Good Homes Are Unnatural

Anyone who wants to sow their wild oats will tell you that “Monogamy isn’t natural.”

They are right. Our natural selves animalistically live in the moment, and if we are “true to ourselves,” we really ought to pursue every passing opportunity for pleasure. Or, frankly, to indulge our anger, our desire for revenge, or any other momentary passion. Following our natural inclinations does not lead to long-term marital harmony.

Other healthy family relationships are also at odds with our natural selves. Sibling rivalry, including outright fratricide, is as old as time. So are intergenerational betrayal (King Lear) and perfidy (Oedipus). And, as already mentioned, the idea of a man and a woman mating and loving each other for life not only beggars belief: it is counter to the way Mother Nature made mankind.

Which suggests that “good” homes – the kind where the parents stay true to each other, where siblings root for others to succeed, and where children honor their parents – are indeed unnatural.

Bilaam, the biblical prophet, understood this. He says that the Jewish home (the goodly tents /spiritually-infused dwellings) (N. 24:6) is -

Like a fixed flow / like gardens on a river / like (portable) tents made permanent by G-d /like cedars on the waters.

But these are all paradoxes! Things that flow cannot be fixed. Gardens cannot be planted on a river bank because they will be swept away with the spring waters. Tents are, by definition, portable homes – not permanent! Cedars do not grow on the water – they need drainage. Bilaam is comparing the Jewish Family to things that are inherently impossible!

Bilaam is saying that the Jewish Family cannot exist in a purely physical world. In no normal, physical world does monogamy triumph over promiscuity, do siblings help one another instead of competing, and do parents and children love and respect each other. No, not in a natural world, a world governed by only physical inputs.

The only things that can be physically impossible – but still exist nevertheless – are those things that have a special, spiritual ingredient. And that ingredient is the presence of G-d within a marriage, the spiritual element that makes it possible for us to overcome our physical limits.

This is why Bilaam uses the word mishkan to describe our dwellings. Mishkan is also the name of the Tabernacle, where G-d’s presence dwells amidst the people. A mishkan is our physical world with infused spirituality. The Jewish family is a walking impossibility. We are described by, and defined as, something that cannot be found in nature – that can only be found when G-d joins us in our tents. Bilaam understood this!

P.S. Bilaam “solved the problem” by advising our enemies to send loose women into the camp, to drive a wedge within the family, and between the people and G-d. Animalistic displays of pure physical lust cannot coexist with holy spirituality, with the presence of G-d amidst the people.