Thoughts
on The Parsha
Parshas
Balak
A
Weapon of Mass Construction
וַיִּשְׁלַח
מַלְאָכִים אֶל בִּלְעָם בֶּן בְּעוֹר
פְּתוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר עַל הַנָּהָר אֶרֶץ
בְּנֵי עַמּוֹ לִקְרֹא לוֹ לֵאמֹר הִנֵּה
עַם יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם הִנֵּה כִסָּה
אֶת עֵין הָאָרֶץ וְהוּא ישֵׁב מִמֻּלִי:
וְעַתָּה
לְכָה נָּא אָרָה לִּי אֶת הָעָם הַזֶּה
כִּי
עָצוּם
הוּא מִמֶּנִּי אוּלַי אוּכַל נַכֶּה
בּוֹ וַאֲגָרְשֶׁנּוּ מִן הָאָרֶץ כִּי
יָדַעְתִּי אֵת אֲשֶׁר תְּבָרֵךְ מְבֹרָךְ
וַאֲשֶׁר תָּאֹר יוּאָר
“He [Balak] sent
messengers to Billam son of Beor to Pesor, which by the river of the
land of the members of his people, to summon him, saying, 'Behold! A
people has come out of Egypt and it rests opposite me. So now –
please come and invoke a curse upon this people for me, for it is
more powerful than me; perhaps I will succeed, we will strike at it
and I will drive it away from the land. For I know that whomever you
bless is blessed and whoever you invoke a curse upon is accursed.'”
-Balak 22:5-6
Rashi1
describes that Balak, king of
Midyan, had an arrangement with Sichon and Og, kings of the Amorite.
The Midyan and Moav territories used to pay a tax to the Amorite for
them to protect their borders. When Balak saw that Sichon and Og were
unable to stand up against B'nei Yisroel,
he immediately realized that he would definitely not stand a chance.
Balak therefore called upon Billam, the sorcerer, to use his powers
to curse B'nei Yisroel out
of existence. The passuk (verse)2
describes that Hashem Himself
told Billam that his mission would be a complete failure because
Hashem would not allow Billam to curse His blessed nation. Yet,
Billam was obstinate and continued on his way riding his donkey. The
Torah3
tells us that Hashem was furious that Billam decided to keep going
and He sent a malach (angel)
to stand on the path with a drawn sword in its hand. Rashi4
comments that the malach
took a sword because it reasoned the following: “This evil one
[Billam] put aside the tools of his craft, for the weapon of goyim
is the sword, and instead he
comes against them with his mouth, which is the craft of the B'nei
Yisroel. I too shall grab that
which is his, and I shall come against him with his own craft.”
This is why the malach chose
to threaten Billam with a sword, and in fact, Billam's ultimate death
was by sword.5
The
difference of craft between Jews and goyim is
one which was present and noted all the way back during the time of
Yaakov and Eisav. When Yaakov pretended to be Eisav in order to
accept the berachos (blessings)
from Yitzchak, Yitzchak
exclaimed, “Ha'kol
kol Yaakov,
v'ha'yadayim y'dei
Eisav”6
(The voice is the voice of Yaakov, but the hands are those of Eisav).
Rashi7
comments that the very way
Yaakov spoke was different. He spoke pleasantly and nicely, and this
was something unique t to Yaakov, which Eisav was lacking. After all,
as the Kli Yakar8
elaborates, the passuk
cannot merely mean that the
voice itself gave it away because if Yaakov really sounded different
than Eisav then it would have clear it was Yaakov. Rather, the Torah
is informing us that although they sounded similar, their tone and
manners while speaking were quite different from each other.
The
Kli Yakar there
continues and says that the passuk deliberately
puts “ha'kol kol Yaakov”
before “v'ha'yadayim y'dei Eisav”
to allude to the fact that as long as Yaakov holds onto his power of
kol, Eisav's weapon of
yadayim is utterly
powerless.
Our
weapon is our mouth which connects the worlds of gashmiyus
and ruchniyus.
It is literally our peh – the
opening and portal between the synchronized dimensions of
spirituality and physicality. Eating is a physical activity, but
reciting a beracha (blessing)
before and after gives it more
of a purpose. The power that people, and particularly Jews have with
speech is beyond our comprehension. Declaring things as hekdesh,
reciting berachos,
testifying, making shevuos
(oaths), and stating when the new month begins are just some of the
many things we have the power to do with speech. These examples are
more than rules and customs, they are examples of real things that
even have an effect on physical nature based on our power of speech.
