Balak Excerpts
בלק
Shabbat Shalom
Balak takes Bilam to another place. He already tried to get Balak to curse the Jews, twice, and it didn't work. Balak wants curses and Bilam gives blessings; as Bilam promised to say what H' tells him.
Like the Fergensun's son. How many times is he going to curse out his class?...It has nothing to do with Asperger's. Do not blame the Asperger family for every problem in this congregation. You all sit at home all day, cursing everybody in the shul. It came out at the youth basketball summer league, and now all of our children are banned from the Maccabiah.
Your family has switched three shuls in the past 5 years because of random curses...'Your family should shoot each other and eat each other's dung and vomit all of it out during layning' is not tourette's...
(24:1) This third place they go to, Bilam doesn't go out to speak with H.' He already knows that 'it is good in Gd's eyes to bless Israel.'
Give blessings, not curses, is what H' wants. If our Gabai would understand this, the Maskowitzs would have gotten an Aliyah last week. Not the ark opening...If the beggar at the corner store would just stop cursing everybody that passes.
Bilam goes on with a blessing. Praising Israel, (24:5-9) 'How good are your tents?...'
I don't know how good the Jewish tents were in the desert. Did they use a decent hide? That is not known.
He saw that they must have been acting OK. That is what the commentaries say...It is not what the home is made out of. It is what is inside. Is the home full of people cursing each other and all the Jews, like the Fergensun's?
He ends the blessing with 'those who bless you are blessed and those who curse you are cursed.'
And the Balei Tshuva in this community can't find one nice thing to say about the only member who has been religious his whole life. Take it easy. You just became religious the other day. Take it easy. Calm down. At least the Fergensun's have a reason to be angry at the Jewish community. They have had to do this mitzvah stuff their whole lives...
(24:10-13) Balak is mad. He wanted curses but he got blessings for Israel from Bilam. He then takes back his word of honoring Bilam.
You get mad when people don't do what you ask them to do. I have worked with the shul board...But claiming that Gd doesn't want to gold-plate the ark is not right...Karen is not a prophet, and she doesn't deserve the honor of shul sultan.
Bilam responds that even if he gave him all his money, he couldn't transgress H's word. 'That which H' speaks to me, so shall I speak.'
Blessings from other people are meaningless. I can tell you this. As the shul blessed me as a great rabbi last year, and I received no raise...
It is a duty. Not a good or bad thing. A man had a duty to speak H's word. Sometimes Brian Fergensun curses correctly. He said the shul board is a bunch of money hungry pigs. Those are holy words....
The blasphemy coming out of the mouths of you people...The Yeshiva guys with their Nivil Peh.
The Maccabiah doesn't want people cursing Jews...The whole event is for Jewish people, Bernie. They don't want teams out there throwing bagels at other teams.
You can't take back throwing pennies at the other teams and calling them cheap.
And what happens. They still beat us. The Mexican team, who is wealthier than us, beat us last time. If we would have blessed them...
We must take our curses from the Torah.
Some curses that should be used...Curses for the sake of Heaven.