THERE IS THE story of a philosopher who, while contemplating the secrets of the universe at the base of a mountain whose peak was in the clouds, was interrupted by a scientist running past him. “Why so fast?” the philosopher asked him. 

RASHI COMMENTS ON the Torah’s pointing out that Bilaam was killed by the sword: He came against the Jewish People and exchanged his craft for theirs. They (Jewish People) are victorious only with their mouths, through prayer and supplication, and he (Bilaam) came and adopted their craft to curse them with his mouth. So they…

PINCHAS WAS A hero. Who knows how many souls he saved the day he “saw, arose, and took his spear in his hand” and avenged God.

BALAK IS THE name of the parsha, but it is really about Bilaam. Except for the last few verses, the entire parsha is about him, as if Moshe Rabbeinu and the Jewish People went on vacation for a week. If the point is how God turned Bilaam’s curses into blessings to protect the Jewish nation, couldn’t that have been done in one aliyah?

Not every son has the merit to have a father as a mentor, and fourteen years after my father’s passing, I am as just as grateful, if not more, for all my father taught me and helped me to accomplish, b”H. May my father’s Neshamah have aliyah after aliyah, and may he be a meilitz…