Vision
A Message for Parashat Balak 2018
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Looking
with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
(Walt Whitman)
“Sight” and “vision” are dominant themes in Parashat
Balak. Initially mentioned regarding King Balak – “And Balak…saw all
that Yisrael had done to the Emorim…” (Bemidbar 22:2) – Bilaam “the seer”
predictably engages in a variety of his own visions in the subsequent
narrative. Indeed, Bilaam described himself by means of sight: “The man
open-eyed,” who beheld God’s vision “prostrate with eyes unveiled” (24:3-4).
And although his failure to see in the episode with the donkey and God’s angel
is perhaps most memorable, Bilaam’s bird’s-eye view of Am Yisrael were
in fact most effective in his general mission.
Erica Brown wrote about the irony that beset
Bilaam’s vision. She noted that while he exceled in “long-distance” vision,
Bilaam was blind to the cries of a donkey right in front of him.[1]
Bilaam could see and perceive the strengths of Am Yisrael as a nation
and articulate them in his several blessings in a way that their leader Moshe
had failed. Whereas Moshe had errantly referred to them as “rebels” (20:10),
Bilaam declared: “How goodly your tents, O Yaakov, your dwellings O Yisrael!”
(24:5). His sight was strong enough to understand a distant nation that
encamped in the valley below but was blind to his dream-visions of a forbidding
God.
I believe that Bilaam’s sight may serve as a
foil to that of the meragelim, as described in Parashat Shelah.
Moshe chose a highly-regarded group of men and sent them to scout Canaan. He
fundamentally instructed them: “And you shall see the land, what it is like…”
(13:18). They were tasked with observing the various people and landscapes of
Canaan and then generating an integrated report that captured the breadth of
their sights. Upon their return, however, the meragelim recounted a
vision of disparate details which was narrow in scope and limited in
understanding. Instead of answering the general question of “what it is like,”
the scouts revealed a tunnel-vision of the land by demonstrating its
large-dimensioned fruits and locating each neighboring nation. The meragelim’s
vision, in its contrast to that of Bilaam, is most recognizable to us: They saw
and understood everything up close but were blind to a broader picture which
required some distance.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks pondered whether our
experience of life in continuous progress and motion may in fact be an
illusion. He suggested that we might actually be piecing together countless
“still-frames” in constant subconscious activity. Sacks posited that our eyes
and brains may “take” perceptual stills of our surroundings and happenings – as
on the “burst mode” of our iPhone cameras – and then somehow fuse them to give
a sense of continuity and motion.[2]
Shifting these two perspectives of sight and perception to our own biblical
case studies, we might suggest that Bilaam failed at pausing between the
successive snapshots to take stock of what was happening directly in front of
him, while the meragelim became trapped in the many stills of the
present and therefore failed to grasp the scene as a whole.
An individual who can see and appreciate the
“stills” while also fusing them is rare. This ability is the mark of
leadership. Moshe perhaps sensed that his father-in-law was imbued with this
trait when he asked him to serve as “eyes” to the nation (10:31). And this is
possibly the meaning of “the eyes of the nation” (15:24) as reference to the
leadership. The difficulty in achieving a “fused vision” is the result of
engagement in the day-to-day activities – the “stills”. It is extremely hard to
keep involved in the present while concurrently connecting our vision to past
and future as well. It is for the reason, I believe, that Bilaam thrived where
Moshe had failed. Bilaam approached the nation as an outsider and he could
therefore see past their many flaws which constantly surrounded their leader
Moshe.
A leader is challenged to engage his vision
with the countless “stills” of the present while at the same time realizing
that they are mere fragments of a “fused” whole. Leadership gurus Ronald
Heifetz and Martin Linsky captured this idea with “the balcony metaphor.”
Dancing on the ballroom floor necessarily blinds you from the peripheral
activity taking place several feet over. Asked about the dance you might
therefore exclaim: “The band played great, and the place surged with dancers.”
Watching the scene from above, however, you can realize various patterns taking
place on the dance floor. You can then see, for example, that when slow music
played, only some people danced; when the tempo increased, others stepped onto
the floor; and some people never seemed to dance at all. A leader lives in
constant flux between the ballroom floor and the balcony. Although he or she
realizes that they are most effective while dancing on the ballroom floor, they
are also aware that they can best understand what is actually happening when
perched from above.[3]
The stories of Bilaam and the meragelim
present us with starkly different approaches to vision. Whereas Bilaam could
only see from a distance, the meragelim could only see what was near. A
true leader adeptly utilizes both of these visions. Intimately involved in the
present, he or she can nonetheless maintain a broader perspective and operate
“both in and out of the game.”
[1] Erica Brown, Leadership
in the Wilderness: Authority and Anarchy in the Book of Numbers (New
Milford, CT, 2013), pg. 169.
[2] Oliver Sacks, The
River of Consciousness (New York, NY, 2017), pg. 161-84.
[3] Ronald Heifetz and Marty
Linsky, Leadership on the Line (Boston, MA, 2017), pg. 53. Cited by
Brown (fn. 1).
