Hello and welcome to another episode of Covenant and Conversation with me, Rabbi Sachs.

In each new episode, we'll explore a Jewish idea from the Hebrew Bible based on the Torah reading of the week.

Balak, 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 anti-Semitic publication Der Stormer.

How can you possibly read that revolting rubbish, says the first?

The second smiles, what does your paper say?

Let me tell you, the Jews are assimilating, the Jews are arguing, the Jews are disappearing. Now let me tell you what my paper says. The Jews control the banks, the Jews control the media, the Jews control Austria, the Jews control the world. My friend, if you want the good news about the Jews, always read the anti-Semites. An old and bitter joke. Yet it has a point in a history and it

begins with this week's parishes. Some of the most beautiful things ever said about the Jewish people were said

by Bilam. Who can count the dust of Jacob? May my final end be like theirs. How beautiful are your

tents, Jacob, your dwelling places Israel.

A star will come out of Jacob. A sceptre will rise out of Israel.

Bilam was no friend of the Jews. Having failed to curse them, he eventually devised a plan that worked.

He suggested that Moabite women seduce Israelite men and then invite them to take part in their idolatrous worship.

24,000 people died in the subsequent plague that struck the people.

Bilam is numbered by the rabbis as one of only four non-royals mentioned in the Tanakh, who are denied a share in the world to come.

Why then, did God choose that Israel be blessed by Bilam?

Surely there is a principle of Megalgalim Zahutalya Dezakai,

good things come about through good people.

Why did this good thing come about through a bad man?

The answer lies in the principle is stated in proverbs,

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