imaginary messianic vision, for it clothes the terrifying future in friendly and sympathetic garments.

The Torah does not preach this approach, of disregarding actual, tangible reality.  The Torah has no need for a denial of past and present, and is quite capable of granting the right of entry even to those who dwell on high, and even to creatures of purgatory risen from the depths of hell.

The Torah does not even give Paradise the name of Paradise Lost.  Rather, Paradise is existent, but reserved for the righteous, who are existent even in the present, and not just in stories of mythology from ancient books.

Truth to tell, there are no ancient books.  Everything exists in the present.  Past and future too meet in the present.  Human beings too meet with those who dwell on high.  “Man and beast shall You save, God,” “and man’s advantage over the beast does not exist, for all is futility.”

Thus can Bilam and his donkey converse intimately, and thus can a donkey reprove her master for his moral lapse, for his presumptuousness in daring to imagine that he comprehends the speech of the Supreme One, and thus can an animal discern an angel before her master realizes it.  Thus can Balak and Bilam trade sorceries between themselves, and activate all their witcheries in vain.  Thus can the people of Israel be immune to the most perilous of sorceries.

However, “there is no wisdom and no insight” capable of outsmarting the boundaries of morality and of man’s creature urges.  The boundaries of morality are the trap in which a progressive, enlightened world becomes ensnared.  The lack of these causes the world to disintegrate.  Bilam represents the highly sophisticated person who feels arrogant contempt for the tsadik, who restricts himself to the boundaries of morality.

Morality seeps through all dimensions of the layers of existence, and grants them right of entry.  Godly morality is the glue that unites all parts of human existence.  Whoever ignores this morality will find that his wisdom in all the mysteries of creation is unable to save him.  Bilam attempted to exploit the excellent connections he enjoyed with the Creator of the universe Himself, in all His glory, while at the same time attempting to ignore Godly morality by cursing those who did not deserve to be cursed.

He learned the hard way that his toil had been in vain.  He learned the hard way that the key that opens the gates of nature, and that opens the gates of the heavenly palaces as well, is none other than the key of Godly morality.

In his viciousness, Bilam granted this key of immorality to the daughters of Midian, and by raiding the paths of morality brought the nation of Israel to sin and to harm.  This teaches you that consolidation is not to be found in the nature of creation.  The key of morality has been given over into man’s hands.  Only using this key wisely can bring about the perfect consolidation between man and universe.

It is important to note that the Torah is not concerned about separating the creation into parts for human beings’ sake.  There is separation between sacred and secular, between pure and impure, and even within man himself.  Purity and impurity depend on human beings producing the ashes of the red heifer.  Separating between kosher and non-kosher, prohibited foods.  Even in clothing, a separation exists between wool and linen.  This separation is called shatnez.  There is separation between different types of seeds for planting, and this is called the cilayim, the “forbidden hybridization” of seeds.  There is also cilayim between animals, for work purposes: Certain animals may not be paired in the harness, for plowing.  There is cilayim of the vineyard and the prohibition against grafting of trees.

These separations have not been accepted well by human logic, which mocks this apparently arbitrary law.  The Torah is not concerned that a split might result from these laws for people who observe the Torah and the commandments.

The opposite is the case.  Strict observance of these separations strengthen human control, and encompass and unite man’s control of himself and of his life style, which are consolidated through the imperative from on high.  Non-acceptance of separation by those who do not keep the Torah imperative opens the way for separations that have no justification.  Strict protection of private property from strangers, which is a fundamental tenet of Judaism, has inculcated in the Jew a respectful attitude toward the property of others.  “‘What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine’ – this is the trait of the ignoramus,” just as an extreme of strictness that says “’what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours’…is the trait of Sodom.” 

Chesed brings distant ones nearer.  Tsedaka crates peace more than do treaties between nations, for these treaties were created to be broken, an excuse to needlessly make war.

Moral separation is the candle that lights the Torah path.  This is separation as self-restraint rather than separation in the essential substance of the universe or separation between human urges.

A separated world splits the human being.  A human being who compels moral separation upon himself brings peace to the universe, as is written:  “Torah scholars increase peace in the universe.”