Undoubtedly Bilaam's everlasting contribution to our liturgy and the decor of our shuls is the divinely rephrased blessing - (24:5) "How good are your tents, Yaakov, your dwelling places, Yisrael." Clearly, Bilam understood all too well just how important every home and shul is in shaping the individuals and communities of our people. It is thus not surprising that this is the only of Bilam's statements that will weather all of time as a blessing; long after every other blessing will have to come to haunt us in the form of their intended curse (Sanhedrin 105b). Perhaps we too can weather whatever comes our way as long as we can take refuge and retreat in our homes and our shuls. That is why Bilam ultimately advised Balak to tear apart the Jewish home through decadence and infidelity, explaining how this will distance us from Hashem and His mission for us.
Exactly what quality did Bilam see in our tents which impressed him so? Rashi explains that Bilam was not referring to our private homes but rather to the various places throughout time that would be set aside for the korbanos of kapara, services that would gain forgiveness for us. Apparently that ability to achieve forgiveness and its attendant qualities of new beginnings, would forever inspire us and bring to us strength and prosperity.
However, Rashi's first interpretation is that Bilaam was taken by our modesty and how out of respect for everyone's privacy we turned our tent flaps away from each other. To me this is all quite surprising that the values of privacy and confidentiality can be so important that we should allude to them as we begin to daven every day, and that a person as decadent as Bilaam should find them so impressive.
However, Bilaam himself, in the following pasuk, reveals to us just what he did see. "[These tents] stretch out like rivers, like gardens alongside the river, planted like spices, like cedars along the water." What is the point of comparing our homes to the span of a river bed, spices, and well nourished gardens and cedars? Perhaps all four share the quality that the breadth and depth of their impact is determined by the strength of their source, without in turn weakening that source. The length and strength of the river flow will heavily depend on the strength of its water source without threatening the source's ability to bring ever fresh water. The cedar will impress itself upon viewers far beyond its immediate environs, without in any way being diminished; the spices will, if the source is potent and pleasant, be enjoyed by many without taking any scent away from any other. In this lies one of the great secrets of the home and the community. Our ability to impact on others will be far more dependant on the vibrancy of the core than on the calculated design of its reach.
Apparently, Bilaam was impressed not so much with the privacy per se but with the intensity of focus on one's own tent which was communicated by turning the entrances away from one another. We who are forever juggling our concern for the growth of the members of our own community with the concern for outreach can appreciate what intrigued Bilaam. Families, who are always balancing the energies we place into our own children as we extend ourselves beyond as well, understand that indeed Bilaam noted a magical event. He saw families so focused and so successful in creating an intensely fragrant lifestyle that it attracted effortlessly, from afar; shuls that stood so tall and strong with integrity and nobility that they readily impressed far beyond their immediate surroundings.