Voyeurism in Tents

Written by Sender Rozesz. Sender Rozesz is a practicing attorney with a background in Jewish pluralistic education for adults. Sender Rozesz is Jewrotica’s resident Double Mitzvah columnist. The views reflected in his writing represent his own personal views, and are not intended to reflect the views of any organizations, institutes or associations with whom he may be affiliated.

Over the millennia, the Jewish people have experienced many different varieties of persecution, genocide attempts, and plots of annihilation. More often than not, these have taken the form of physical violence and coercion, as our Patriarch Isaac presciently once said: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.” [1] Thus, Jacob’s power was seen as the power of the voice: the ability to call upon G-d via prayer, the gift of prophecy, the power of Torah. Esau’s power, conversely, was the power of the hand: physical violence, and the use of physical weaponry — as Isaac said to Esau shortly thereafter, “and by your sword shall you live.” [2]

In this week’s Parshah of Balak, however, after watching the Jewish people sweep through and conquer the powerful armies of the Ammorites unscathed, the nations of Moab and Midian sought to confound this stereotype. Recognizing that the sword was proving an ineffective weapon against the Israelites, they decided to come after them with the Israelites’ own potent weapon: the spoken word.

Thus, they hired Bala’am, a well-known, anti-Semitic and powerful prophet, who prided himself on being able to anticipate the moments of G-d’s anger, and to utter, during those moments, potent curses that would be sure vanquish his target.

To their dismay, however, Moab and Midian found that, over the course of three different sessions, every time Bala’am opened his mouth to curse the Jews, he instead lavished them with the most beautiful and profound blessings and praises.

Some of those blessings remind us of the potent power of sexuality, and it is clear that, in his attempts to curse the Israelites, Bala’am was searching for signs of sexual impropriety among the Jews. Instead, he found that he was unable to do ought but bless them.

In his very first curse-turned-blessing, Bala’am announces:

How can I curse whom God has not cursed, and how can I invoke wrath if the Lord has not been angered? . . . It is a nation that will dwell alone, and will not be reckoned among the nations. Who counted the dust of Jacob or the number the seed of Israel? [3]

More than one Midrash notes that the Hebrew word used here for “seed” — “rovah” (רבע) — is actually a reference to sexual intercourse; and not just any sexual intercourse, but a particularly animalistic kind of intercourse. Indeed, readers may recall that the last time the root word of “rovah” was used to denote sexual activity was in the context of the prohibition against a woman allowing herself to be mounted by an animal. [4]

The Midrash thus explains that Bala’am was noting the attention that G-d gives to the sexual intercourse of Jews, as he counts every act of copulation and every drop of seed that may result in new life being born.[5] Bala’am, who failed to appreciate the holiness and transcendence of sexuality, himself considered it a prurient and debasing fascination that was unworthy of G-d’s interest. For this thought, Bala’am was punished by becoming blind in one eye, an appropriate consequence for one looking upon Jewish coupling without the appropriate perspective. [6]

Speaking of looking upon someone else’s coupling, however, in the third and final session in which Bala’am attempted to curse the Jews, the Torah states that: “Bala’am raised his eyes and saw Israel dwelling according to its tribes.” [7]

Both the Talmud and the Midrash explain what it was that Bala’am saw: he saw that the openings of the Israelite tents did not face each other, so that they would not view the marital intimacy going on in their neighbor’s tent [8] This, in turn, led to one of his most beautiful blessings of all — a blessing that Jews across the world repeat in their daily prayers each morning:

“How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!” [9]

Think about it.

Voyeurism is the outcropping of a very natural curiosity that we have about other peoples’ sexual experiences. We know how mind-blowing, powerful, enigmatic and varied our own sexual experiences can be; and we often cannot help but wonder: Is it like that for them? How does he do it? How does she do it?

On a recent camping trip with some friends, we stayed in a large tent that had a flimsy little curtain hanging down it’s center to provide privacy to the two sides of the tent. And, of course, I wondered about the privacy that that thin curtain would afford to two married couples sleeping on either side of the tent. Then, at the neighboring campsite, I saw that several families had set up several different tents in close proximity to each other. Now, I don’t sleep well in tents, because I can hear every gust of wind, every falling leaf, every footstep through the thin walls of the tent. Part of my honeymoon took place in a national park under a thin canvas tent, and to this day, my wife blushes as she realizes that there was absolutely no way that we were not heard by our neighbors. So it made me wonder how notions of marital intimacy and privacy might be different amongst tent-dwellers.

City dwellers, such as we, are accustomed to relatively thick walls separating our apartments, our homes; and consequently, we have an expectation of privacy that simply doesn’t exist among those who live in tents. In our bedroom we feel alone, secluded, and private, which we then associate with the particular activities in which we engage in our bedroom. When we go camping, we bring our expectation of privacy with us, and perhaps we try to “behave ourselves” while we are camping (unless on our honeymoon); or at least — unless we are expressing an exhibitionist streak — we take great effort to keep our noises to a minimum so as not to alert our neighbors to the sexiness going on just beyond the curtain. Our culture is one that reinforces the sense that the bedroom is a private place.

But what was privacy like for the tent-dwellers of yore? One imagines that the Israelites must have been regularly exposed to the sounds of passion coming from their neighbors’ tents. We recall that the Israelites in Egypt would make love and bear children in the fields and the orchards.[10] They would not have had the same cultural sensitivity that we have developed toward privacy. In fact, one might expect that in such an atmosphere there would be no privacy at all; that sex would be as common and mundane as eating and bathing, and that the Israelites would not be discriminating as to when, where, or before whom they “did it.”

So Bala’am was surprised when he noticed that the entrances of the Israelite tents were deliberately turned away from one another — for this told him a lot about the way the Jewish people view sex. Sex is not mundane or trivial. It is not simply a bodily function. Sex is intimate, and sacred, and yes — private (which is what makes voyeurism and exhibitionism so thrilling). There was undoubtedly curiosity about what was going on in the neighbor’s tent, particularly in light of the regular stream of erotic sound that must have wafted through the Israelite camp in the evenings. Nonetheless, the Israelites resisted the temptation of opening their tents to each other; of — like the exposure of film to sunlight — forfeiting the mystery and intimacy of their sexual experience. They celebrated sex as a higher, more meaningful, and holy form of bonding, that would not be treated in the same menial fashion as eating and drinking.

Although G-d may observe our sexual interactions with great interest, we respected the privacy of each other’s tents — and Bala’am recognized that a people with this approach to sexuality could not be cursed.

Shabbat shalom!

Works Cited

[1] Genesis, 27:22.

[2] Genesis , 27:40. See also Numbers, 20:16, 18.

[3] Numbers, 23:8-10.

[4] See Numbers, 18:23; 20:16.

[5] Numbers, 23:10, Rashi; Midrash Tanchuma, Balak 12; Numbers Rabbah, 20:19.

[6] See Numbers, 24:3, Rashi, Midrash Aggadah.

[7] Numbers, 24:2.

[8] Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra, 60a; Midrash Aggadah.

[9] Numbers, 24:5.
[10] See Exodus, 38:8, Rashi: “When their husbands were weary from back-breaking labor, the women would go and bring them food and drink and give them to eat. Then the women would seduce their husbands, and in this way they aroused their husbands’ desire and would copulate with them, conceiving and giving birth there, as it is said: “Under the apple tree I aroused you” (Song of Songs, 8:5).