{"id":48214,"date":"2019-01-27T07:54:24","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T05:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=48214"},"modified":"2022-08-21T13:19:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-21T10:19:47","slug":"we-have-met-the-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/we-have-met-the-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"We Have Met The Enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The central message that we have to learn from chapter 25 is also the primary prophetic and rabbinic understanding of Jewish tragedy throughout the ages. It\u2019s a message that is hard to hear, but critically important to listen to. The true existential threat to the Jewish people is not an external physical threat, as that of Sichon and Og, or an external spiritual threat, as that of Balaam. From the days of the Jews sinning in the desert, to the Hasmonean competition that invited in the Romans, to the warring Jewish sects that ultimately brought about the Temple\u2019s destruction, to the infighting of today, we have always been our own worst enemy and the key to our own downfall. <\/span><\/p>\n

The rabbis explain that which is clarified later in the Torah. The story of the sin with the daughters of Moab was Balaam\u2019s brainchild, because he understood that, for all his power as a sorcerer, the only way he could best us was to cause us to trip ourselves up.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s a message that runs all through the prophets, but we ignore it today, and we do so at our own peril. Tremendous resources, in terms of money, energy and attention, are focused on external threats over which we have limited control, at the expense of our significant problems from within.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a state founded on a socialist ethos, inspired by the vision of the prophets, the gap between the rich and the poor is among the largest in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a state founded to be the home to all Jews, large swaths of world Jewry are disenfranchised and alienated by Israel\u2019s discriminatory religious policies.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the state of the people of the book, education is not prioritized, classrooms are overcrowded and teachers are overworked and underappreciated.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the state dedicated to the ingathering of the exiles, the ingathered exiles still face discrimination and racism.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Walt Kelly wrote, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.” Isaiah said it first: “Your destroyers and demolishers will come from within you” (49:17). That is both the most frightening message we learn from Balaam, and the most empowering, because it means that our redemption is not “across the sea..but it is a thing very, very close to us\u201d (Deuteronomy 30).<\/span><\/p>\n

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