Chukat-Balak

          This week we are privileged to read another double sedra, Chukat and Balak. This week’s  sedrot contain two of the Torah’s most thought-provoking episodes. Sedrat Balak focuses on the story of Balak, the king of Moav, who requests that Bilaam, an evil prophet, curse Bnei Yisrael. When Bilaam fails to curse Bnei Yisrael, the Moabites conspire to destroy the Israelites another way – by encouraging them to act promiscuously with the Moabite women. His plan is successful, and Bnei Yisrael are punished with a plague that devastates the nation. The end of the sedra culminates with the dramatic story of Pinchas, who, upon witnessing the sin of one of the leaders of Bnei Yisrael strikes him dead - in public. This Shabbat afternoon, take out your Chumash and enjoy our two sedrot.

                The very last posuk in our second sedra tells the devastation of the plague that overwhelmed the Jewish people by God’s hand. “Those that died in the plague, numbered 24,000.” Killing so many of the approximately 600,000 men must have been horrifying. Yet, the number 24,000 recalls a more modern tragedy for the Torah student.

                The Talmud relates that shortly after the destruction of the second Beit Hamikdash, “Rebbi Akiva had 12,000 pairs of students throughout Eretz Yisrael, and they all passed away in a plague because they did not show each other respect. The 24,000 students all passed away during 33 days between Pesach and Shavu'ot, and the world was barren until Rebbi Akiva approached a new set of five students and taught them Torah."

                It is hard to believe that two plagues occurring a thousand years apart from each other, both killing 24,000 people, are completely coincidental. There must be something in common between the plague that devastated the Jews in the desert and Rebbe Akiva’s students. The common denominator between the two plagues teaches a lesson for the ages. What is the lesson that both plagues teach? 

                The Jews in the desert died because they sinned in two severe ways, they violated the sexual laws of the Torah, and they worshipped the Moabite god, Ba’al Pe’or. The students of Rebbe Akiva died because they didn’t show proper respect to each other. The sin in the desert was a sin between man and God, while the sin of Rebbe Akiva’s students was between man and God. These sins don’t seem to have anything in common with each other.

              The similarity between the two plagues is not to be found in the sins themselves, but rather the situation that the people found themselves in when they decided to sin. While not currently under attack, the Jews in the desert faced a formidable challenge in that Moav was scheming to destroy the Jews. Similarly, Rebbe Akiva’s students lived in a time where they weren’t under direct attack from the Roman Empire; the Romans were planning attack after attack against the Jewish people. The common denominator between the Jews’ sin in the desert of sexual deviancy and idol worship and Rebbe Akiva’s students’ sin of not respecting each other was that it was done under the threat of coming persecution and attack.
When the Jewish people find themselves in a time of crises we are instructed to cry out to God. While seemingly prayer, crying out is actually a form of repentance. In improving ourselves, both in action and awareness of God through our cries, we hope to merit Divine protection to ward off our enemies’ nefarious plans. When in the face of crises we sin instead, we face Divine punishment. In the case of the Jews in the desert and Rebbe Akiva’s students that punishment manifested itself in a plague that killed 24,000 Jews. Today, our enemies scheme to harm us just as Moav did in the desert and the Romans did in Judea, we must take this week’s sedra’s lesson to heart and improve ourselves.