From the Rebbetzin's Shabbat table

Dear Friends,

You must have heard the good news. Musk became a trillionaire. I think that what that means is that he has a million millions. My real question isn't exactly what one can buy with a trillion dollars, but how do you make it? So far, no one in my entire circle of friends and relatives has come to my rescue by telling me how. I did get a suggestion that, if I look at the sales first when I buy my groceries on Online Mehadrin, I might save as much as 40 shekels per order, but at that rate I would have to live to be about a million to reach my goal….

The truth is that I am not particularly interested in how he made his trillion. I don't think it's magic, but you sometimes wonder...
MAGIC, CLAIRVOYANCE, PROPHECY, AND BILAAM

I find it much more interesting to find out why a person like Bilaam could have a level of prophecy that was compared to Moshe's. The Talmud tells us that he had what you might call a spiritual window that was clear enough for him to see exactly when the moment of

Hashem's anger is ignited. That tells you that he had a much deeper capacity to look at the spiritual world and understand what he was seeing than you or I do.

First things first. What is the spiritual world?

Ramchal tells us that in order for us to be able to make meaningful choices, Hashem created an entire system through which He conceals His presence. You don't see lifeforce; you don't see raw compassion. All you see is the manifestation of Hashem's will.
The way the Baal HaTanya described it is that there are innumerable masks that Hashem wears. His light is compared to the light of the sun, far too strong to gaze at for any significant amount of time without risking our sight. What we see here in our world isn't even the light of the sun. We see the light of the moon, which only reflects the light of the sun. Nonetheless, the light of the sun is the source of the light, goodness, and meaning that we experience. It comes down to us via each thing we see, hear, or experience. There are times, however, when Hashem lets the light come down in a less filtered form.

LEVELS OF CLARITY

I was talking with my friend Shoshana. She came from a Modern Orthodox home back in L.A. She had everything that the California dream could get you: money, status, and few demands made on her. I asked her what made her drop it all and come to Israel as an Olah. She said, "From the first time that I went to the Kotel, I knew I had to be here."
This wasn't a voice and it wasn't prophecy. It was Hashem answering her prayer to direct her feet toward Yerushalayim, and within a short time her entire family found themselves untangling the aliyah process.

THE BEGINNING OF SPIRITUAL INSIGHT THAT IS MORE THAN JUST A STRONG FEELING

A person with deep intellectual perception and the ability to use creativity and move beyond the concrete slice of reality – not through fantasy, but through the use of imagination – will "see" things far more clearly than you or I do. This, Rambam says, is the first and lowest step of the process that leads to prophecy.
The next step is an indescribable (to us) moment of clarity, that makes its demands on you. The closest thing that I can envision is seeing a car come straight at you and moving aside at the last minute. This isn't magic; it's depth and clarity.

The next step is going into a trance state so that you aren't distracted by the constant flow of the here and now, and while in that state having a vision that goes beyond the kind of reality you hear in the news.

The next step is hearing a voice telling you what the dream is informing you of, and the final step, for our purposes, is being clear enough in the depth of your perception of things as they really are that you don't need a dream or a vision to bring the message home.

BILAAM: PROPHET OR BRILLIANT, CHARISMATIC MAGICIAN?

Wait a minute! Is there such a thing as magic? Is there a way around the formula I just wrote about?

The Jewish answer is, "It depends on what you mean when you say magic."

Rambam focused on the kind of magic that earns the magician a good living, comforts those who like to hand over their lives to mysterious forces, and is nothing but a well-polished fraud.

Conversely, no one debates that there are many brands of what people call magic that are just tricks – in which the fact that the hand is faster than the eye is the answer to all of the questions that the naïve audience thinks are supernatural. Ramban, Ramchal, and others, however, don’t deny the possibility that Hashem created a complex world in which many forces interact. Some can be observed and defined by humans, and some are just as real, but resist these criteria of “being for real” because they aren’t physical.

The world of angels (Hashem's agents for making things happen) is just one example.

Bilaam's unquestionable brilliance put him in this category. He could see beyond the limitations of time and place. There was one thing, however, that clouded his vision. It was himself. His egocentricity, greed, and unrestrained physical lusting after anything base got in the way.
He had Moshe's clarity blocked by Bilaam's own evil. He could see things as they are and awaken Hashem's commitment to justice by making true accusations against us. What he didn't want to see (after all, he was making good money) was that Hashem's justice is a means toward challenging us into becoming actualized people, each one of us
in his own way.

Bilaam saw justice but not purpose. He saw judgment but not growth. He understood that actions have consequences, but he could not see that Hashem's goal is not punishment but transformation.

STORY TIME

There was once a terrible fire in the days of the Brisker Rav. In a place and time when all the buildings were made of wood, and there was no such thing as a fire hydrant, the devastation was unimaginable.
He summoned one of the city's wealthier Jews and demanded that he give the unheard-of sum of 1,000 rubles to help those who had lost everything.
The man responded coldly and said, "I give enough charity. I already gave a tenth this year. Who are you to tell me that I am obligated to do more than what the Torah requires?"
"If I show you that I can make a supernatural event take place, will you give me the money?"
The man was shaken. "Yes. If you can do a mofes (wondrous sign), I will give you the entire sum."
"Come back with four notes, each one for the sum of 250 rubles."
He returned and showed the Rav that he had the bills.
"Place each one under a leg of this heavy wooden table, and without my moving from my chair, just by the words I utter, you will see them rise and go to the top of the table. Is that supernatural enough for you?" The man agreed that it was and placed each bill under one leg of the table. "Remember. No touching anything," he reminded the Rav.
"No problem."
The stage was set.
The Rav called his son.
"Chaim, come here and pick up the money from under the table's legs," he said.
The boy picked up the bills and put them on the table.
The Rav immediately took them.
The rich man was disappointed, but he was fair and didn't demand the money back.
"You promised me a mofes," he said. The Rav replied, "Your money left your hand to go to the poor. That's a mofes if I ever saw one."
Use your mind and your creativity as a giver. As brilliant as Bilaam was, nothing of what he did benefited him, and it was only Hashem, who is the Author of Truth, who turned
his curses into blessings.

Love,
Tziporah