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TORAH PORTION: BALAK

Parashat Balak

July 20, 2024 | 8 Tammuz 5784

Torah: Numbers 22:2–25:9 Triennial: Numbers 22:39–23:26

Haftorah: Micah 5:6–6:8

Dear Torah Sparks Community,

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Yours,

The Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center Team

We believe that in times of great strife, words of Torah can provide stability and comfort in our lives.

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We stand together for a strong and secure Israel.

In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Torah portion by Bex Stern-Rosenblatt called "Warring and Winning", Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein asks shares insights from Hassidut in a video titled "Our Public and Private Selves", and Ilana Kurshan reflects on the parashah through poetry in a piece called "From the Ass's Mouth".

D'VAR TORAH

Warring and Winning

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt

Parashah

We are getting closer and closer to the end. After generations of waiting, suffering, growing, wandering, we stand poised to enter the promised land. We are numerous as the stars in the sky, as many as the grains of sand on the shore. The generation that left Egypt has perished, but we are left, dewy-eyed and optimistic. And we are ready for our storybook ending. We are ready to live happily ever after. 

Our happily ever after is not an end to history. The  most utopian vision we can imagine here in the Torah is one in which people look at us, want to kill us for no good reason, but are unable to wipe us out because God is on our side. Our utopian vision is endless war, but wars we win. Our utopian vision is the other side being forced to acknowledge that as much as they want us dead, they are powerless to accomplish it. 

Our parashah starts with Balak, King of Moab.  For the first time since we were in Egypt, the narration of the Torah shifts. We see ourselves through Balak’s eyes. We behold ourselves not as a ragtag group of survivors but as a powerful and numerous people. Balak looks at us and sees a force of nature, so many people that we can cover the very “eye of the earth.” This is the same language the narrator had used to describe the plague of locusts back in Egypt. Just as Pharaoh saw us as too numerous for him, a swarming mass, so too does Balak. But Balak knows his history. He knows that we have come out of Egypt, that we have left Pharoah behind. He fears that we will be just like the locusts that “consumed all the grass of the land and every fruit of the tree that the hail had left, and nothing green in tree or in grass of the field was left in all the land of Egypt.” In our wake, there will be nothing left. We have just come from Hormah, where we inflicted herem, total destruction, on the Canaanites. Balak knows that. His people know that. And they are awash with deep dread. 

The answer they seek is a sort of divine intervention. We imagine our enemies as in such fear of us that they seek help from our God, knowing no one else can save them. Our power is not just our numbers and our record, it is our covenant. And God too is bound by that covenant. The words that come out of Balaam’s mouth assure us that God is in relationship only with us, that God chooses us. 

But the words also tell of battles to come. We learn of future fights with Amalek when Saul faces off with Agag, and of wars to come with Moab for King David to face. We will win these battles. Our God, “consumes nations, his foes, and their bones he does crush and smashes their arrows.” But we will have to fight them. When Balaam looks and sees our tents, saying “how goodly your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel,” Balaam sees us arrayed for war. Our tents protect our dwelling places, our fighting protects our Temple. 

Eternal war, even eternally won wars, are not the heritage we might wish for ourselves standing on the edge of Canaan. We want back into Eden. We want plowshares instead of swords. It is not to be. Even the donkey knew that. She saw the angel with a fiery sword guarding the path, just as the cherubim blocked the path back into Eden. So we must live with a warring and winning ever after.

HASSIDUT

Our Public and Private Selves

Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein

Insights from Hassidut

*

Rabbi Daniel Silverstein teaches Hassidut at the CY and directs Applied Jewish Spirituality (www.appliedjewishspirituality.org). In these weekly videos, he shares Hassidic insights on the parashah or calendar.

WHITE FIRE: POETRY ON THE PARASHAH

From the Ass's Mouth

Ilana Kurshan

God gave me voice. I spoke just once in time

To try to save from harm my awful master,

Bilaam. The clear-eyed one, or so they say.

(If clear-eyed, why’d he walk into disaster?)

Balak the king of Moav summoned him

To curse a nation populous and growing

My master said why not? He’d take the gig. 

(Bilaam’s a decent seer. But not all-knowing.)

God warned him it was ill-advised, but heck,

The king had offered ample sums of cash

He took a risk. Together we set out

(I sensed he was impetuous and rash.)

We left home bright and early, made good time.

Until we reached a very narrow path

An angel blocked the way! I swerved thrice sharply

Bilaam was mad. He beat me in his wrath.

Because he could not stop, it seems, for angels,

I kindly stopped for him. How dare I halt? 

My master, if he had a sword, would kill me

(I’m just an ass. It’s surely all my fault.)

But I’m not just an ass, for I have spoken.

God furnished me with power to explain. 

My words, henceforth, recorded in the Torah!

God gave me voice. Some say ‘twas foreordained. 

My master is the prophet, seer, and poet –

But once I spoke. And always I will know it.

*

The Talmud teaches that the Torah was given in black fire on white fire (Y. Shekalim 6:1). The black fire is the letters of the Torah scroll, and the white fire is the parchment background. In this column, consisting of a poem on each parashah, I will try to illuminate the white fire of Torah – the midrashim, stories, and interpretations that carve out the negative space of the letters and give them shape.

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