Life, Love, and Compassion
This week’s
Torah portion, Balak, tells the story
of how the Moabite king Balak sought to hire Balaam, a pagan prophet, to curse
the Israelites so he could have the advantage over them in battle. God,
however, subverts his plan; and each time Balaam opens his mouth to curse the
Jewish people, words of praise and blessing come out instead. It is a story of
faith, deliverance, and divine protection, a promise that no matter how hard
our enemies try to harm us, God will undermine their plans.
This week,
however, the parshah sounds like cold
comfort as Jews around the world mourn Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Sha’ar, and Eyal
Yifrach, of blessed memory, who were cruelly murdered after being abducted in
Israel earlier this month. How are we meant to understand a Torah portion about
God’s protection in a week where that protection was not extended to three
young students?
A possible
answer comes from the opening passage of Midrash
Rabbah on our parshah:
The Holy Blessed One did not afford the
idolaters an opportunity of saying in the time to come: “You are the one who
has cast us aside!” What did the Holy Blessed One do? In the same way as He
raised up kings, sages, and prophets for Israel, so He raised them up for the
idolaters... He raised up Moses for Israel and Balaam for the idolaters. See
what a difference there is between the prophets of Israel and those of the
idolaters: … All the [Jewish] prophets retained a compassionate attitude
towards both Israel and the idolaters. Thus Jeremiah says: My heart moans for Moab like pipes (Jeremiah 48:36); and it was the
same with Ezekiel: Son of man, take up a
lamentation for Tyre (Ezekiel 27:2). But this cruel man rose to uproot a
whole nation for no reason! Therefore the Torah portion dealing with Balaam was
recorded to make it known why the Holy One, blessed be He, removed the Holy
Spirit from the idolaters, for this man rose from their midst, and see what he
did! (Num. Rab. 20.1)
Balaam, the
Midrash tells us, is a foil for Moses and all the great Jewish prophets; his
actions are meant to help us understand our own attitudes. It is significant,
then, that the characteristic the Midrash chooses to highlight is compassion.
Our prophets, from Moses to Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had compassion for all
humanity. They saw in each human being a reflection of the Divine Image, and
sought God’s blessing and mercy for all people. Balaam, by contrast, was
willing to curse Israel purely for profit.
This week, parashat Balak calls us to reaffirm the
values our prophets taught, to defend the value of human life against those who
would devalue it. While our sisters and brothers in Israel face enemies who
celebrate those who murder teenagers, bomb buses, and fire rockets at schools
and hospitals, the Jewish people stand by the values of our tradition, which
teaches us that to save even a single human life is to save the entire world
(Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4.5).
In her moving
eulogy, Naftali Fraenkel’s mother Rachel reflected on the prayers and support
Jews around the world offered in the weeks after her son’s abduction, the hopes
that were so abruptly dashed on Monday: “There is no drop of love and
compassion that is in vain.” Rachel Fraenkel reminds us that, even in times of
tragedy, we are called to live by love and compassion, to act as God’s agents
in the world – to follow after Moses, and never after Balaam.
Shabbat
Shalom,
Rabbi Abe
Friedman
