balak

When בלעם blesses the בני ישראל he says, “ לא הביט און ביעקב ולא ראה עמל בישראל He perceived no iniquity in Jacob and saw no burdensome work(toil) in the Jewish people. The לקח טוב brings the אור החיים הקדוש who explains this blessing to mean that even though the righteous among us are constantly doing mitzvos & toiling in Torah, they do not feel like they are working at all. Rather, it's like someone in the midst of a big deal who's making millions of dollars and doesn't even realize he's working hard; he's enjoying every moment. So, too, the בני ישראל, when they are involved in Torah, they enjoy themselves & don’t feel like they are working. To add to this concept, הגר"י ניימן brings the Gemara that tells us the story of ריש לקיש, who saw ר' יוחנן standing across the river. He wanted to get close to him, so he jumped across the river in one jump. When ר' יוחנן saw his strength, he said, “you should use your strength for Torah”. He made a deal with ריש לקיש that if he leaves his life of banditry & comes to live a life of Torah, ר' יוחנן would give him his sister as a wife. ריש לקיש agrees, but, when he tries to jump back over the river, he can't. Now, had ריש לקיש already started learning & then couldn't jump over, this inability would make sense because Torah study weakens one's strength. However, here he didn't even start learning; he just agreed to start. Why was he not able to jump the river? Answers ר' ניימן that ריש לקיש still had the strength; however, what he didn't have anymore was the drive or the desire. Once he accepted upon himself the study of Torah, being able to jump across the river wasn't important anymore. Once it lost its importance, he lost the ability to do it. Once a person has no desire or drive for something, it becomes impossible to do. The opposite is also true. If a person has a desire for something & wants to do it, then, even if by nature he doesn't have the strength, he can overcome that by sheer desire & accomplish. How can we get to this level of enjoyment in Torah? Where does one get this desire to learn for hours on end & not feel the time go by? Perhaps the most famous of the ברכות that בלעם gave us is מה טבו אהליך. Rashi interprets it to mean that בלעם saw that the Jews’ entrances weren't facing one another. הגרא"ז מלצר explains a little differently, and says that in order for בלעם to curse the Jews he had to find a sin that everyone was doing. In order for the curse to take effect, it needed an opening to be able to get in. However, even though there were sinners in כלל ישראל, there was no one sin that everyone was doing. One person was a thief, one spoke lashon hara, & yet another was taking bribes. Although these are openings for the curse to take effect, since they all weren't doing them, the curse couldn't take effect. This is why he said מה טבו אהליך, that they're openings were not aligned, because he couldn't find an opening for the curse to take effect since all their sins were different. Maybe we could use this logic to understand how we could get enjoyment out of our learning. Just as each person sins differently & has certain things that he enjoys & will sin with, so too by learning. If each person would learn something that he finds interesting, he could get to enjoy it, One should not just try one thing & say, "hey, this isn't for me". The אור החיים הקדוש even says on this posuk of מה טבו אהליך that it's referring to those who set aside set times to learn every day & that could be why there's a חייב to learn at least something morning & night. If the first thing you try doesn't interest you, one has to try again until you find something that does. Once you find your niche, the desire will intensify enabling one to reach previously insurmountable heights & continue to grow in the service of 'ה!