Parshah • July 2022
Balak – Despite All Odds
Some people just thrive on being prophets of doom. One such person was the King Balak in this week’s parsha of the same name. Noting the approach of the Jewish…
Some people just thrive on being prophets of doom. One such person was the King Balak in this week’s parsha of the same name. Noting the approach of the Jewish…
Balak was an unsavoury character bent on destroying the Jewish people. He spent fortunes trying. So why name a Torah Parsha after him? The nature of the world is to…
In this double Sedra of Chukas-Balak, we encounter the enigmatic and perplexing personnage of Bila’am. Endowed with extremely high spiritual capacities (some say equivalent to Moses) he presents as an…
When a leading shaman magician, King Balak, teams up with powerful wizard, Bila’am, to curse the Jewish people, except that the curse is transformed by G-d into a blessing. Mistakenly…
While Bil’am seems to possess mystical evil powers, these can only exist in a vacuum devoid of good. That’s how his intended curse is transformed into a blessing, which is…
In this week’s Sedra we read of an ethical dilemma. Pinchas spears a foreign princess of the Moabites who is luring away a prince of Israel, Zimri – killing both…
Why name it after an evil non Jewish soothsayer? There are higher spiritual powers – but for bad as well as good That’s why we don’t access ‘fortune tellers’ and…