As part of the blessings that Balaam bestows upon the Israelites in our parsha this week, there is one line that we have adopted as a prayer: Mah tovu ohelekha Yaakov, mishkenotekha Yisrael. How good are your tents, Yaakov, your dwelling places, Yisrael (Numbers 24:5).
Rashi explains what Balaam saw that made him comment on the Israelite tents: He saw that the openings of their tents were positioned in such a way that they were not directly facing one another. They offered each other privacy and separation, not intruding on one another’s space. And this separation, this respect for privacy and differentiation, is, as Balaam sees, profoundly good – mah tovu. How good it is to live in this way.
Separation or Togetherness?
There is another mah tov, equally if not more familiar to us, with an almost opposite meaning: hineh mah tov umah na’im shevet ahim gam yachad. How good and how pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to sit together (Psalm 133:1). How good togetherness is, this phrase exhorts, while Balaam’s mah tov(u) phrase looks at separation and says – no, this is what’s good. Which is the true way of tov, of goodness – togetherness or separation? Of course, as in most things, surely the goal is to live in a both/and situation – to strike some balance between the two – but right now, in honor of our parsha’s Balaam phrase, I want to look deeply into the privacy end of that balance and to understand how it might actually help us do togetherness better.
Part I: Imagining Tents Facing Each Other
I invite you to imagine two different ways tents could be set up in relation to each other. In the first instance, the tents are facing each other, meaning that each tent’s one open side is facing the other tent’s open side, while its three remaining solid sides are all on the outside. Notice in this setup how you can move with great ease from one tent to the other, nothing stopping you, no barrier between them. You can see and run freely into the other person’s tent and they can see and run freely into yours. How does that feel? Surely sometimes we want that openness, and it feels great – intimate and connected. But what about the times we don’t? Can you sense how that openness might sometimes feel like a violation of personal space, someone coming in where they are not invited, coming in too far. Mishkenotekha, Balaam says. This is your mishkan, your sanctuary, your inner sanctum; it is meant to be kept hidden, private, sacred, not exposed at will.
Sensing into your need for privacy and solitude and boundaries, and remembering what it feels like when people violate those and step over a line, maybe even with good intentions, and sometimes without our noticing it or even having mistakenly invited them in. What is that like – the other stepping into our private space, subtly but still with some unnamed aggression, rushing in too fast, pushing, controlling, advising, meddling, assuming they know best, the presumption, the feeling that they are trying to own us in some way, as if they get to decide our lives instead of us, taking away our sense of autonomy and agency.
We Think We Are Mirror Images
We all do this. We want to help. We think we know what will work for another person. The image of those two tent openings facing one another has another implication – that we assume we are the same, we line up our openings in parallel and resonate with the other person’s problems, but do we really get how it is for them or do we just assume and project how we feel, our parallel openings creating a mirroring effect, making it seem that you are exactly like me, no acknowledgement of difference, of the simple but profound truth that other people are different from us.
We Forget Our Completeness
The danger of this kind of wide open tent arrangement is that we forget who we each are as solid separate selves. We forget our boundaries and the way those boundaries mark off our wholeness, our completeness, our enoughness in and of ourselves. It’s not just that others come into our home. We go out of our own tent looking for them, we go over there to their tent seeking their validation and approval and to know what to think, we are beggars for attention sometimes, so that we end up abandoning our own tent, abandoning ourselves, we don’t even know how it feels inside, what we ourselves think and feel. We need to return to our own tent and know who we are, our authentic self, our integrity, the uniqueness of this person that God created, to live into our own sacred purpose, in our own daled amot, the four cubits of personal space that Jewish law gives each person, like an aura around us that is ours and ours alone, no one should cross it.
Worry Over Others Makes Us Abandon Our Tents
Sometimes we are so enmeshed with others that we spend our time in their bodies, in their tents, feeling their feelings for them, feeling responsible for them, worrying we might hurt them, bending over backwards not to, as if we have left our own bodies and tents and reside entirely in theirs. We don’t stay in our own lane, in our tent. It’s out of care, usually, but it is still invasive, a sign of not trusting their wholeness, and also leads to a loss of our own integrity, an abandonment of ourselves, of our groundedness in this tent, in this body of ours, as if our tree roots are all tangled up with each other. We can’t grow that way. We need a little space, the separation of knowing who we each are. You’re an oak tree and I’m a maple tree. We are each whole and solid in ourselves. We are not the same. We have enough distance and solidness in ourselves to tolerate these differences, maybe even to admire and celebrate and love them.
