A Thought On Parshas Balak
A Thought On Parshas Balak
"...tamus nafshi mos yesharim v'tehi acharisi kamohu..." (22:10)
"... may my soul die the death of the righteous and let my end be as theirs..."
Some years ago I was talking with my physician during a check up. He is a religious man and we were talking about our respective yeshiva backgrounds. He said to me that one thing he had been working on for many years was why belief in an ultimate afterlife is so fundamental to our faith system, yet it is not an explicit commandment nor clearly sourced in our Torah. I told him that I had been accumulating material on this and would one day share my findings with him.
Rabbeinu Chaim Paltiel focuses on the above verse. What kind of wish is this that the wicked Bilaam expresses? Here he is having a vision and what he dwells on is how he looks forward to dying like a Jew! What was going through the man's mind at the moment?
He suggests that this must be a proof from the Torah that there is an afterlife for us. Given that Bilaam was speaking as a conduit for the Divine (otherwise the entire parsha would not have been mentioned in the eternal Torah, nor would we have had verses which could actually glimpse into his thought process, something that no man-written passage could possibly do), he must have seen something profound and real in his vision. If what emerges in his vision is this wistful plea for a death like the righteous Jews, it must be that there is a goal which is attained with death. If it is not posterity or legacies which make death worth dying for, or life worth living for, it must be that transcendent form of immortality known as the afterlife of the soul.
He then notes that the phrase mos yesharim - death of the righteous - equals in gematria- value the words avos ha'olam - the eternal ancestors. This is of course an allusion to our patriarchal figures whose spiritual immortality lives on for us. A further allusion to their, and our, and Bilaam's aspired, afterlife can be found within part of the prior verse (23:9). Over there, Bilaam proclaimed that he foresaw "a nation which would dwell alone" - le'vadad yishkon. Those two words add up to 420. This equals precisely the gematria-value of the words b'yamei moshiach - in the times of the messiah. According to this interpretation, we have the theological axiom of an afterlife and of a messianic era within the overt words of Bilaam's vision, and within the latent remazim of those same words.
Once again, our Master Rabbeinu Chaim Paltiel has enlightened an aspect of our Torah reading through his insightful use of sod and his artful application of remez.
Wishing you a good Shabbos. D Fox
"...tamus nafshi mos yesharim v'tehi acharisi kamohu..." (22:10)
"... may my soul die the death of the righteous and let my end be as theirs..."
Some years ago I was talking with my physician during a check up. He is a religious man and we were talking about our respective yeshiva backgrounds. He said to me that one thing he had been working on for many years was why belief in an ultimate afterlife is so fundamental to our faith system, yet it is not an explicit commandment nor clearly sourced in our Torah. I told him that I had been accumulating material on this and would one day share my findings with him.
Rabbeinu Chaim Paltiel focuses on the above verse. What kind of wish is this that the wicked Bilaam expresses? Here he is having a vision and what he dwells on is how he looks forward to dying like a Jew! What was going through the man's mind at the moment?
He suggests that this must be a proof from the Torah that there is an afterlife for us. Given that Bilaam was speaking as a conduit for the Divine (otherwise the entire parsha would not have been mentioned in the eternal Torah, nor would we have had verses which could actually glimpse into his thought process, something that no man-written passage could possibly do), he must have seen something profound and real in his vision. If what emerges in his vision is this wistful plea for a death like the righteous Jews, it must be that there is a goal which is attained with death. If it is not posterity or legacies which make death worth dying for, or life worth living for, it must be that transcendent form of immortality known as the afterlife of the soul.
He then notes that the phrase mos yesharim - death of the righteous - equals in gematria- value the words avos ha'olam - the eternal ancestors. This is of course an allusion to our patriarchal figures whose spiritual immortality lives on for us. A further allusion to their, and our, and Bilaam's aspired, afterlife can be found within part of the prior verse (23:9). Over there, Bilaam proclaimed that he foresaw "a nation which would dwell alone" - le'vadad yishkon. Those two words add up to 420. This equals precisely the gematria-value of the words b'yamei moshiach - in the times of the messiah. According to this interpretation, we have the theological axiom of an afterlife and of a messianic era within the overt words of Bilaam's vision, and within the latent remazim of those same words.
Once again, our Master Rabbeinu Chaim Paltiel has enlightened an aspect of our Torah reading through his insightful use of sod and his artful application of remez.
Wishing you a good Shabbos. D Fox
posted by Rabbi Dr. Fox at 9:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home