When is a curse a blessing? Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. In our parasha this week, the non-Israelite prophet Balaam is summoned by Moabite King Balak to curse the Israelites. Somehow, throughout Jewish history, we have been seen as a threat to nations in which we have lived. Rulers who have felt threatened have killed our male newborns, enslaved us, taxed us mercilessly, and treated us as foreigners, limiting our rights, limiting where we could live, and limiting our access to both higher education and professions. Curses, indeed.

In the parasha, Balaam is unable to curse the Israelites. The first time he tries he ends up saying, “How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How doom when the Lord has not doomed? …. Behold! It is a nation that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations” [Num 23:8-9]. So, if God reversed Balaam’s curse to a blessing, then “dwelling in solitude” is a blessing. Balaam’s intended curse was for Israel not to dwell in solitude; he wanted Israel to assimilate with the nations around it, and thereby to lose its distinctive religion and identity.

For over three millennia, the Jewish People has survived in large measure because there were always Jewish communities that did not (or could not) assimilate with the local culture. Every time and place that we have assimilated we have disappeared. Our generation exists because of the generations before us who dwelt apart from their neighbors. This has always been our greatest challenge: how to be part of our surrounding community while remaining apart from it.

The first paragraph of the Aleinu prayer is a statement of Jewish particularism — we are different from all other religious communities; the second paragraph is universalist —  expressing the messianic hope that bayom ha-hu – “on that day” God will be one and God’s name will be one.

Halevai that “that day” will arrive soon, when all humanity will understand that we are answerable to the same singular God. But in the meantime, the first paragraph of Aleinu articulates the distinctiveness  of the Jewish people – she-lo asanu ke-goyei ha-aratzot…. – “ for [God] has not made us like the nations of the lands, and has not placed us like the families of the earth; for [God] has not made our portion like theirs nor our fate like that of the multitudes.” In other words, we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them.

Balaam had wished to curse Israel — to destroy us — by removing the boundaries between the Israelites and their neighbors, but instead, what came out were words of blessing: “Behold! It is a nation that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations.” To which Balak responded, “What have you done to me? To curse my enemy have I brought you – and instead you have blessed them!” [Num 23:11].

Sometimes the curse of being different is, in reality, a blessing.