Rabbi's Derasha

Mazal Tov to the Grossman family on the Bris and naming this morning of their son, Yehoshua.  And welcome to the Mohel, R' Moshe Baruch Parnes and family.

Kol HaKavod

Kol HaKavod to Yaakov Tuchman, one of our honorees a few weeks ago, on the successful defense of his PhD thesis this past week.

Rabbi Feldman's Derasha

There are two Parashiot this week as we finally catch up to the reading in Israel.  We have been out of sync since Shavuot although we are less aware of it now.  Normally, when this happens, there is a steady stream of Israeli visitors listening to the Parasha here which they already heard the week before.  They often wonder whether they need to make up whatever Parasha they have missed.  (They don’t, according to almost all authorities.)  

This question, at least in this form, has not come up at all this year.  We look forward to a return of the phenomenon of Israeli visitors, as we look forward to the phenomenon of visiting Israel.  The only way people from EB can go to Israel now is by pledging to stay there, as the Behars and the Tuchmans plan to do over the next few weeks.

We wait to resync the Parashiot until this week for mostly practical reasons.  But there is a thematic reason that presents as well.  One is always looking to see if double Parashiot match up thematically.  In this case, we know the two are sequential.  King Balak goes looking for Bilaam, a mercenary to curse the Jews, because he is frightened by the Jewish conquests at the end of Parashat Chukat.  

But they also form the beginning of the second half of Bamidbar.  The book divides into two equal parts of five Parashiot each.  The first five take place during the second year in the desert.  The last five take place in the last year in the desert.  Between the first and second halves, there is almost 38 years of silence.  These two Parashiot are the first two on the other side of that silence.  Much has changed but the most important change is a shift in terms of human agency.  The wars conducted in Chukat are conducted not by direct miracle but by human agency.  Hashem is involved of course but not through clear miracles. 
 
Into this situation rides Bilaam.  The back and forth negotiations between King Balak’s servants and Bilaam form a well-known puzzle.  How exactly does Bilaam finally receive Hashem’s permission to go with his suitors, only to have Hashem turn on him so quickly afterward?  It happens in a flash; Bilaam seems justified in his grievance, a victim of an angry and capricious G-d.  If he left without permission, then Hashem’s anger and harassment would be understandable.  But if has permission, what gives?

The key to this puzzle is found in a general attitude from Hashem and in the change of a small word.  The attitude is that Hashem does not generally stand in the way of a person’s will.  If a person wants to do something, the path is usually clear.  So when Bilaam comes back to ask for the second time if he can go with King Balak’s servants and pursue their plans, he is granted permission.  

But permission is not a blank check.  Hashem agrees by saying, “Kum Lech Eetam,” rise and go with them (22:20).  In the next verse, however, the narration says that Bilaam rose in the morning and walked “Eem” -- with -- Balak’s ministers.  Both times, Bilaam is “with” the others but that’s just in English.  In Hebrew, the first word is “Eetam,” and the second time it is “Eem.”  They both translate as “with,” but there is an asymmetry in the two sides when the word is “Eetam” and there is equality and shared purpose when the word is “Eem.”  Hashem’s permission was granted so long as Bilaam did not go with Balak’s men as equals.  Hashem’s anger comes when Bilaam embarks on the journey in concert and common purpose.  For that, no permission was granted.

Chazal see in Bilaam a person with an uncommon connection with Hashem.  He is considered no less than the prophet for the non-Jewish world.  But they also see a person given to sacrificing his agency on the altar of greed and honor.  He is contrasted with Avraham Avinu in Pirkei Avot (5:19) in this point: that Avraham had full control of his passions while Bilaam too often identified his self with his passions.  He is unable to resist their pull.  He cannot goes his own way -- he must go “with” them.

The last half of Bamidbar will play out in the hands of human agency.  The Jewish people will conquer anything in their way when they are in control, and they will fall, as in the end of Parashat Balak, when they lose control.  It is on them, however.  Will they go their own way or succumb to those around them?

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My mother’s Sheloshim passed today, Tamuz 11.  There is a reference to the plague at the end of Balak that I wanted to mention.  The reference is about this section but it is not here.  It is in Parashat Mattot (32:16).  The plague at the end of our Parasha is remembered there as a plague “BaAdat Hashem,” among the assembly of Hashem.  A 17th century Sefer called the Chut shel Chesed (R’ Eliyahu ben Avraham Shlomo HaKohen) finds it strange that though we are referring to people who died in a plague which came as a punishment, they were still referred to as Hashem’s assembly.  He therefore points out that those who die in a time of plague are often deprived of normal honors.  Fewer people participate in taking care of them after they die and fewer attend the burial.  This diminishment in honor results in atonement, the Sefer says, which is why these people are still called Hashem’s assembly.
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My mother did not have Covid but she died in a time of Covid and her last months -- even her last days -- were shaped by the Covid contortions.  She could not have family close by except at the very end, and she could not have family escort her to her final resting place.  By late March, it was already clear that this could very well be the picture, and it was, as I pointed out at the time of the funeral, painfully fitting for a woman who had spent so much time going about things in her solitary way.  It was a reminder of how much she had accomplished alone, of how many friends she had made, and how many lives she had affected through the alliances she had helped forge.  And now we learn that her isolation because of the plague will serve as an atonement.  She always had a nobility in her solitude, and now she also has a singular reward.