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...
This is my first broadcast from the new office and studio in Washington, DC, where I'll be for a couple of years my neighborhood back in L.A. cleans up -- and as we follow the Trump administration from a little closer up than usual.
Topics:
- The anniversary of the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump
- The escalating tariff battle with various different trading partners
- The future of the Middle East peace talks, and ongoing antisemitism
- The Jeffrey Epstein files and whether they mean anything at all
- The continued crisis of the Texas floods, and stories of heroism and survival
And more!
Special guests:
- James Rosen - Newsmax chief Washington correspondent
- Bob Price - Breitbart News Texas reporter, on the ongoing floods
- Robert Cahill - Trafalgar Polling, on a new alliance of reliable pollsters
- Rabbi Yaakov Menken - Coalition for Jewish Values - on Israel & antisemitism
Tune in: 7-10 p.m. ET, 4-7 p.m. PT
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This week’s portion tells the grand story of the prophet who tried to curse people of Israel and instead ended up blessing them.
I am reminded that these portions continue to be relevant anew, as this particular reading lent the title for Israel’s recent 12 Day War against Iran, “Operation Rising Lion.”
This week's portion includes the commandment of the red heifer -- one of the classic "irrational" commandments whose fulfillment is an expression of faith. It also includes the regrettable episode in which Moses strikes the rock.
I referred to this story in a wedding speech last night. Why was Moses punished for striking the rock in Numbers, when he struck the rock without incident in Exodus -- both for the purpose of providing water to the people?
The answer is that in the interim, the Jewish people had received the Torah, which is like the marriage contract between the people of Israel and God. In a marriage, you do not resolve things by breaking boundaries, but through love.
The additional reading, from Judges Chapter 11, is the story of Jephthah (Yiftach), a man whom the leaders spurn, but to whom they must turn to save the nation. The parallels to our present political circumstances are striking.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Fourth of July!
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