Parashat Balak and the 17th of Tammuz

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Balak, a wild story about a talking donkey, angels, false prophets turned to true ones, and a curse that becomes a blessing. This Shabbat is also the 17^th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz. Though traditional observance of this fast day is moved to after Shabbat so as not to decrease the peace and joy of the Sabbath, we are told that this is the date on which five calamities befell the Jewish people: Moses broke the two tablets of stone on Mount Sinai; the daily tamid offering ceased to be brought; during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, the city walls were breached (proceeding to the destruction of the Second Temple); prior to Bar Kokhba's revolt, Roman military leader Apostomus burned a Torah scroll; an idol was erected in the Temple. This date begins the three weeks of mourning that lead up to Tisha B’Av, the date on which both Temples were destroyed by the Babylonians and the Romans, on which the Bar Kokhba revolt was fully crushed, on which the Jews were expelled from medieval England, and on which the Final Solution was determined in Wannsee.

Now, these are all terrible things, and most of them had lasting effects on the Jewish people. The most egregious atrocities were curses brought upon us by “enemy” nations. Unlike in the story of the prophet Balaam in this week’s Torah portion, these aggressors were not thwarted in time, and they were successful in bringing seeming ruin to the people. And yet, we survived. We thrived. And we will outlive all those who seek to destroy us.

When the non-Israelite prophet Balaam seeks to curse the Israelites on behalf of the Moabite king Balak, he is instead moved by the spirit of the Lord to speak the words that become the start to our Mah Tovu prayer: How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places O Israel. His curses were literally turned into blessings. We, the Jewish people, have managed to make some of the tragedies that have befallen us into blessings as well. We were slaves in Egypt and now we have the beautiful festival of Passover. We survived the attempted genocide of ancient Persia and now we have the feast of frivolity, Purim. The Babylonians destroyed our First Temple, but our ancestors and prophets maintained their Judaism in exile as best they could, and eventually built a second one. The Romans destroyed that one too, and we created synagogues, wrote the Talmud, and instituted rabbinic Judaism and prayers in lieu of sacrifices. Europe forced conversions, terrorized our communities, and kicked us out of nearly every country in the continent, so we picked up and formed new communities: in the Pale of Settlement, in the Holy Land, in the New World. We have known at least since the 3^rd century CE that wherever we go, that is our homeland, that we are a resilient people who will form sacred communities wherever we find ourselves.

I often say, when we sing Mah Tovu, that what makes the tents of the Israelites lovely, what makes our synagogues a blessing, isn’t just the physical location and excellent design of the building, but the people in it. The love, the spirituality, the kinship that fills the space, that is what makes our houses of worship and meeting places beautiful and allows us build up a world of justice and love that helps us survive through difficult times. Even as we argue through our differences as Jews tend to do, may we all work to build unity and strength with our wider community and turn curses into blessings for our people, and for the world. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.