Yeshiva
Beit Midrash
- Torah Portion and Tanach
- Bamidbar
- Balak
This is indeed a potent plan, by a dangerous pair of villains. Chazal note that if you take the last two letters of Bilaam & the last two letters of Balak, you form the word Amalek, our arch-enemy. What Amalek could not accomplish by strength, they will try to do by slander.
Sound familiar? It should – this is exactly the same evil strategy we face in our own day. The Arabs, prodded by the Palestinians, have B"H failed to dislodge us from our land in war after war. And so, they park their tanks & unleash their tongue, trying mightily to malign us in every possible forum, hoping to sway world opinion against us & thereby advance their cause.
If you ever wondered why Chazal place such a major emphasis on speaking the truth, on employing Lashon Tov rather than Lashon Hara, you just have to tune into any media any day of the week anywhere in the world, to see the influence & power that invisible words can have on the multitudes.
Many commentators ask the obvious question, "If Bilaam was such an effective master of the supernatural, why did he not use his powers to bless Midian, rather than to curse Israel?" The answer to that question is also part of our everyday life here in the Holy Land. Our enemies, it’s often been noted, are not so interested in attaining their own state as they are in preventing us from having ours.
What is the solution to all this? It’s exceedingly difficult to disprove lies that are spoken against us (can you prove you never robbed a bank?!) especially when the other side has already made up their minds as to our guilt. Of course, we have to do our utmost to speak the truth & defend our legitimate rights. But at the end of the day, we have to trust in Hashem to do for us exactly what He did in our Sedra – turn the curses flung at us into blessings.
And so He has. The "curse" that Israel was desolate for millennia enabled us to return to a place that was virtually abandoned. The refusal of most of the world to help arm Israel in our early years led us to become fiercely independent & creative. And the almost complete lack of neighboring countries to visit motivated us to develop amazing hotels & resorts within our very own borders.
Menachem Begin once told Anwar Sadat: "The greatest achievement is to turn an enemy into a friend." May we turn all our enemies into friends & all curses into brachot.
Rabbis in Midrash
Lessons
fast navigation
Hosha'ana Rabba FLYDUBAI & HOSHANA RABBA- ANI VAHU HOSHIA NA- I & HIM SAVE US
"Ani vaHu Hoshia Na", "I and Him, Save Us". We don't just pray to Him, but we also pray to and for ourselves that we should emulate and educate our children to have that instinctive altruism with which He created the world. President Trump seemed amused about Yaniv Hayon, our PLUMBER who confidently worked with G-d like Superman (he learned from a pilot on a TV show!) to save 174 lives on the Dubai hijacking, but we in Israel are totally accustomed already 78 years to our plumbers, teachers, garbage-men, rabbis, farmers & doctors being Hashem's shlichim! This is what Zionism is about.
Moreshet Shaul Hashem Is your Shadow – part I
Based on Siach Shaul, Pirkei Machshava V’Hadracha p. 420 – an address from 1941
P'ninat Mishpat A Non-Contractor in Changing Times – part I
(based on ruling 85128 of the Eretz Hemdah-Gazit Rabbinical Courts)
Moreshet Shaul Our King on Rosh Hashana, Our Father on Yom Kippur.
Based on Aroch Siach, p. 221 (Rav Shaul Yisraeli)
