You may not have known this, but neuroscientists are pretty clear about it: up to one third of your brain mass is dedicated to the faculty of sight. Obviously, a very important faculty in human beings. Yet sight is a funny thing. If you go down to the 16th Street Pedestrian Mall and try to cross the street, you better look both ways, because those free buses they provide will run you right down and squash you like a bug if you step in front of them. You have to look both ways. But if you think about it: what we see hurling down upon us to kill us, in the 16th Street Mall, isn’t really the bus in itself but a representation of the bus that is created in our brains as a result of light hitting the retina which sends electric signals to the occipital lobe and so on. It’s a good representation: we can tell that the bus is a big, dangerous moving thing that will hit us and hurt us so we need to stay out from in front of it. But the brain is putting all of this together: it’s interpreting what is out there from light waves, retinas and electrical impulses stimulating gray matter.

But there is even more to this. Our brains are seeing the bus coming at us but our brains must work even harder to interpret what our brains are seeing. Is this bus a threat in and of itself? Maybe there are hoodlums on the bus that will hurt us when they get off the bus? Maybe the bus is speeding and we get angry because of that. Maybe we don’t like buses at all because they cost us taxpayer’s money and we are libertarians. A whole world of interpretation comes with what our brains are seeing; and often, these interpretations are dead wrong which make us do stupid things.

Here’s one from the Torah. Exodus Chapter One; Verse 8: “A new King arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Behold. The people, the Children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than we. Come, let us outsmart it lest it become numerous and it be that if a war will occur, it, too, may join our enemies and wage war against us…” Pharaoh saw the people of Israel with his eyes, but how he interpreted what he saw was completely wrong. Certainly the Israelites didn’t outnumber the Egyptians. They were most certainly not stronger physically than the Egyptians. Pharaoh had no reason to believe that the Israelites would rebel against him in a time of war. They had lived peacefully within Egypt for 100 years in an era where there were wars and the Israelites most certainly did not rebel. Their ancestor Joseph had saved the country from famine: this Pharaoh didn’t know Joseph personally but must have heard about him —and duly ignored the fact. Here is the first example we have of overt anti-Semitism. A perverse misinterpretation of the facts. Pharaoh looked, he saw and he got it entirely wrong. The result? Ten plagues including the death of his own first born, among others. And you know what happened at the Sea of Reeds. Dead Egyptian soldiers washing up on its shores. Misinterpretation of what we see, especially if we have power, often leads to catastrophe.

Sometimes, evil men can intentionally misinterpret the facts to mislead others. From the Bible. Haman says to the King, “there are a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from every other people’s. They do not observe even the Kings’ laws; therefore it is not befitting the King to tolerate them” (Esther 3:8). The King looks and sees the people living in his kingdom but sees an enemy where there is no enemy. In the Book of Esther, disaster comes close.

And here is another example. This week’s parasha. Balak, the King of Moab heard about Israel’s military victories against the Amorites who attacked Israel. He must not have heard about the circumstances. The Israelite were travelling in the desert and Moses sends out emissaries to the Amorite King saying, “Let me pass through your land; we shall not turn off to the field or vineyard; we shall not drink well water; on the king’s road shall we travel, until we pass through your border.” Sichon, the Amorite King didn’t seem to understand this. He saw the Israelite numbers and saw an enemy and attacked and lost and he lost his whole kingdom.

So Balak hears about this and looks out and sees an enemy as well. Listen to the beginning of this episode, “Balak, son of Tzipur saw all that Israel had done to the Amorite. Moab became very frightened because it was numerous….. Moab said to the elders of Midian, “Now the congregation will lick up our entire surroundings, as an ox licks up the greenery of the field.” Then Balak sends a message to Bilam: “Behold, a People has come out of Egypt, behold, it has covered the face of the earth.” (Num 22:2-5). Balak looks, he sees and gets it wrong. Israel will not destroy everything around it. It won’t destroy anything if it isn’t attacked. It will not lick up the ground like an ox. The people do not cover the face of the earth.
So Balak calls upon a sorcerer to curse the people; probably a better move than attacking them outright, but a silly move, none the less.

This theme of sight or lack thereof continues through the whole episode. The donkey can see the angel of God where Bilaam misses it, until God opens his eyes, as we read, “The Lord uncovered Bilaam’s eyes and he saw the angel of the Lord” (Num 22:31).

And here is a seeing, much deeper and more important than the seeing through the eyes. You don’t see angels of God through your eyes. Your eyes see the world, your brain interprets what you see but it is your soul that makes ultimate sense of it all. God uncovered the eyes of Bilaam’s soul. Chapter 24, “Bilaam saw that it was good in God’s eyes to bless Israel” (verse 1). And verse 3, “The words of Bilaam, son of Beor, the words of a man with an open eye; the words of the one who hears the sayings of God, who sees the vision of Shaddai, while fallen and with uncovered eyes.” And then comes the blessings: “How goodly are your tents, oh Jacob, your dwelling places, oh Israel” (Num 3-5).

Pharaoh saw the Israelites and got them wrong. Achashverosh saw the Jews in his kingdom and got them wrong. The Amorites got it wrong. Balak got it wrong and only with Bilaam, did God stop all the nonsense and force the sorcerer to look more carefully at the Israelites and really see them for what they were and for what they meant. Bilaam’s eyes were “uncovered,” and when they were uncovered, Bilaam blessed the People for the great gift that this People would bring to civilization.

It isn’t only the anti-Semite that misinterprets what he sees. The brain is a funny thing. It tends to interpret what we see, even before we see it. We tend to look at the world through a kind of graph paper: seeing only the things that fit into the tiny predesigned boxes of our minds: colored by culture, religion, ideology and often, by just plain pettiness and stupidity. We have to be very careful about our faculty of sight. In the Torah, as part of the Shema prayer in the davening, we read, make “tzi tzit and see them [as they flap around on our clothes and get in the way of things……so that you won’t] go after what your eyes see.” Interesting irony here. Use your eyes to see spiritual truths so that you won’t let your eyes lead you astray. The most central prayer in Judaism; an expression of the deepest spiritual truth, is the Shema itself, which requires of not to use our eyes at all. “Shema,” means, of course, to hear. Hear Israel, the Lord is One. Be careful with your eyes, our most powerful faculty, yet the one most unlikely to lead us to spiritual truths; the one most likely to lead us astray.

We see with our brains and we misread reality with our brains. The Torah tells us to be careful. You should probably trust your eyes when you see a bus bearing down on you. But to see deeper, you must have a healthy skepticism. You should compare notes with others, especially with others who see things differently than you do. If you are really sure you have got it right, you are probably wrong. Think again. Challenge what you see and what you know. And if you wield power over others, all the more so. We live in an age that seems to respect the expression of ideological certainties. Pharaoh was certain; the Amorites were certain; Haman was certain; Hitler was certain. All paved the road for us and for them, straight to disaster.

God ultimately uncovered Bilaam’s eyes. In His great mercy, may He do the same for us.