Israel's not-so-secret weapon Heard a story recently about a Jewish soldier in the US army stationed in Germany. When a visitor to his base spotted him wearing a kipa, a conversation was begun. The soldier told the visitor that he was a recent Baal T'shuva and that an experience he had had in the army started him on the path to religious observance. The soldier had attended a lecture on military history, given by a general. After the lecture, in answer to the soldier's question, the general explained why his lecture included details of many armies - past and present, but no mention of the Israeli army. The general answered in a dismissive manner, something like: "The Israeli army has no regular strategy; G-d fights on their side." How this led the Jewish soldier to religious observance is not this issue here. What is the focus of this Lead Tidbit is the unique relationship between G-d and the Jewish People and its military implications. Obviously, the following will be a vast oversimplification, but we hope the point will be taken. In Sh'mot 14:14, the people of Israel are only recently out of Egypt and they are being pursued by Par'o in a new determination to bring them back to slavery. The people panic when they see the Egyptian chariots coming their way and Moshe assures the people that HASHEM YILACHEIM LACHEM, G-d will fight for you. In D'varim 1:30, Moshe Rabeinu is telling the "new generation" about what happened with the Meraglim. Again he says that I told them (your fathers), HU YILACHEIM LACHEM, He will fight for you. In the encounter with Amalek, the people saw that there is an alliance (so to speak) between G-d and the people of Israel. They see it in all the battles that they had and in the times they were told not to fight, because that's what G-d wanted. In the bulk of Balak, we are taught that G-d fights for us even when we do not contribute to the "war effort". In this case, we didn't even know that we were being targeted and G-d took care of the whole thing. It's really simple. When we follow G-d, He fights with us and for us. And we cannot lose. But when we turn away from Him, we cannot win. As mentioned in the Sedra Summary - Bil'am and Balak tried real hard to harm us... and got nowhere. But when they facilitated our betrayal of G-d to idolatry and immorality, they didn't have to list a sword or a curse. If it's so simple, when are we going to learn? Bil'am knew it; the general knew it. We need to know it well. [The Parshat Balak Homepage]
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