Part II: Imagining The Tents Facing In Different Directions
I want to move on to the second way of positioning the two tents in relation to one another, the way the Israelites actually did encamp and that Balaam saw and called good. So I invite you to imagine now two tents with openings facing out in different directions, not pointed towards each other. What happens now? It’s not that you can’t go in and out of each other’s tents. There are still openings, it’s just a little farther, not so automatic. It requires you to pause and decide “I want to go over now,” go out your doorway, circumnavigate the solid wall separating you, come around the corner and approach their entrance. This implies an acknowledgement of the other person’s difference, separateness, and autonomy. It implies respect. It is respectful of another person’s integrity to not enter their space so directly and intrusively, but from the side, to approach with humility and curiosity, to ask permission first, not to assume or project or meddle or advise or fix, but to move slowly and respectfully – this is their sanctuary after all – perhaps even knocking before entering. There is more of a barrier to entrance in this setup and that means that when we do do it, when we do make contact, it is with more intention and honor. We are not so easily enmeshed, living over in their tent. There is a wall between us and that’s important.
I know we don’t normally like to talk about walls between us. It’s not that there aren’t also entrypoints. We do want connection and togetherness, of course we do. But not out of our own sense of incompleteness, not out of this need for validation or a desperate need to save the other. This one wall of separation serves to keep us intact inside our own tent, to remind us of our own divine wholeness as well as our neighbor’s and shockingly, even our children’s. They are whole, too. They, too, live in a tent whose opening should not be directly facing ours, but sideways, so that it requires asking permission to enter. We are so eager to fix things for each other, when perhaps the best gift we can give ourselves and others is to respect our own and their autonomy, to see their wholeness and separateness and celebrate it and support it. They have their own tents. We can enter, and it’s wonderful to enter, but maybe taking the time to traverse that wall of separation first with care and honor. Resting more completely in our own tent and letting others rest in theirs is deeply relaxing. You don’t have to be constantly on the alert to rush out and save someone.
Separateness Is Not a Curse
Balaam is called upon to offer curses, but instead he offers blessings. We may think of our separateness as a curse, a chasm of existential aloneness that can never be completely crossed. But the separation of our tents, the ability to respect each other’s boundaries and privacy, is actually a profound and ever giving blessing, a true tov, a true goodness in our lives. It is good because it compels us to remember our own divine origin, our own intrinsic and incontrovertible worth in and of ourselves. We do not get worth from our neighbors who praise us nor are we demeaned by their disapproval. The very place of our separateness and aloneness, this tent, is also the place of our connection to the divine, it is the ohel moed, the tent of meeting, the place where we and God meet, the mishkan, the sanctuary where we remember and connect to our own essential goodness, the tov planted in us by the One who is known for tov (“Give thanks to God for God is good,” hodu lashem ki tov).. Perhaps taking a moment now to rest in that inner ohel mo’ed, that place of meeting God deep inside you, feeling your own completeness in and of yourself in this place, no need to run out to anyone else’s tent, knowing your own goodness here with God right now.
Coming Together From This Place
If it is from this solid place that we move out into relationship with each other, then it becomes true that hineh mah tov umah naim shevet achim gam yachad, how good it is to sit together. Coming each from our own divine tent, knowing our own wholeness, we can move out and sit together in a communal space, in the space between our tents, keeping our integrity while joining together in song. This is a new type of connection with each other, born not out of desperate need and worry, out of control and fixing and hunger, but out of love and presence, out of the simple desire to be here together, acknowledging and honoring one another’s wholeness and separateness, while also sensing the joy of our joining. Hineh mah tov umah naim. It is so good and also so naim, so pleasant, so calming, to sit here together in this way of respect and wholeness, not trying to control or fix, but simply being present, enjoying and celebrating each other..
Mah tovu is plural – there are so many beautiful flowers in the field, such an abundance in God’s world when we allow for and celebrate difference and individuality. And then somehow, when we come together, yachad, it is mah tov in the singular – we merge, we connect, we join into a single tapestry without ever losing our separate threads of color.
Photo by Xue Guangjian at Pexels
