In this week’s parsha we learn that although Bila’am was terrible rosha, he asked: תמת נפשי מות ישרים -" May my soul die the death of the righteous” (23:10). Bila’am expressed a longing to die like a yashar — a righteous person. This is striking. Bila’am was gifted with prophecy at the level of Moshe Rabbeinu, yet he chose to live a life of wickedness, ultimately descending to the level of a animal (Sanhedrin 105a). He spent his entire life clinging to evil — and yet his dying wish was for mos yesharim – the death of the righteous.
How are we to understand this?
R’ Yosef Sorotskin shlita in his sefer Meged Yosef explains that the hour near death is a moment of truth. In that moment, every person shakes free of bias, self-interest, and ego, and arrives at his inner reality. Bila’am who had a high level of nevuah surely knew the pure truth within himself — but the momentum of life, the weight of pride and desire, kept pushing that truth aside. Only moments before his death did he manage to break free from this and return to the natural truth inside himself. And from that truth, Bila’am expressed his longing for mos yesharim.
R’ Yosef Sorotskin shlita writes that he remembers when Moshe Sneh, secretary-general of the Israeli Communist Party, died. Moshe Sneh had spent his entire life in relentless war against da’as Moshe v’Yisrael, dedicating himself fully to the destruction of Torah Judaism in the Jewish state. When his will was opened, it was found — to everyone’s astonishment — that he had requested a Jewish funeral and burial, and that his son recite kaddish over him. All of Eretz Yisrael was shaken! The spiritual father of every apikores in the Jewish state had wanted, in the end, to die mos yesharim.
This is the way Jew’s are when they die, and even if they have led wicked and corrupt lives, in the end, they want to die mos yesharim.
R’ Yosef Sorotskin shlita then goes on to cite two stories which highlight what it means to die as a non-Jew:
Story #1: In 1995 he was staying at a New York hospital during his wife’s illness. At that time there was a murder trial taking place for a famous football player who had murdered his wife. The entire America was gripped waiting for the verdict. R’ Yosef Sorotskin writes that he remembers sitting in a visitors’ room beside a non-Jewish patient who was scheduled for surgery the next morning, with a fifty percent chance of not surviving. The patient told him that he had no fear of death - his only concern was that if he died tomorrow, he would never know the verdict in the murder trial and he was desperate to know what the verdict would be. R’ Sorotskin writes that he reassured the non-Jew that in the olam haneshomas [world of souls] not only do they know what transpires in this world (Berachos 18b), they even know what will happen in the future — so if he died on the operating table, he would immediately learn the verdict. The non-Jew then thanked him graciously for the good news. The above is what occupies the mind of a non-Jew in his final hours on the world.
Story #2: Rav Mordechai Gifter zt’’l related that he was once on an airplane when one of the engines caught fire. The flight attendants prepared the passengers for an emergency landing, and an atmosphere of ‘eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’ descended — attendants distributing free liquor to all who wanted it. At that moment, two Bais Yaakov girls came to Rav Gifter and asked how they should properly prepare themselves for the death that seemed to be approaching. Again, we see the difference between what a Jew does in his final moments of life, and what a non-Jew does in his final moments.
