Are Jews Cursed or Blessed?

The pagan prophet, Balaam, is hired by Balak, King of Moab, to curse the Jewish people. Balaam makes several pronouncements, the most famous being: “Lo, it is a people that dwells alone, not reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:8-9). For many generations, in exile, powerless and persecuted, Jews have referred to that quotation as an explanation of their isolation and vulnerability. But is it really a curse?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his comments on this portion, concedes that the word “alone,” in Hebrew, is typically used negatively in the Torah: “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18), “He shall dwell alone, outside the camp (Lev. 13:46) and “How alone is the city once filled with people” (Lamentations 1:1). And historically, prejudice against Jews seems only to reinforce the idea of a cursed people, but Rabbi Sacks points out that commentators take the meaning differently. Ibn Ezra says that being alone means that they don’t assimilate and Ramban says that it means that Jews maintain their integrity.

In fact, God says to Abraham: “Through you all the families of the Earth will be blessed” (Gen.12:3). “Abraham,” says Rabbi Sacks, “was different from his neighbors, but he fought for them and prayed for them. He was apart but not alone.”

Judaism is the only religion associated with a single country, Israel. You can be Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist anywhere, but the fullest expression of Judaism was practised for centuries at the Temple in Israel, where God told Moses to lead the people after the Exodus. 

The Jewish Diaspora throughout the world has thrived and contributed enormously to the world, but its spiritual home is the land of Israel, its source and its wellspring. Prayers formulated 2,000 years ago, and still in prayerbooks today, express yearning for Zion and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in its ancestral homeland. Zionism and Judaism are two sides of the same coin. To be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

The founder of modern Israel, Theodor Herzl, was an assimilated German Jew who attended the trial of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris in 1894 and heard the crowds shout “Death to the Jews.” He realized, as a secular Jew, that Jews needed to reestablish Zion for their protection. His prescience was remarkable. He saw that enlightened France, the great center of European culture, was not safe for Jews. The secular Jew became a passionate Zionist.

Now, we look back and realize that if there had been a sovereign Israel during World War Two, countless Jews would have been saved. It was Robert Frost who wrote that “home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Frost’s insight makes the case for the State of Israel. That is why a dire threat to Israel results in great anguish and overwhelming support from most Diaspora Jews. They know, from experience, that their own security is in danger too. There is an inextricable link between the condition of the Jews in the Diaspora and in Israel.

Israel now finds itself on the front lines of a civilizational war, and our future — and that of Diaspora Jews as well our non-Jewish neighbors — hangs in the balance. Antisemitism is, and always has been, the sign of a world in crisis, anger looking for a scapegoat. 

So, given Jewish history in Israel and the Diaspora, is Balaam’s description of the Jews a curse or a blessing? To answer the question, we must understand that those famous words were not his only ones. He declared “No harm in sight for Jacob/No woe in view for Israel” and “How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel” (Numbers 23:8-9). Balak was exasperated with Balaam, interpreting his words as a blessing, not a curse. 

Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, for decades the leader of modern Orthodoxy in the U.S., argued in “Kol Dodi Dofek” that secular Zionism falls short of the religious ideals for which Israel stood from the time of the Covenant on Mount Sinai. For him, “the mission is not to nullify the special loneliness of the community of Israel … but to raise the people to the level of a sacred community nation, [one] permeated with morality and religious principles that transcend history.”

Religious or secular, it is impossible to deny that there are many tragic chapters in the long history of the Jewish people. We have too often been “the other.” Jews question social orthodoxies, challenge the status quo, fiercely oppose injustice and believe in education for all. That unconventional and unyielding challenge to societies is interpreted by some as arrogance, by others as too different to “fit in” and by yet others as proof of difference.

This ever-dying people persists in living; this stubborn and headstrong people are singular and unique. Hated by many, appreciated and admired by many others, Jews are both cursed and blessed and remain undeterred in making a contribution to the world.

But this ever-dying people persists in living; this stubborn and headstrong people are singular and unique. Hated by many, appreciated and admired by many others, Jews are both cursed and blessed and remain undeterred in making a contribution to the world, in Israel and in the Diaspora since the appearance of the first Jew, Abraham, whose name refers to his origins on “the other side” of the river. He opposed the established order and revolutionized the world. And so have succeeding generations.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.