Balak  Yom Chamishi, Tamuz 14, 5781 (June 24, 2021) #162

 B’li ‘Ayin Hara’ (or COVID) 

Remember we promised to come out of COVID better people, more humble, more grateful? We
promised! This week Rabbanit Yemima checks what happened to all those good intentions, and she has
a suggestion for improvement.

Plus: What really happens in the realm of the Instagram filter?

Suddenly we’re talking about coronavirus again. How
can that be, how? How can it happen that a country
among the first to emerge from it now sees everything
turned on its head, a blessing becoming a curse?
There’s such a thing. In our parasha, our Sages tell us,
every blessing that Bil’am pronounced eventually
became a curse. He wanted to curse. Hashem
transformed everything to blessings, but the Sages teach
that all but two blessings turned completely around and
became curses once again – why? Because ‫ְמ ָב ֵרְך ֵר ֵעהּו‬
‫ ְקלָ לָ ה ֵת ָח ֶׁשב לֹו‬,‫ – ְבקֹול גָ דֹול‬One who blesses his fellow in
a loud voice is considered as cursing him.1
mean, a flight – How good are your tents, Ya’akov, your
dwellings, what a beautiful land we have right here…”
We really did see people become more modest in
dating, because they came to realize what it means to
be alone during a pandemic. I was sure that was it, that
yeshivot would throw their doors open and stop
subjecting people to the filtering effects of seminars…
But we’re emerging from COVID immodestly. We’re
emerging with undignified, unbecoming bombast.
Suddenly all the resolutions we made peel away so
easily.

In full public view, Bil’am pronounces blessings, with
such exposure – that’s no blessing. It can’t last.
I’m looking back at the last year and a half of COVID.
During all my shiurim I preached passionately that we’d
emerge from this as changed people. That we’d learned
to be more appreciative and grateful. That COVID had
taught us dignified modesty. “We’ll come out of this
more modest! Enough shopping sprees! What do you
The Haftarah writes: Come, I’ll tell you what’s good. ‫ִה ִגיד‬
‫ וְ ַה ְצנֵ ַע לֶ כֶ ת ִעם ֱאל ֹקי ָך‬,‫ ַא ֲה ַבת ֶח ֶסד‬,‫ ֲעשׂ וֹ ת ִמ ְש ָפט‬:‫לְ ָך ָא ָדם ַמה טוֹ ב‬
– He has told you, as a human, what is good: do justice;
love kindness; and walk with modest dignity with your
God.2
What are those three actions?
Do justice – do something good and right.

1 2
Mishlei 27:14. Mikha 6:8.
Love kindness – knock on your neighbor’s door and offer A loud, public b’racha is considered a curse, a k’lala. We
her a drink. have to walk with the dignified modesty we resolved to
adopt over the last year-plus. So that the b’racha
Both of those are specific action points. I did justice remain. So that COVID not again rear its ugly head.
today; I did kindness.
Translated by Rav David Swidler
But modest dignity is a walk, ‫ לֶ כֶ ת‬- ‫ וְ ַה ְצנֵ ַע‬, a longer-term
proposition. It’s not a one-and-done event. It’s knowing
how to construct delicate walls of dignified modesty, lest
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Hashem impose walls of siege or lockdown. Torah by Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi!
http://www.RabbanitYemima.com
We’re approaching a special day in the calendar, the
seventeenth of Tammuz. It’s the anniversary of the
Babylonian forces breaching Y’rushalayim’s walls; of the
sin of the Golden Calf, which Moshe sees on his way
down from Mt. Sinai and smashes the Tablets of the
Covenant.

The first tablets, why were they fated to be shattered?

Our Sages answer that because they were given with
great public pomp, ‘ayin hara affected them. ‘Ayin hara
means avoiding a public display of my prosperity, my
good fortune – not because someone else will harm me
as a result, but because in doing so I might harm
someone else! After a year of illness, unpaid leave, of
people struggling to stay solvent, of domestic upheaval,
of children dropping out, it’s a been a year of so many
wounds, so much post-trauma. Don’t you dare fly with
your family and pose for selfies! You made resolutions
to be more modest, and now violate them?

This is especially concerning in the social media age.

Everyone puts on a huge smile and applies a filter and
hurts someone. Of whom is that viewer jealous? Of
herself. She sees herself virtually and genuinely believes
there is such a person, that the person with the filter is
real. And by contrast to her she feels diminished,
lacking…

We’re in a lacking, flawed reality. When we don’t build

delicate dignity boundaries so as not to boast in public
about what we have, those boundaries become a siege.
I think that’s the call of our time. It’s the most proper
resolution to keep under present circumstances.