ב"ה
King Balak summons Balaam to curse the Children of Israel, but G-d transforms
the curses into blessings. From the wicked prophet's mouth flow some of the most
exquisite verses ever sung about the Jewish people. Beautiful story.But there's a darker side to the story. What did Balaam want to say? What were those curses of his that were transformed into blessings? And did those curses indeed die their final death on Balaam's lips, never to be fulfilled?
Numbers 22:2-25:9 Torah Reading for Week of July 1-7, 2001 
What Balak is about: a frightened king and a greedy prophet, a
sword-wielding angel and a talking donkey, curses transformed into
blessings and a messianic prophesy, a plague provoked by pagan debauchery and a
zealot who saves the day.But also: the connection between Balaam and Laban, the Moabite ancestry of Moshiach, the duality of Jacob and Israel, the evolution of pleasure and the offal-worship of Peor.
My first imprisonment took place in the Lubavitch of my childhood, in 1891,
when I was eleven years old... My sixth imprisonment was in the summer of
1920, in Rostov-on-Don. All these were imprisonments of but hours; the seventh,
however, is the most distinguished of them all.I will not deny that, at times, this seventh imprisonment causes me great pleasure, as is evident by the fact that now, some seven years after the event, I occasionally take the time to seclude myself and visualize the encounters and discussions, the visions and the dreams, which I heard, saw, and dreamt in those days.
The Torah assumes this in its language many times, while the Talmud discusses
the experiences of several people who made the trip there and back. Classic
Jewish works describe the process of entering the higher world of life: the good
deeds and wisdom the soul has gained on her mission below serve as a protection
for her journey upwards. You want a real good spacesuit to make this trip.
The older I get the more apparent my lies have become. I barely believe myself anymore, especially when I make grand statements like, “I’ll never do or say that again.” Too often the future robs me of my honesty.
In receptive aphasia, the region of the brain that actually generates language remains intact, so that the patient can speak fluently. Areas of the brain involved in cognitive and emotional expression also function properly. But the "wiring" connecting speech with meaning is destroyed. The faculties of the mind are operative, and the ability to produce language is unimpaired, but the two functions are uncoupled, resulting in fluent speech that is empty of meaning. Patients with a pure complete receptive aphasia speak in sentences with proper intonation and inflection. What they say, however, is random nonsense. Occasional fragments may be amusing, or even lyrical, but they fit into no pattern or conceptual context. Aphasic language is the paradigm that best describes the chaotic profusion of things, people, and events that constitute worldly life today.
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 The Parshah in a Nutshell
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