Balak

פרשת בלק

This week’s Parsha tells us how Balak attempted to use any means at his disposal to halt the Jewish military advance and prevent them from entering into the land of Israel. The vast majority of the Parsha explains in great detail how Balak tried to hire Bilam to curse the Jewish people and to use this curse to succeed in destroying them. Even though Bilam warned him many times that if God does not desire to curse the Jewish people, no amount of cursing was going to help him, Balak was not discouraged and continued to proceed with his plan of cursing them. Finally, at the end of the Parsha, when Balak saw that his initial strategy was clearly not going to work, he took Bilam’s advice and resorted to a different tactic. He convinced the daughters of Moab to go out and seduce the children of Israel, and by causing them to sin, he reasoned that they would lose favor in God’s eyes and they would become more vulnerable to a military attack. This tactic worked, and Balak was able to wipe out many Jews with this strategy.

However, we must ask ourselves why was this not the primary tactic for Balak to adopt? Surely it is more reasonable to get the Jews to sin and thereby make them susceptible to an attack then to hire some necromancer to curse them. What was the driving force for Bilam to be so persistent in his first approach that he only relented and tried the second (more reasonable) method of attack after so many failures?

R’ Reuven Fine, the renowned Rosh Yeshiva of Torah V’daas deals with this difficulty and he explains it based on a Midrash in this week’s Parsha. The Jewish people are so distant from the non-Jewish ways, and so aloof, that although Balak would have certainly wanted to try his second way first, he gave up almost immediately, realizing that he would have no success that way. Indeed, Bilam in his attempted curse of the Jewish people, which Hashem mercifully turned into a blessing, states, “They are a nation who dwells alone, and they pay no attention to the gentiles”. This statement captures one of the fundamental traits of every Jew since Har Sinai. Jews have always had nothing to do with their gentile neighbors, period. That being said, how did Balak in fact sway the Jews hearts to become interested in the Gentile girls? The Midrash in this week’s Parsha teaches us that he acted with great cunning. Bilam first got an old non-Jewish Moabite merchantess to go out and sell her wares to the Jews at a very cheap price. (Even back than the Jews could never resist a good deal). She would then invite her customers into the store where there was a much younger girl vending her wares for very reasonable prices. When the customers became steady, this young girl would then offer her “business associates” a drink of wine. (This was before non-Jewish wine was forbidden to the Jewish people, and indeed, one of the major considerations in forbidding it!) After they would naively accept the wine, she would offer them to stay the night, and eventually, they would convince the Jewish people to sin with them. R’ Reuven would extrapolate from these evocative words of Chazal how important it is for the Jewish people to constantly distance themselves for the non-Jews around them and have absolutely nothing to do with them, because when a person develops even the smallest of connections with his non-Jewish neighbors, it will not be long before he is inextricably ensnared in their world and is no longer capable of severing his connection with them.

Similarly, we find a verse in Psalms, “And the people may become mixed in with the nations, and they may learn from their ways”. R’ Reuven explains that Dovid Hamelech is teaching us that these two concepts are not the same thing. There is one danger of learning from the non-Jews around us when we are in contact with them on a daily basis. But what would you say if a Jew says, I will be around my non-Jewish neighbors, but I will have nothing to do with them? At first glance, this would seem like a harmless proposition. R’ Reuven explains that Dovid Hamelech is teaching us that even this is forbidden. Chazal were so concerned with the effect of just being in the presence of the gentiles, that they demanded there be a complete separation between us and them. They went out of their way to make seemingly unreasonable decrees upon us. The Gemorah in Avoda Zara (36b) says that Chazal forbade us from eating their bread, because we may come to drink their wine. And if we drink their wine, we may come to marry their daughters. And if we marry their daughters, we may come to worship idols. R’ Reuven reflected, look how far Chazal went back in the possibility process to ensure that we don’t even come within three steps of adopting their religion. Usually, Chazal have a carte blanche rule to never go beyond one decree. Obviously Chazal want us to have absolutely nothing to do with the nations around us, even though physically, we are in such close proximity to them, and we must be aware of the very real and present danger we are in if we decide to foster even the smallest of relationships with any non-Jew or to even be around them.

I would just like to conclude by reflecting for a moment on the history of the Jewish people. Every other nation in the world immediately begins to blend in with the country that they are living in, abandoning all the customs of their forefathers in a very short time. We do not find any nation that retains its identity for more than one or two generations when living in a foreign country. Yet the Jews are different. We have been tortured, tempted, and provoked for the past two and a half thousand years to forsake our religion in favor of fame and fortune, and have always resisted these overtures in almost every circumstance. Ironically, the worse we were tortured, the more distant we remained from our tormentors, and when we were treated much better, we began to relent and adopt the ways of the non-Jews. When one contemplates the truths that emerge from the Jews’ astonishing history, one sees clearly what foresight Chazal had and one will realize how it behooves us to always keep in mind that we are sons of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, and we have been brought out of Egypt, and have been given the Torah, and we are elevated far above the nations of the earth in order to set a shining example of how to behave on this earth, and we must always keep in mind that even the smallest connection that we form with the non-Jews around us can have devastating effects.

May we merit to inculcate these words and always be aware of our unique role!