This week's portion is one of the most colorful in the Bible, telling the story of the evil king Balak and his attempts to hire the prophet Balaam to curse the people of Israel. Balaam is waylaid by his own donkey, who is miraculously able to talk. In the end, he praises the people of Israel rather than cursing them.
That much is familiar to many people. But there is a twist at the end: the people are corrupted through temptation, and they fornicate with the daughters of the Moabites. What armies and prophets could not do, the lustful women easily accomplished. The result is pain, suffering, plague -- and, eventually, violence.
Jewish philosophy wrestles with the question of lust. There is a famous episode in the Talmud, in Tractate Sanhedrin (link below), in which the people manage to imprison the desire to commit the sin of idolatry. Having succeeded in that effort, they try to imprison the sin of lust, and they are successful in doing so.
But then things begin to go wrong. Without lust, they discover, chickens stop laying eggs. It turns out that lust is part of the essential life-force that makes the world go around. So the people release lust from imprisonment, and they merely blind it, so that desires like incest disappear. As for the rest of them...
I should have noted in my message about the weekly Torah portion that this week is Shabbat Chazon, the Sabbath of Vision. We are about to mourn -- but see through that pain to something better that lies beyond, on the other side.
Wishing you the best vision -- and an incredible reality to follow. It happens!
We begin the final speech of Moses to the people of Israel before they enter the Promised Land. He relates the ups and downs of the years of wandering in the desert, before, finally, the people have the merit to enter the land itself.
This Sabbath always precedes Tisha B'Av, the Ninth of Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. It is the anniversary of the destruction of both of the Holy Temples, and a catch-all for many calamities that befell the Jewish people.
A word on Tisha B'Av. This year I am leaving for an overseas trip during the afternoon of the holiday -- in the middle of a fast day. Not idea, but there was no other choice. But my flight is in the afternoon, which is significant.
We relax some of the harsh, mournful customs of the day in the afternoon. We start to pray normally; we sit on regular chairs; we start to have hope again in the redemption that will, one day, lead us all back from exile to our home.
I'll be taking a trip to a land where an important part of ...
President Trump is in Scotland, playing golf and making big trade deals -- a major deal with the EU, in fact. Meanwhile, there is a global outcry about humanitarian aid to Palestinians (not about the Israeli hostages, mind you).
On top of that, Democrats are at their lowest polling numbers ever -- so they are trying to win control of the House by redistricting in the middle of a 10-year Census cycle. Oh, economic optimism is up, so they have a tough road.
And Tulsi Gabbard's revelations about the Russia collusion investigation make it clear that Obama's lieutenants lied to Congress. How deeply was he himself involved? The media continue to ignore the evidence, but we certainly won't.
Special guests:
Nick Gilbertson - Breitbart News White House correspondent, on EU deal
Frances Martel - Breitbart News foreign editor, on Trump abroad and Russia
John Spencer - urban warfare expert, on humanitarian aid and war in Gaza
Bradley Jaye - Breitbart News congressional correspondent, on the ...
