פרשת בלק

In this week’s Parsha, Balak hires Bilam to curse the Jewish people because he realized that this was the only viable way to neutralize the very real threat the Jewish people represented to Balak’s existence on this earth. Bilam was all too happy to accept this particular mission, because he hated the Jews more then Balak. In his enthusiasm, Bilam woke up early in the morning and saddled his donkey himself in order to set out on his quest to curse the Jewish people, but on his way, he encountered a little roadblock. Bilam’s donkey saw an angel who was standing on the road with a drawn sword ready to strike Bilam. In order to protect her master, the donkey first deviated from the path it was on and went into the nearby field. Bilam then hit his donkey for the first time. The donkey then tried to stall by squashing Bilam’s leg against the wall, but this too only infuriated Bilam, and he hit her again. And finally, the donkey refused to move, which earned her a third thrashing before Hashem opened up her mouth and she rebuked Bilam for his mistreatment of her. The word she used in her rebuke was, “Why did you strike me these three ‘Regalim’?” The simple translation of the word “regalim” is times. Meaning, the donkey was asking Bilam why he hit her those three times. But Rashi points out that the donkey was hinting to Bilam that if he was going up against a nation who kept the 3 regalim (holidays), there is no way he would succeed. However, the question needs to be asked, why specifically were the Jewish holidays the Mitzvah which Bilam should have been most afraid of? The Jews keep 613 Mitzvos, each one being extremely powerful in its nature to protect and defend the Jewish people. Why were our holidays singled out as the most formidable ally to protect us against Bilam’s verbal attack?

The Shem Mishmuel deals with this difficulty, and he explains that the non-Jews also perform the will of God in many respects. They have laws governing morality, honesty, murder, and many other subjects which are very much in line with God’s will. But there is one area which the non-Jews are completely unwilling to give up, and that is their desires. One will not find a non-Jew who is willing to curb his desires, and give up his entire “self” in order to do the will of Hashem. The Jewish holidays are the primary illustration of the Jews’ excellence in this trait. During each one of the three Jewish holidays, a Jew leaves his home, and the comfort and security that this provides, not knowing if he will come back to find anything in the place he left his wife and children, and travels up to three days in order to get closer to Hashem. In fact, the Rambam holds that if a Jew does not own property, he is exempt from this commandment. One thing is certain – during these three times a year, a Jew shows unequivocally his loyalty and his willingness to sacrifice everything he owns to come close to his Creator, and this Mitzvah was therefore a powerful defense for the Jews’ cause, that Bilam sought to destroy.

But the Shem Mishmuel, suggests another more subtle reason why it was so important for Bilam to negate the importance of the Jewish holidays. The Mishna in Avos teaches us that Bilam was afflicted with three very poor character traits. He was stingy and couldn’t see the good in other people, he was arrogant, and he was a pleasure seeker. These three traits are exactly what the Mishna tells us to stay away from. Avraham Avinu, on the other hand, possessed the exact opposite traits. He was generous and saw the good in his fellow man, humble, and would attempt to minimize the amount of pleasure he could take from this earth. The Mishna goes on to say that anyone who excels in these three traits is from the students of Avraham Avinu, and one who does poorly in them is from the students of Bilam. These three traits are responsible for the three most insidious crimes in the Torah – crimes which a person must even give his life to avoid doing. Stinginess is a direct result of jealousy, and is the primary motive for murder. Arrogance is a denial of God’s omnipotence, and is therefore a form of idolatry, and will certainly lead to idolatry. And one who cannot control his passions, will obviously be helpless in the arena of the forbidden relations. Interestingly enough, there is another Mishna in Avos which shows how the Jewish people use the good part of these three traits to hold up the world. The world stands on Torah, prayer, and kindness. Torah can only be produced by a person who is free of his passions, and conversely, when a person is engrossed in Torah, he will not be drawn after his passions, as the Rambam says, one only finds perverse thoughts inside of an idle mind. Prayer can only be successful in a humble person, which makes perfect sense since a person who knows who he is standing in front of is incapable of arrogance. And kindness is obviously the opposite of jealousy. The three holidays which the Jews celebrate are also congruent with these three pillars which the world stands on. Shavuos obviously represents the study of Torah. Pesach represents the service of prayer, which is also called “Avodah”, or service, and the primary focus of the Pesach holiday, was the Pesach offering which was offered in the Beis Hamikdash. And Succos represents kindness, since the Succos holiday comes out during the grain harvest, a time which is abundant with commandments of kindness and providing for the poor people. Bilam’s sole goal was to convert the world to his way of thinking and to convince the world to become stingy, haughty, and seekers of pleasure. But his donkey patiently explained to him that there was no way he would win against the Jews, who spent their entire lives fighting these three sinister traits by keeping all three holidays, year after year, and always strengthening the three pillars of the world!

The one point which I think we can all take away from these interesting equations is how important it is to spend our lives trying to uproot these three primary dreadful traits from our hearts, and all their sister traits, and replace them with good and positive qualities by excelling in Torah, prayer, and kindness. As difficult as it is to deracinate these powerful inclinations inside of a person, he should take comfort in the fact that after he gets through the initial hellish stages of growth, it will get a lot easier. The Gemorah in Yuma (38a) says, “The House of R’ Shilah taught ‘once a person has been tested with an Aveirah twice, and passed successfully, he will never stumble on that sin again’, because Hashem will help him to succeed”. We see from this Gemorah that while in the beginning, it is very difficult to train a person to remove his “Bilam” character traits, if he persists at it, it will get a lot easier.

May we all merit to extricate ourselves from Bilam’s school, and join Avraham’s school!