What Every President, CEO, and Leader Needs to Know About Israel, Torah, and the Laws of Blessing

Shalom Aleichem Chevra, welcome back! What if the greatest threat to the Jewish people was never a sword — but a word? This week we dive deep into Parshat Balak, and the Chevra gets the full cinematic picture of everything leading up to it. We walk through the end of Parshat Chukat together — the Jewish nation's encounters with the king of Edom, the Canaanite king of Arad, the wars against Sichon king of the Amorites, and the wild story of Og king of Bashan, the giant whose uprooted mountain ended up over his own head. We go through the Rashi, the maps, the geography, all of it — because you need the setup to understand why Balak is terrified by the time our parsha begins. Then we shift into Balak itself, and we explore something fascinating: the Jewish people are barely in this parsha at all. We are just encamped in the plains of Moab, totally calm, while the entire drama unfolds around us. Balak ben Tzippor, king of Moab, watches the Jewish nation defeat the powers that were supposed to protect him, and he panics. He knows you cannot beat the Jews with a sword. So he turns to the one weapon he thinks can work — words. Specifically, a curse. And for that, he needs Bilam. We di