Balak 5773
This week’s Torah portion Balak which both one of
the most familiar and popular of parshot and one of the most difficult to
understand. Balak, the King of the Moabites, is
afraid of the power of the Israelites, who are coming into his territory. In effort to secure victory in battle against
them, he hires Balam, the most famous of the non-Jewish prophets, to curse the
Israelites. But Balam, on his way to go and do the cursing, first encounters
trouble with his donkey when it won’t go any farther. And when he beats the
donkey, the donkey talks to him and the donkey shows him an angel that is there
to do evil to Balam. Then Balak takes
Balam to see the Israelites from three different perspectives, trying to get
him to see something that he can use as the basis for a curse But each time
Balam opens his mouth to curse the Israelites, he blesses them instead.
What is all of this supposed to mean?
Is this just a silly story with a talking donkey, a ne’er do well king, and a prophet who cant seem to get a curse out of his mouth?
The secret to understanding this Torah portion comes not in the words of the Torah at all, but at the very end of the haftarah. Here we see what the prophet Micah tells the Jewish people.
“He has told you O’ man what is good
and what the Lord requires
of you.
Only to do justice
and to love, kindness, and
to walk modestly with
your God”
How does
this verse at the very end of the haftarah help us understand this message of Parashat
Balak? It is ultimately this modesty that is the undoing of Balak and Balam, the
villains of the story. Balak’s fear of
the Israelites comes not from the ordinary fear of a king who is going into battle
with another people. Balak and Balam, like all of the villains of the Torah
who have come before
fear not only the Israelites, but what the Israelites represent, because the Jewish
people are the people who proclaim God’s dominion over all things. The Jewish
people are the people who remind the world that human accomplishment is not
the be all and end all of existence, but that our actions, as the prophet Micah
points out, will be judged on the moral quality of our behavior, not merely on
any measure of worldy success. It's Balak’s refusal to walk modestly, Balak’s
inability to acknowledge that he is but a part of things and not the sum total
of all existence that leads him to seek a curse on the Israelites. And it is
his immodesty, his refusal to recognize God’s role in the world that is
ultimately his undoing.
Shabbat
Shalom,
Rabbi Abe Friedman
Rabbi Abe Friedman
