The Prophet’s Prophecy
Now Bilam didn’t only describe – he prophesied too; and he foretold that the effects of that great and original Jewish home would be forever. כנחלים נטיו – These tents are like streams that stretch out, that keep flowing (ibid. 6). “When fathers and mothers inspire their children like they’re doing now in the Midbar,” Bilam said, “so there’s going to be an eternal river of greatness, of nobility, that will flow into all the generations.
יזל מים מדליו – Waters will flow from that spring of the Jewish home, וזרעו במים רבים – and his seed will be nourished by the mighty waters that come out of these homes (ibid. 7). It means from these tents will come forth rivers of pure water of inspiration and idealism in all the generations; it will continue in many waters for a long, long time.
The River’s Flow
The truth is it’s forever. I always quote a certain historian who was speaking about the ancient Jewish home. Cracow, he wrote, was a town where children in the street babbled divrei Torah. He was a sonei haTorah, that historian. But a fact, a verifiable truth like that, even an enemy of Torah couldn’t dispute. He said that children, when they played in the street, were babbling divrei Torah because it poured out of the home when they opened the doors. Along with the children, the spirit of the Torah home poured into the street.
And it remained that way for many years. I was fortunate as a boy, a little boy, I prayed in those synagogues where old-time Jews davened. I was perhaps the only child in the whole synagogue, me and a friend of mine. And these elderly Jews who were fresh from old Russia, they told me about their homes. I heard stories about how people lived in the 1800’s. Every home had a tremendous fire of enthusiasm; families who with all their hearts were devoted to this great ideal of Torah living.
You know, nowadays when people talk about ‘home sweet home’ so they long to come back home again; but really it’s nothing but a nostalgia for a place of gashmiyus. What is the home anyhow? Of course it’s something; there’s a certain affection in the home maybe, a certain ease, comfort, in the home. But in the days of old when they looked back and thought back to the homes that they once had in Russia they were thinking only of one thing – the flame of kedushah that burned in those homes.
Rebuilding the Home
Now today we don't have that spirit with us as was in the days even of one hundred years ago. Certainly not two thousand years ago, in the days of the Mikdash. And three thousand years ago in the Midbar, the tents that Bilam saw, surely not. That’s why we mourn for those days, for that delight, the ancient home that went lost. And not just for the sake of aveilus, just to fulfill the minhagei Yisroel of ‘The Three Weeks’. We mourn for those days because we want to recapture this ideal, so that we should try, to whatever degree
