On The Parsha
It was one of the highest-profile crime stories of the early 1990s.
Gregg Smart, an insurance agent, was found dead in his New Hampshire condo on May 1, 1990. The 24-year-old man had been murdered.
The police investigation soon zeroed in on his wife, Pamela. She was a 22-year-old media coordinator at a nearby school, and she had been having an affair with a student, William "Billy" Flynn.
Flynn ultimately admitted that he committed the crime but maintained that the crime was committed at the direction of Mrs. Smart. He said that she had told him, that she would completely end the affair if he did not kill her husband. Billy was caught up in his desire for Mrs. Smart and did the unthinkable.
There would appear to be a parallel to be found in this week’s Parsha. In this week’s parsha, Moshe Rabbeinu warns Bnei Yisrael not to be blinded to the potentially devastating consequences that can come with rationalizations and faulty thinking. He says, “Do not add to the word which I command you, nor diminish from it, to observe the commandments of Hashem which I command you. Your eyes have seen what Hashem did with Ba’al Peor, for every man who went after Ba’al Peor, Hashem has exterminated from your midst.” (Devarim 4:2-3).
Ba’al Peor was an idol that the Moabites worshiped. The Moabite women enticed Jewish men to worship the idol by seducing them, and right before they were to have marital relations, the women would say, “If you want to continue, you just need to serve this idol.”
The Seforno says that the Torah testifies that Bnei Yisrael’s first sin was to engage in promiscuous behavior with the Moabite women. (BaMidbar 25:1) Once they were filled with desire, that led to idol worship. When referring to the idolatrous women of the nations that populated Israel prior to being conquered by Bnei Yisrael, the Torah states that marriage with these women will lead to idol worship (Shemos 34:16).
However, every Israelite who indulged his lust for a Moabite girl likely rationalized to himself that he was immune to the Torah’s warning. This had devastating consequences as there were 24,000 people who ended up serving Ba’al Peor and Hashem wiped out every single one of them.
How could this be? Were they not the Dor De’ah - the greatest generation that ever lived? How could they have fallen so deeply into this abyss? They fell the way they did, because they were caught up in desire, and once that happened, even idolatry was possible.
And this is what Moshe is warning Bnei Yisrael about when he warns them as referenced above, to remember what happened with Ba’al Peor. His warning to them, and by extension to us is, “Do not rationalize and say to yourself that it won’t happen to you. Stay away from indulging your desire, because once it takes hold, virtually anything is possible.”
Indeed, the Seforno says that even Shlomo HaMelech thought that he would not sin by marrying many wives, even though the Torah specifically forbade it. At the end of it all, he did come to sin as his many idolatrous wives continued to serve their idols, which introduced idol worship back into Israel which had devastating repercussions.
The Torah and Shulchan Aruch have given us boundaries and protective fences to ensure that we remain on the straight and narrow. There is the directive in the Shema not to be led astray by following the desires of our eyes and hearts. There is a prohibition of Yichud (the requirement for a man and woman who are not married to each other, to not seclude themselves with each other). But all this is not enough. We also need to see a vivid example of what can and indeed did happen, to those who thought that it would not happen to them. That is why Moshe warns Bnei Yisrael and by extension us, to remember what happened with Ba’al Peor.
(It would be remiss of us to not mention the ready applicability of this lesson to internet access. Some of us may think that we will not fall prey to the dangers of the internet. However, human frailty being what it is, some of us have succumbed, Heaven forbid.)
