Shnayim Yomi - Chukat - Balak - Sh'vi'i - #7 - Rabbi Leiby Burnham - Sordid Avoda Zara Service

Welcome to the Schneem Yomi. We're now at our final aliyah for this beautiful Chukas Balak. It's been a pleasure learning with you this whole week. And we'll end up with a bang. So, it talks about at the end of Bilam, he's unable to successfully curse the Jewish people, and instead he gives a terrible, terrible piece of advice to Balak about how to ensnare the Jewish people by using the Bnos Moav, their daughters, to entice the Jewish people to sin, first to the avodah to the avera of gilui arayos, but through that also into avodah zarah. The pasuk says over here, "Vayochal ha'am vayishtachavu la'Elohim." "Vayeitzamdu Yisrael la'Baal Peor." So, it says the people ate and they served, they bowed down to their gods, and they the Jewish people stuck itself to Baal [snorts] Peor. Now, it's interesting, the Rashi says that the why was it called Baal Peor, which means like a something about opening yourself, and it's because people would would reveal themselves in front of this idol and and defecate on it. That was the way you served it, which is a very bizarre way of serving an idol. But says says the Rav Hillel of Kolomy, his name was Rav Hillel Lichtenstein, he lived from 1814 to 1891. And he was one of the great Galitzianer rabbonim. He says something fascinating. He says, "We know that when you ate the mun, the mun was miraculous, and it was you were you were machnis v'eino motzi, you would put the mun into yourself, but it would there would be no there would be no defecation. The mun was all so spiritual there was no there was no waste removal." When the Jewish people wanted to serve the Baal Peor, which you served by defecating on it, you had to first eat in order to get eat non-mun foods so you could be able to have you know the storage to be able to to be able to do this. "Vayochal ha'am vayishtachavu la'Elohim vayeitzamdu Yisrael la'Baal Peor." First they had to eat, and only after that they were able to serve the Baal Peor in its own way. But uh let's let's keep in mind though, when your idol is served by defecating on it, what's the message? The message is humans are in charge. And all of white idol worship is really like we are the ones in charge. And we're the ones who made you, and we're serving things that we made. What we're really saying is we're in charge. And that's the message of all white idol worship. And of course, the opposite of that is Hashem, it's all you. And the more we get that right, the more we're getting on our way to Mashiach again. Thank you, and have a great Shabbos.