This Shabbos, David summarized for us Efroni’s commentary on
the parsha. Efroni points out how Balak
can not take no for an answer. He
continuously asks the non-Jewish prophet Balaam to curse the Jewish
people. Balaam keeps saying "no". It is not until Balaam's purpose becomes to bless and praise the Jews as specifically directed by Hashem, that Balaam agrees to go. Dave W commented that the entire parsha is dedicated to this conflict, whereas with Jewish prophets this is not necessary at all.
Efroni describes the history of
the families of the Moab leaders, and their basic character flaw of believing
that Hashem is like an idol. Efroni uses
the example of Haron, who believes that just like Avraham he is going to come
out just fine after going through a fire. Haron,
and the other Moab’s, do not realize that simply being righteous and worshipping
Hashem does not result in Hashem becoming a servant of the people. The reason Avraham came out on the other
side, is because Hashem had plans for Avraham to start a religion and nation of
people with a purpose. Haron burns in
the fire, because that is what happens if you go into a fire. Hashem did not have any plans that necessitated
the survival of Haron.
We discussed Rav Yeager’s commentary on the parsha. Balaam is known as the greatest non-Jewish
prophet to ever live. Just like Jewish
prophets, such as Moshe, Balaam is able to see and convey the history of the
Jewish people and talk of the future including the coming of the messianic era. However there are big differences between
Balaam and Moshe. Moshe did not have to
be forced to use his free will to effectively serve Hashem. On the other hand, Balaam needed to have his “eyes
opened” by Hashem. We see this with the incident involving the donkey. Balaam was not inclined to bless and
praise the Jewish people, however after receiving instruction and becoming aware he was able to do so.
We discussed this Shabbos, why the non-Jews were given a
prophet, which may have been as a response to their jealousy. We talked about the very tiny fraction of the
world’s population that we as Jews represent, but the tremendous importance of
our people as can be seen by the large amount of attention that we get. This can lead to envy both historically and in the present. The non-Jews were given Balaam as a prophet,
but as we can see from the parsha, this prophet does not carry out the will of Hashem's until he is forced to do so.
David talked about how we all have this free will, and that it is great we live in a country in which we have the freedom to use it. On this Independence day holiday, we should
all give some thought to this, and how fortunate we are to have freedom. But with this freedom comes
responsibility. We have the responsibility
to carry out a purpose.
This Shabbos, David summarized an article, “No Peace for the
Wicked”, written by his father, Dr. George N. Schlesinger. The article was published in “Chai” magazine
back in 1994. The article starts off
discussing how those with a conscience have trouble having peace and sleeping
at night when they have done something wrong (or not done something
right). Those who are not wicked in
general, or only have some wickedness, have enough conscience to be bothered when they transgress.
The article continues to describe how there are some that
are so wicked they have no conscience at all.
These people can sleep at night regardless of what they have done,
however their wickedness leads to them never finding any peace. The article uses as an example, Hitler. Hitler was able to sleep at night, but ended up losing the war. The article points out how Germany
may have been able to acquire an atomic bomb if the smartest and brightest had
not been considered the undesirables by hitler.
The article goes on to discuss how those who are wicked, let the wickedness
control them. This wickedness and the accompanying
emotions, drive their behavior, rather than intelligence and logic. The wickedness leads towards a lack of trust
in anyone, which results in those that are wicked not being able to receive the
help of others.
After discussing the article, we moved on to discuss Tefillin. The general purpose of tefillin is to “elevate
the sparks of kedusah”. In other words,
by engraving words of Torah onto physical objects, we symbolize our purpose of
bringing spirituality to a physical world.
We discussed how we must treat tefillin with utmost respect, certainly
taking off tefillin before going into a restroom. We also must only wear tefillin when we are conscious
of it, so that it has become the practice to take tefillin off and not wear it the entire day.
We studied some Talmud as part of the Daf Yomi program. In the section, when there are droughts there
are procedures that are followed in order to bring about rain. We do not want to “use up” the people with the
greatest abilities to bring the rain about, so we look towards those who have
just enough ability to do this.
We talked about some of the new Jewish communities
that have developed. Jeff B talked about
the community in Boca, and Dave W talked about the community in Destin.
Next week we will have a special Kiddush at Young Israel at 11:00 AM on the occasion of David’s father’s yeirtzeit.
This is a summary of what we discussed. No Halachic rulings are intended or should be inferred
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