Election results, headlines, and social media feeds seemed to converge into a single narrative of isolation, accusation, and pressure. It feels all too familiar. The Jewish state and those who speak up for it are once again under a global microscope, inside a tightening vice.
And yet, walking through the streets of Tel Aviv, life goes on. As always, there is tension, but there is also normality and a resilience that no headline quite captures.
Both realities are true at once. The noise is real, and so is the complicated life beneath it. Three little words from this week’s parsha can shed light on our current situation.
If Balak hires Balaam to curse Israel, it is because words have power, and words can break a people. That is the assumption behind every generation’s “Balaam moment.” If the pressure is strong enough, the narrative sharp enough, and the accusations repeated often enough, something will finally give way.
But before Balaam does anything, God interjects with a line that feels almost impossible in light of everything that follows: “Lo ta’or et ha’am ki baruch hu - Do not curse the people, for they are blessed.”
However, by the end of the parsha, the people fail. They sin. They are punished. They do not appear very “blessed” at all.
What does ki baruch hu actually mean? It cannot mean that Jews are always righteous or immune from failure. The Torah is too honest for that. God is not describing behavior. God is defining essence. The Jewish people can stumble. They can forget. They can even fall into moments of moral blindness. But none of that cancels who they are.
The essence of a Jew remains intact even when behavior does not reflect it. Sin may cover or conceal that essence, but it cannot redefine it. Goodness is not something a Jew acquires; it is what a Jew is.
The Jewish mission begins long before Balaam. It begins with Avraham, who is told, "v’heyeh berachah - Be a blessing." The Jewish people were never meant to be passive recipients of divine favor. We were meant to become a conduit of blessing in the world. Our mission is to introduce moral responsibility, affirm human dignity, and carry covenant and conscience into history. That calling does not disappear when Jews fail to live up to it.
This is why Balaam cannot succeed. He is not only trying to curse a people; he is trying to redefine them. And he fails not because the people are flawless, but because their essence is not up for negotiation.
The pattern has never stopped repeating itself. Every generation has its Balaams, people who look at the Jewish people and see not blessing, contribution, or covenantal responsibility; but threat, danger, and suspicion. The vocabulary changes, but the underlying motivation remains.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed that antisemitism is a “mutating virus.” It changes form in every age but never disappears. It tells us less about Jews than about the societies projecting it. When a culture becomes unstable or morally uncertain, Jews often become the screen onto which those anxieties are projected.
This insight sharpens what is happening in our own moment. Israel is routinely singled out in ways that bear little resemblance to how other nations are judged. Support for Israel is recast as moral failure. Public figures gain influence by treating Jewish particularity as something suspicious rather than something that carries meaning and responsibility. This is Balaam in modern language, and sometimes it works. Not because the curses succeed, but because Jews begin to internalize them. The greatest danger is not that Balaam curses us. The greatest danger is that we begin to believe him.
We must not allow others to define who we are. We cannot spend more energy explaining ourselves than living our mission. When Jews stop believing in our own calling, we do not become neutral. We become diminished. The response is not defensiveness; it is clarity.
If we are a people of blessing, then we are called to live like one. To strengthen Jewish life with seriousness and joy, to support Israel without apology and without illusion, and to deepen Torah, community, and moral language in a culture that often forgets all three.
Balaam wanted to define the Jewish people from the outside. God defines them from within.
Ki baruch hu is not a guarantee of success or a promise of perfection. It is a declaration of essence. People may try to push us off course, but we cannot lose what we are for.
The challenge is not to answer the curses of others but to live so clearly that they no longer define us.
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