Of course, this list is far from complete without davening
and learning Torah which are the
ultimate ways of connecting directly to Hashem through our thoughts
and speech.
As
is the case by all things which are important to do, there is a
strong yetzer harah to
not maintain a kol Yaakov.
In the world in general, lashon harrah,
improper speech, and inappropriate language, are quite acceptable.
When we are secluded from it, it is easier to stay away but
unfortunately this often becomes exponentially difficult and more
tempting during the summer when there is a general laxness in the
atmosphere that we do not have to keep to our year-round standards,
and when time is spent with other crowds of people who sometimes
cause a negative peer pressure.
The
most important thing is to not be moreh heter (rationalize)
to ourselves and say what could
be so bad already about a curse here or an inappropriate comment
there; for it is a pretty serious matter indeed. The Gemara9
discusses when one is obligated to give up his life instead of
transgressing certain mitzvos. The
famous part of the Gemara is
the part where it mentions that the three cardinal sins: idol
worship, illicit relations, and murder are what fall under this
category. However, the less-quoted part of the Gemara is
a few lines later where the Gemara qualifies
that the whole discussion of the Gemara is
only by times where it is a personal force or where the aveirah
(sin) would
take place in private. However, says the Gemara,
if the aveirah is one
which society as a whole or government is enforcing, or if even not
but the aveirah is in
public, then even for a “mitzvah kallah”
(literally: a light mitzva), one
must allow himself to be killed rather than transgress. The Gemara
then asks, “What is a 'minor
mitzvah'?” and
answers that it refers even to a case where a Jew is ordered to
change his shoelace. The rishonim10
explain that the Gemara
refers to cities where the goyim
wore a less modest color
shoelace or form of tying their shoelace. In such a city if one was
publicly forced to wear such a shoelace or tie it in such a fashion,
or even forced to do so in private – but by the government, he
would be obligated to give up his life and not transgress on
following after the ways of the goyim.
It
is hard to imagine the extent of immodesty possible to breach with a
shoelace, but nonetheless, the Gemara clearly
says that even such a light mitzva of being forced to wear shoelaces
in the way of the goyim is
something to give up one's life for if forced in public or by the
government.
After
hearing the horrible news this past Monday that the three kidnapped
boys in Israel were indeed murdered, many wondered why Hashem put us
all through 18 days of pain along with their families in the complete
dark? If they were killed right away in cold blood for not even a
ransom, why didn't Hashem arrange for the Israeli army to be able to
discover the bodies right away and save us the added misery of not
knowing what happened to them? The answer that many concluded on
their own is that for Jews across the spectrum, those 18 days was a
time of realization that Hashem is really the only One we depend on
to fight our fights, and that we have the privilege of a direct
access pass to Hashem through the power of our mouth utilizing our
tools of davening, learning and being mekabel (accepting)
Shabbos early as a
zechus (merit) for the
boys. Now, the biggest zechus for
their neshamos would
be if we capitalized on the lesson Hashem taught us during those 18
days and used the summer to fight our personal yetzer harah
and instead work extra hard on
keeping our thoughts and mouth clean of dirty thoughts and language
in order for them to be cleansed and prepared as proper vehicles to
learn and daven to
Hashem.
There
is no doubt that there is a strong current in the direction of
following the norms of the world and lowering our standards. However,
we must understand the severity of doing so. The Gemara may
seem extreme to us when it says to give up one's life for a shoelace,
because we have fallen so much past that, but we should at least take
the equivalent of what we do which is too similar to the “ya'dayim
y'dei Eisav” which
we should accept upon ourselves to stay far away from as if we would
have to give up our lives not to transgress. In this way we could
each properly reset our minds and mouths in order that we be able to
maximize its potential as a weapon of mass construction.
1Bamidbar
22:2
2Bamidbar
22:12 and see also 22:18 where Billam conveys this to Balak's
men
3Bamidbar
22:22
4Bamidbar
22:23
5Bamidbar
31:8
6Beraishis
27:22
7Rashi
ibid.
8Ibid.
9Sanhedrin
74a-74b
10For
example see Rashi ibid.
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