I want to discuss with you this morning a problem which is familiar to all of us, yet, despite its familiarity, is the most sadly neglected. It is a matter which is of central importance in every phase of human life and existence and on every level. And perhaps it would be best for me to state the problem by pointing it out in the hero, or villain, of this morning’s sidra, where it is drawn in clear and bold lines. The character of Balaam is an intensely paradoxical one. He is a person who fluctuates from the heights to the depths, from greatness to pettiness, from genius to perverseness. Indeed, Maurice Samuel (Certain People of the Book) rightly refers to this character as “the perverted genius”. That is just what he was – a perverted genius. Our Rabbis indicated the same thing when on the one hand they commented on the verse lo kam be’Yisrael k’Moshe od…aval be’umos ha’olam kam, u’man nihu, Bilaam. And on the other hand, they tell us that this man who is comparable to Moses himself was shocheiv im b’hemto, a degraded sexual pervert who regularly committed the most vile form of sodomy! Nowhere in the Bible do we find a single personality combining two such extreme opposites within the confines of one person. Prophet and pervert, genius and degenerate. Here is a man who has intimate contact with the Divine, and then sinks to the lowest debaseness known to us. He speaks with an eloquence unequalled by most of the great prophets of Israel, and takes it upon himself, with incredible chutzpah, to thwart and frustrate the plans of the Almighty by cursing Israel. A strange and paradoxical person indeed!Such behavior does not “just happen.” Minor inconsistencies are common to all human beings, but this sharp and jagged contrast is irrational; it is pathological and must have deeper roots. What, then, are the roots of this eccentric character?Our Sages pointed to these roots when they expressed great amazement and astonishment about one statement of Balaam about himself. …