AVROHOM YAAKOV
Seeing the failure of the Emorite armies that Moav paid to protect their country, the princes of Moav elected Bolok, a Midianite official, as king. He reached out to Bilaam, famed prophet to the non-Jews, for assistance in cursing the Jews.
Bilaam’s initial attempt was a failure which resulted in G-d, via Bilaam, blessing the Jews.
Bolok tried another tack.
“Maybe you will see some of it (the Jewish People) and not all of it.” (23:13) Then Bilaam would be able to curse.
R’ Mendel of Kotsk explains Bolok’s reasoning. Individuals make mistakes and therefore looking at a subsection of the people, there would be some grist that would allow G-d to acquiesce to the wicked plans of Bilaam and Bolok.
However, viewing at the nation as a whole, as it turns out later, inevitably leads to a positive assessment of the Jews as it is almost impossible to find a general fault with everyone.
THAT MAY BE G-DLY ACCOUNTING, but human calculations seemingly are the reverse. If a person acts in a negative way and has even the slightest association with Judaism, it is Judaism and the Jewish people as whole who are at fault.
From the Crusades through to the past ten months since the October massacres, Jews and Jewish institutions worldwide have been under attack even if they only have a tenuous relationship with the secular state of Israel.
And yet the reverse is not the case. Individual Jews have given the world medical, scientific and technological breakthroughs and no one credits the Jewish people as a whole. Even the so-called ‘start-up nation’ is a pariah despite literally improving the lives of all humanity.
Perhaps Bolok achieved more with his suggestion to leverage the negatives of a few Jews?
