Curses - Balak 5784

 A profile or two antisemites:

Balak, the king of Moav, is afraid.  The Jews are coming and are going to perform genocide on his people and take his land.  It was a fabrication.  Hashem had warned the Jews not to go to war against Moav or take their land, because it was not to be part of the Promised Land until Moshiach comes.  But that didn’t stop Balak from trying to employ a greater antisemite than him, Bilaam.

Bilaam was a known curser.  Hashem gave him great prophetic vision, and our Sages taught that in terms of prophecy he was on the level of Moshe.  But he didn't use it for good.  The Mishnah describes him as an arrogant man with an evil eye.  He had figured out the exact second of every day when Hashem’s wrath is revealed in the world, and he knew that in that moment any curse he gave would be fulfilled.  

He had proven himself previously when the Emorites fought a war against Moav.  He cursed the Moavites, and the Emorites captured a large part of their land.  Now Moav, a mortal enemy of the Midianites, went to Bilaam the Midianite to gang up together against the Jews.  Balak’s messengers pass along Balak's message:  “I know that whoever you bless is blessed and the one you curse is cursed.”  

So, Balak said, “please come and curse this people that are dwelling near me, perhaps I will be able to chase them away from the land”.  Balak, at least, had an excuse.  Maybe he didn’t believe that the Jews would follow Hashem's directive not to go to war against his people.  Bilaam had no reason to hate the Jews, yet he relished the idea.  Not only does he get to curse the Jews who had never done anything to him or his country, but he would get paid for it!  

So when Hashem appears to him in his dream, he asks permission to curse them, but he goes way beyond what Balak requested.  Balak said “please curse them“, using the Hebrew term “Arah li.”  Bilaam requested permission to curse them using the term “kava li.”  I don't know how to differentiate in English between the two Hebrew words for curse, Arah and Kavah, but Rashi points out that Kava is a much more cruel curse than Arah.

Another escalation in Bilaam’s request to Hashem is the extent of the destruction he wanted to bring to the Jews.  As Rashi points out, Balak said that he wanted to “drive them out of the land.”  Bilaam said he wanted to curse them and “drive them out,” meaning to destroy them.  Of course I’m sure if someone asked Bilaam what he was doing he would have said that he was standing up for justice and international law.

As a matter of fact, the situation with Moav, as well as their neighbor Ammon, proves that the Jewish people are not land grabbers and did not steal any land from anyone.  The land of the seven nations, led by Canaan, was the land that Hashem had promised to Avrraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov that their descendents would inherit, specifically and explicitly to Yaakov's lineage.  When they came to take the land back from the squatting nations, they gave them an opportunity to leave peacefully, and the nation of Girgashi did so.  It was only when the other six nations refused to give the Jews back the land that was lawfully theirs that the Jews were forced to go to war.

However the land of the three nations adjacent to Israel, Edom, Ammon and Moav, was not designated as Jewish land, and therefore Hashem had warned them not to fight them.  None of that mattered to those great antisemites Balak and Bilaam.  Balak and his people were, as the Torah says, “disgusted” by the Jewish people.  So they accused them of genocide and attempting to colonize their land.  And Bilaam?  He was in a different country and had nothing to do with this issue, but that didn’t stop him from taking up the false cause, protesting and trying to destroy the Jews.

Just as then Hashem foiled Bilaam’s plot, so too through the ages every attempt to destroy the Jews has failed, and we are here to talk about it.  Yes, we are in exile, and tragically we have suffered many losses. Even Bilaam was successful in causing a plague that killed 24,000 Jews. But in the end, Am Yisrael Chai.  Those who bless us are blessed, as the Torah says, and those who curse us end up with their curses landing on their own heads, as happened to Bilaam.

I encourage you to join me for the upcoming free seminar “How Israel Wins,” Wednesday July 24 at 7:30, where I will be pursuing some of these themes and discussing how we can achieve true and lasting peace for Israel and its neighbors, based on true Jewish values.  Reservations required. chabadpaloalto.com/jli.

(Today is the 12th of Tamuz, a highly auspicious day on the Jewish calendar.  You can see information here.)