balak
5770 פרשת בלק
In this week’s Parsha, the Torah describes to us the occurrences surrounding the request of Balak who was the king of Moav of Bilam to come and curse Bnei Yisroel so that Bnei Yisroel would be defeated by Moav at war.
The Torah describes how at first Balak sent messengers to Bilam to request that he come and curse Bnei Yisroel. When they first came, Bilam told them that he would ask god if he could go with them. God responded that he should not go with them and should not curse them. The Ohr Hachayim explains that God was telling Bilam two things. Firstly, you should not go with them since Balak did not send a respectable group of messengers to him as would be proper for the prophet of the nations of the world. Secondly, God said do not curse Bnei Yisroel since they are blessed.
Balak then sent a more respected contingent to ask Bilam to come to curse Bnei Yisroel. After he was asked by this more respected contingent, God gave him permission to go but not to curse Bnei Yisroel.
The Torah tells us that when Bilam got into the border city of Moav, Balak went out to greet him. The Ohr Hachayim asks why is it that the Torah tells us where Bilam was when Balak went out to greet him. The Ohr Hachayim answers that the Torah was telling us that Balak viewed Bilam as a lowly person and therefore did not go out to meet him outside of the city as he would have other great people.
If we look at this Ohr Hachayim more closely, we can ask the following question. We know that Balak felt that he needed Bilam to curse Bnei Yisroel so he would be victorious in battle and that without him he would not have any hope. Furthermore, we saw that when Bilam sent back to Balak that I will not go with the messengers you sent me, Balak understood that Bilam wanted more honor so he acquiesced and sent him a more respectable contingent of officers. Why is it then that in this situation where he still needed Bilam’s help, even if he felt he was a lowly person, why wouldn’t he do the simple action of going out to meet him outside the city if it would show him honor which would get him the result he wanted?
The answer can be that the way a person truly feels dictates his actions in a situation where he would have to put in effort. We know that there is a concept of a person saying one thing but feeling another thing in their heart but when it comes to having to expend effort for someone if he truly does not feel respect or closeness to the person he will not be able to do it.
This is a very important lesson for us not only in our actions between man and our fellow man but also in our service of God. The more respect, awe and closeness we feel towards God the more effort we will naturally want to put out in our service of Him. However, a person who does not feel any relationship to God at all when it comes to doing Mitzvos that require effort it will be much harder for them to get over the hump and do the Mitzvah properly.
5769 פרשת בלק
In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to us the hiring by Balak of Bilam to curse Bnei Yisroel. The Torah tells us that while Bilam was on the road to Moav to curse Bnei Yisroel several things happened to Bilam through his donkey that were out of the ordinary culminating in the fact that the donkey itself spoke to and rebuked Bilam for his actions followed by a Malach appearing and telling Bilam that he was sent to tell him that the way he was going (with the intention of cursing Bnei Yisroel) was wrong as God only allowed him to go to bless Bnei Yisroel. The Rabbeinu Bechai then continues and says that no normal person would see all these signs and continue on the path they were told not to continue on and only because of his immense desire to curse Bnei Yisroel did he continue. The Rabbeinu Bechai continues and explains a Pasuk later on in the Parsha. Every time that Balak told Bilam to curse Bnei Yisroel he used the word Li meaning to me instead of saying curse Bnei Yisroel. The Rabbeinu Bechai explains that the word Li was not said by Balak but rather by Bilam. Every time Balak told Bilam to curse Bnei Yisroel Bilam told him that not only am I cursing Bnei Yisroel I am cursing myself since God told Avraham that a person who curses you I will curse and this applies to Bnei Yisroel also.
Let us examine these two commentaries of Rabbeinu Bechai. I can understand in the first instance that a person who really hates someone can ignore all the warnings he receives not to do it since he doesn’t see any inherent risk to himself, if he desires something enough he will still go ahead and do it, however in the second case where Bilam understood that whatever curses he cursed Bnei Yisroel would come back and land on him also, you would think that would prevent him from cursing Bnei Yisroel. This would be compared to a case where in order to break the leg of a person you hate you would have to break your own leg at the same time.
The answer could be that emotions especially those of hate can cause a person to lose focus and in order to hurt the person he hates will actually cause himself harm. This could be why Bilam even though he knew he would be causing himself harm, nevertheless tried to curse Bnei Yisroel.
This does not apply only to hate but it also applies to emotions in general. When a person has to make decisions there are many times two different forces pulling at him. The first one is the draw of the emotions and the second one is the draw of logic. Many times if the particular emotion is not so strong we can make the decision following our logic, however there are times when the emotions are so strong they can literally blind us to the consequences of our actions. When that occurs the results could be catastrophic. If this is the case, what can we do to ensure that this does not happen to us? There are several ways a person can conquer those emotions. One way to prevent our emotions from taking control is to work on our love of God through appreciating all the good He does for us. If we can do that, our emotions and desire to serve God due to our great love for Him will become the dominant emotional force thereby blocking any emotional desire to sin.
5768 פרשת בלק
In this week’s Parsha, the Torah describes to us how Balak hired Bilam to curse Bnei Yisroel so that the nation of Moav could defend themselves from Bnei Yisroel trying to take over Eretz Yisroel.
We know that as much as Bilam wanted to curse Bnei Yisroel, God did not allow him and rather put words in his mouth for him to say. Some of the things Bilam said were blessings for Bnei Yisroel and others were rebuke for Balak.
One of the first things that Bilam said was:
From Aram Balak the King of Moav spoke to me.
