It’s seldom very interesting to watch someone write. When it’s going well, there’s just the quiet clacking of keys or the scratch of a pen, and when it’s going poorly, there’s frequently no activity at all beyond a vague scowl of idle consternation at the page. And it often goes poorly — the words won’t come, the argument won’t cohere, the characters simply will not do what you want them to. As a montage, it leaves something to be desired.

And yet, it’s in these moments of gnarling quiet that so much of the actual work gets done. It’s not always entirely conscious — in my case, it frequently feels like my mind has gone entirely blank while some part of me gropes about on the pre-conscious level towards what should come next. More than anything, it feels like trying to reach out across some phantasmagorical chasm to find the ideal “finished” version of whatever I’m writing so I can understand where the text wants to go next, and then once I have it, the actual jotting down of words is more like transcribing an extant source than creating something from scratch — the creation is done in the pre-thinking stillness and the rest is mechanical reproduction.

Which is a very self-contained way of putting it; the emotional experience of it feels more akin to trying to tune my brain like a radio to catch a transmission from some distant, inscrutable source. The stuff is being sent to me, and I’m just an antenna with spotty reception. (This is especially true for creative work (and double-especially for textless music), less so for analytic or argumentative pieces, but even in the latter cases, the feeling isn’t wholly absent.) I can understand why some people describe it as straining to catch an utterance of G-d.

There’s just such a scene of creative searching in this week’s parashah. After much ado, the seer Bil’am has answered Balaq’s summons and shown up to pronounce whatever G-d will let him. There have been the formal introductions, they’ve gone to all the trouble of building seven altars and offering formal sacrifices on them, there’s been all this pomp and ceremony, and then instead of proceeding directly to prophesy, Bil’am just fucks off by himself for a bit.

Specifically, he tells Balaq to wait by the altars, and then וַיֵּֽלֶךְ שֶֽׁפִי | vayéilekh shéfi | “he went emptily” (Bəmidbar 23:3).

As you might be able to guess, shéfi is one of those words that’s difficult to pin down, precisely. It seems to derive from the root ShFH, but that root itself is quite rare, so there’s not a ton to help really pin the definition down. Mostly, it seems to have to do with scraping or sweeping things bare, with a background connotation of emptiness, vacancy, and stillness. It’s used of mountaintops scoured down to the bedrock by the elements, of paths worn bare by the trodding of many feet, and bones dissolving into nothing under conditions of famine. As a noun, it shows up in a couple places in the plural [a], but this passage right here is the only time it shows up in the singular, and it feels more than a little like it’s functioning more as an adjective or an adverb, which only adds to the confusion. The JPS translation has waffled between rendering vayéileikh shéfi as “he went off to a bare place” and “he went off alone” over the years; in his translation and commentary, Baruch A Levine renders it “he walked away silently”.

[a] Mostly in the prophets, in fact, especially Yəshayáhu and Yirməyáhu. Given the prophetic tendency to critique the moral failings of their societies, we should perhaps take this rare linkage as a hint that Bil’am, too, is a prophet standing up for justice even when it’s deeply unpopular to do so.

Whatever the precise connotation, we can understand Bil’am in this moment seeking a place of without-ness: without any company, without any noise, without any cover — solitary and vulnerable, open to whatever is coming next.

And what comes next, of course, is that he defies the guy who hired him, who happens to be a king. Bil’am was hired to curse the Israelites, and instead he blesses them. Not only that, before heading home, he also curses Mo’av to boot — in a world where these blessings and curses, once activated by the Divine, have real material force, you could argue that Bil’am has technically committed treason here, which is hardly a risk-free endeavor even at the best of times.

This might make us reconsider that moment of without-ness. After all, at this point Bil’am basically knows what’s going to happen. He’s had multiple dreams and an entire encounter with a deadly angel informing him in no uncertain terms that he’s not to curse the Israelites but to bless them instead. He has to know that’s what he’s going to do. But knowing is one thing, and having the courage to do it is another. Yes, he knows he has to defy Mo’av’s king, he knows he has to stand up for these stateless migrants crossing an expansive desert, but perhaps we can understand his needing a few quiet moments to psych himself up for it.

We can also imagine that he has some preparations of his own that he doesn’t want the king to overhear. Maybe he wants to test whether it’s better to put “the sand of Yisra’eil” or “the dust of Ya’aqov” in the first half of the line describing how abundant this people is. Maybe he just wants to make sure his tongue doesn’t stumble getting out uthi aḥariti kamóhu. Above all, we can be sure he wouldn’t want to give Balaq a heads up about what he’s about to say — better that the king should have no idea what’s coming until the blessing is pronounced and there’s nothing to be done about it. Either way, he needs just a moment alone, a moment to gather his thoughts and his nerve, a moment where no one can report back what he’s preparing to do.

There are lessons here for us here in the US. We live in a country with an authoritarian strongman for a ruler at the head of a party eager to spare no expense — compare ICE’s monstrous recent budget increase to Balaq’s promises of rich reward for Bil’am’s curses — to destroy, among other targets, people who have made a perilous crossing thru wildernesses towards a land of dreamlike promise (them and anyone who looks like or can even be tendentiously accused of being of their ilk). There will be times where decency, morality, justice demand that we act in defiance of the state, act to protect the vulnerable [b] and risk the wrath of the government. We should take pains to obscure our plans from those who would disrupt them; we should prepare our nerves now for what we know is coming; but we must still act, in the end. We cannot let ourselves be turned into tools of malediction in the service of oppression.

[b] And, of course, many of us are vulnerable in our own ways; sometimes we will be the vulnerable we act to protect.

Did Bil’am’s oracles make a difference, in the end? If we read the story in absolute shéfi, in absolute without-ness, it’s hard to say that they did. He showed up, stood on some rocks, recited some poetry, and left. Maybe he enraged and dispirited Balaq, but in a material sense, did that really change anything? I’m not sure I can say for certain. And yet I have no doubt that he did the right thing. And our tradition echoes that: Lines from Bil’am’s blessings have been woven into our liturgy, prayed at the start of the morning service to welcome us into community together — מַה־טֹּ֥בוּ אֹהָלֶ֖יךָ יַעֲקֹ֑ב מִשְׂכְּנֹתֶ֖יךָ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ | mah tóvu ohaléikha Ya’aqov mishkənotéikha Yisra’eil. | “How lovely your tents, Ya’aqov; your shelters, Yisra’eil!” (24:5). Perhaps it didn’t change the course of geopolitics, but it was a kindness that echoed down the years, a moment of help and hope that has lasted long after Balaq’s entire kingdom faded away.

We are not all the protagonists of some world-changing political thriller. We cannot all singlehandedly stop the wars, make the old younger, or lower the price of bread. But even when our choices are very small, we can still choose decency. We can still choose kindness. We can still choose to do what is right. Even in a place without everything, we can still turn to those we are commanded to despise and bless them anyway.

[This has been an installment of one-word Torah. You can read the full series here.]