June 26, 2010 | 14 Tammuz 5770 

“Lo, a people rises like a lion, leaps up like the king of beasts, rests not till it has feasted on prey and drunk the blood of the slain” (Numbers 23:24)

What could be more frustrating than paying a trusted prophet, skilled at inflicting debilitating curses on others, and finding out that he just can’t do the job?!  In our parasha, Balak has hired Bilaam to curse the Israelites and to thereby doom this people that he perceives to be a dangerous enemy. But Bilaam can’t do it because he can only speak words placed in his mouth by the Holy One.

Three times Bilaam seeks to curse B’nai Yisrael, and three times he blesses them.  Toward the conclusion of Bilaam’s second attempt, he utters the words of the verse above. Obviously Bilaam’s “curse” is directed at Balak and his nation of Moav. Bilaam intimates that the Israelites will attack the Moabites and not rest until they have utterly annihilated them.

But Rashi understands this allegorical verse in a very different manner. Israel, Rashi suggests, will triumph over Balak not because the nation will physically overwhelm the Moabites and destroy them but because the people will exercise another type of power.

“When they (the Israelites) rise from their sleep in the morning they show themselves strong as a lioness and as a lion ‘snatch at’ the Divine precepts (to perform them immediately) – to put on tallit and tefillin and to read the Shema”

For Rashi, triumphant strength lies in a highly motivated spiritual commitment to Jewish life. Such a commitment has the power to “overpower” stronger forces in ways that physical strength can never accomplish. In the familiar words of the prophet Zachariah,

“Not by might, nor by power but by My spirit says the Lord of Hosts”

What do you see as the power of such aspects of spiritual practice?