Not Reckoned Among the Nations (Balak, Covenant & Conversation)

The Rabbi Sacks Legacy

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 627 Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2022

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to Rabbi Sacks' commentary on the weekly Torah portion. Chukat and Balak were a double parsha back in 2015 when Rabbi Sacks originally wrote the Ethics series and recorded the audio for Chukat. There is no recording available for Balak from the Ethics C&C series, so the Rabbi Sacks Legacy Trust has selected this piece, originally written and recorded by Rabbi Sacks in 2019, to share with you this week. You can find the full written article on Balak, "Not Reckoned Among the Nations" available to read, print, and share, by visiting: https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/balak/not-reckoned-among-the-nations/ To read the Balak article later added by Rabbi Sacks to this series for the Ethics book, please visit https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/balak/the-curse-of-loneliness/ For more articles, videos, and other material from Rabbi Sacks, please visit www.RabbiSacks.org and follow @RabbiSacks. Covenant & Conversation is kindly supported by the Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation in memory of Maurice and Vivienne Wohl z”l.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Balak, not reckoned among the nations.
0:05.0	The year is 1933.
0:07.0	Two Jews are sitting in a Viennese coffee house reading the news.
0:12.0	One is reading the local Jewish paper, the other the notoriously anti-Semitic publication Der Stormer.
0:18.0	How can you possibly read that revolting rubbish, says the first?
0:22.6	The second smiles. What does your paper say? Let me tell you, the Jews are assimilating,
0:27.0	the Jews are arguing, the Jews are disappearing. Now let me tell you what my paper says. The Jews
0:32.4	control the banks, the Jews control the media, the Jews control Austria, the Jews control the world.
0:37.6	My friend, if you want the good news about the Jews, always read the anti-Semites.
0:44.1	An old and bitter joke.
0:46.3	Yet it has a point in a history and it begins with this week's parisher.
0:50.1	Some of the most beautiful things ever said about the Jewish people were said by Bilam.
0:54.8	Who can count the dust of Jacob? May my final end be like theirs.
0:58.6	How beautiful are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling place is Israel.
1:02.2	A star will come out of Jacob. A sceptre will rise out of Israel.
1:07.3	Bilam was no friend of the Jews.
1:10.1	Having failed to curse them, he eventually devised a plan that worked.
1:13.8	He suggested that Moabite women seduce Israelite men and then invite them to take part in their
1:19.2	idolatrous worship. Twenty-four thousand people died in the subsequent plague that struck the
1:25.1	people. Bilam is numbered by the rabbis as one of only four
1:28.9	non-royals mentioned in the Tanakh, who are denied a share in the world to come. Why then,
1:35.0	do God choose that Israel be blessed by Bilam? Surely there is a principle of Megalgolim Zahutalya
	...

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