The Midrash Raba explains this Pasuk the following way:
Balak said,” God equates the two of us as being those who are ungrateful.” Balak is from the nation of Moav who is a descendent of Lot. If not for the merit of Avraham, Lot would never have escaped from Sedom. Bilam was a descendent of the son of Lavan. If not for Yaakov Avinu, Lot would not have merited to have sons. Since neither of them would have been around without the merit of the ancestors of Bnei Yisroel, how could they now go and try to have them wiped out.
If we look at this Midrash more closely, we can ask the following question:
The claim on Balak that he did not appreciate the good that the ancestors of Bnei Yisroel did for him seems problematic. Let us explain the problem with a parable. If “A” would perform an act of kindness for “B” and then turn around and try to hurt “B”, would “B” then have a requirement not to defend himself from “A” just because of the kindness “A” did for him? The answer should of course be no. The same thing should apply in this case also. Even if Balak recognized the great good that came from the ancestors of Bnei Yisroel, now Bnei Yisroel is coming to hurt him, why should he be considered to be an ungrateful person for trying to defend his people and his country? Even though we know that Bnei Yisroel were commanded not to go to battle with Moav, nevertheless they were allowed to put fear into the nation of Moav which they did. We see from the Pasuk that Balak was truly afraid of Bnei Yisroel attacking them.
The answer is that if we look at the actions of Balak we see that the first thing he did was hire Bilam to curse Bnei Yisroel so he could wipe them out. What he did not do was send messengers to Bnei Yisroel to clarify their intensions or to see if they could make peace. If Bnei Yisroel would have truly come and attacked Moav, past events would not have prevented them from fighting back. However, if Balak had proper gratitude for the actions of Avraham Avinu, the ancestor of Bnei Yisroel, he would have gone out of his way to try and find a way where he would not have to harm Bnei Yisroel.
We can learn an incredible lesson about how far gratitude must extend from here. Gratitude is something that requires seeing the whole picture. Obviously in our lives, we won’t be able to know in most cases if someone else’s ancestor in someway impacted our family and therefore indirectly ourselves except in one case – God. We can’t look at ourselves over our short life and say, these are the things I have to be thankful for, we have to be thankful for the events that occurred to our ancestors also. For example, we must thank God that are family wasn’t wiped out in the Holocaust or else we would not have been born. We have to thank God that our ancestors weren’t impacted by the reform movement in the 18th century and that we are frum today because they were frum. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If we begin to recognize how much good God did for us even years before we were born, let alone what he does for us constantly in our lifetime we will feel a tremendous sense of gratitude which should lead us to a stronger desire to serve God with greater love.
פרשת בלק 5767
In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes how Balak sent his officers to hire Bilam to curse Bnei Yisroel so Moav could defeat them in battle.
The Pasuk describes in detail the request that Balak sent to Bilam as follows:
And now come and curse this nation …. Because I know that whoever you bless will be blessed and whoever you curse will be cursed.
The Sipurno is bothered by the following question:
If Bilam had the ability to bless people, why didn’t Balak ask Bilam for a Beracha for himself and his nation instead of asking Bilam to curse Bnei Yisroel?
The Sipurno answers that Bilam did not have the ability to bless. He only had the ability to curse people.
The Sipurno then asks; if Bilam did not have the ability to bless people why did Balak say to Bilam that I know that whoever you bless is blessed?
The Sipurno answers the following way:
Balak said this for the honor of Bilam so Blam shouldn’t think that Balak considers him to be only someone who damages people.
Now if we examine this Sipurno a little more closely, we can see a tremendous insight in the personality traits of people.
The Sipurno seems to be saying that Bilam would feel bad if he knew that Balak thought of him only as a damager.
Now let us try to compare that situation to a situation we can relate to a little better. Who would we consider to be the ideal complete damager? We would consider a mafia hit man who kills people for a living to be someone whose whole life relates to being a damager.Would a hit man care if people thought of him only as a damager? The opposite would be true, he is proud of the work he does and appreciates the fact that people recognize him for his work well done. The same thing should apply to Bilam. His livelihood is to curse people. He is the only one who could do it and he does it the best of anyone in the world. He gets paid very nicely for his work; you would think that Bilam would be proud that people appreciated his skill for what it is. In fact the opposite would be true when Balak added also to his description that whatever he blesses is blessed it might be considered an insult that Balak doesn’t truly appreciate his skill at cursing people.
The answer is that every person even the biggest Rasha needs to feel that he does good things. Somewhere deep down in the subconscious of every person is the desire to do good. The only thing that deep down makes a person feel good about themselves are the good things they do in this world. This is why Balak made sure to tell Bilam that he appreciates the good in him also.
Based on this idea of the Sipurno how was it possible for Bilam to become that epitome of evil that Balak had to lie to make him feel that he wasn’t a complete damager? Shouldn’t his desire to do good put him at least somewhat on the right track?
The answer could be that even though a person wants to do good, our desires and our Yetzer Hara have the ability to make us believe that what is bad is really good.
How do we protect ourselves from losing our way and ensure that we do follow our natural inclination to do good? The answer is to work on our מדה of אמת. Only if we are honest with ourselves can we ensure that our actions reflect the “good” we desire to do.
We always have to ask ourselves before we do any action, “is this really what God wants from us or am I being misled by my Yetzer Hara to think that an action is a Mitzvah when it is really a sin.
If we can tap into this natural tendency to do good and use our trait of truth to enable us to make the correct choices in our lives and serve God to the best of our abilities we should merit the redemption soon.