Today's date and time:

Sermon for Sidra Balak
June 2008
by Rabbi Geoffrey Hyman

As we read in this week’s Sidra, Bilam is a wayward prophet who wavers between devotion to G-d and promoting idolatry. He is used by Moab and Midian who are intimidated by their fears that the newly emerged Jewish nation will conquer them. “The Jews will take over” – nothing new! So realising that it is no use fighting them, as they acknowledge that there is a higher cause behind their success, they ask Bilam to go and curse them and so he attempts. G-d tells him he can’t, even his faithful, talking donkey tells him he can’t, but he tries and eventually fails. In fact he ends up blessing them. But the story doesn’t end there.

For we read in chapter 25, Israel is now in Shittim: “And the people begin to get involved with the daughters of Moab”, (as can be seen from later chapter 31:16, this involved also the Midianites and was plotted by Bilam himself). Eventually there is an Israelite and a Midianite woman publicly flaunting their relationship before Moses and Israel, whilst at the same time, people are dying by a plague because of the whole episode. But this Israelite stands defiant; he wants his relationship to be recognised.

Ladies and gentlemen, as King Solomon wrote: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Bilam knew the future of Israel that they would outlive and survive all the nations of his days and beyond, but so too did he know that one thing would weaken them, assimilation and intermarriage. And so he conceived his plot to send in the Moabite women and we see the results.

Remaining loyal to our people and playing our individual roles to strengthen our people is incumbent on us all. Our greatest enemy is assimilation and especially those that assault our Jewish identity. It is this that has plagued us from the very beginning of our nationhood – today’s Sidra is but one such example. And so down the ages we have always had those people who have wanted to challenge the Torah on its laws on relationships or on “who is a Jew.”

And so we live in the absurd world of where a Jewish school, JFS, was taken to court by a fellow Jew to challenge its admissions policy on “who is a Jew” in order to qualify for a place. Thank G-d the court upheld the policy of the JFS. We are living in a Jewish world where the “status” issue is not going to go away, but the Orthodox world – including us here – must remain strong and vigilant in its resolve to remain loyal to the Torah, and refuse all attempts to weaken the status of our people.

May G-d grant us all the strength to serve Him with a faithful heart.