The Hidden Meaning of the Bilam Story Many questions have rightly been asked about the story of Balak and Bilam and the would-be curses that turned into blessings. Was Bilam a true man of God, or was he a fraud, a magician, a sorcerer, a practitioner of dark arts? Did he have genuine powers? Was […]
Not Reckoned Among the Nations The year is 1933. Two Jews are sitting in a Viennese coffee house, reading the news. One is reading the local Jewish paper, the other the notoriously antisemitic publication Der Stürmer. “How can you possibly read that revolting rubbish?” says the first. The second smiles. “What does your paper say? Let […]
A People that Dwells Alone This is an extraordinary moment in Jewish history, for good and not-so-good reasons. For the first time in almost 4,000 years we have simultaneously sovereignty and independence in the land and state of Israel, and freedom and equality in the Diaspora. There have been times – all too brief – when Jews […]
A People That Dwells Alone One of the most profound and influential comments ever made about Jewish destiny was made by the pagan prophet Bilaam in this week’s sedra: As I see them from the mountain tops, Gaze on them from the heights, Behold it is a people that dwells alone, Not reckoned among the […]
What Makes God Laugh There is an old saying that what makes God laugh is seeing our plans for the future.[1] However, if Tanakh is our guide, what makes God laugh is human delusions of grandeur. From the vantage point of heaven, the ultimate absurdity is when humans start thinking of themselves as godlike. There are […]
A people that dwells alone? In the course of blessing the Jewish people Bilaam uttered words that have come to seem to many[1] to encapsulate Jewish history: How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I doom whom God has not doomed? I see them from mountain tops, Gaze on them from the […]
Leadership and Loyalty Is leadership a set of skills, the ability to summon and command power? Or does it have an essentially moral dimension also? Can a bad man be a good leader, or does his badness compromise his leadership? That is the question raised by the key figure in this week’s parsha, the pagan […]
The Hardest Word to Hear The story of Bilaam, the pagan prophet, begins with a bewildering set of non-sequiturs – a sequence of events that seems to have no logic. First, the background. The Israelites are approaching the end of their forty years in the wilderness. Already they have fought and won wars against Sihon […]
Not Reckoned Among the Nations The year is 1933. Two Jews are sitting in a Viennese coffee house, reading the news. One is reading the local Jewish paper, the other the notoriously antisemitic publication Der Stürmer. “How can you possibly read that revolting rubbish?” says the first. The second smiles. “What does your paper say? Let […]
A People that Dwells Alone? The dictionary defines epiphany as “a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something; a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.” This is the story of an epiphany I experienced one day in May, 2001, and it changed my perception of the Jewish fate. It was Shavuot, […]
