Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 23, Magic Language

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 23, Magic Language

- Good morning, everybody, from New York. And first day of a new month. And we are dealing with this magician, this international, universally-known magician called Bilam. For some reason I can’t explain, the English says is Balaam, B-A-L-A-A-M, whereas the Hebrew, if you look very carefully, is Bilam, B with a dot underneath, which is I, not A. And of course this all goes back to the King James translation of the Bible into English which relied primarily on the Septuagint, the Greek translation that had certain letters that were special to Greece and which did not include some of the letters that are special to Hebrew, like the letter , no huh sound and no V sound, only a W sound. But anyway, one may wonder why so much of the Torah is given over to Bilam and magic. But, of course, there’s a lot of reference to magic in the Torah. Just think of Pharaoh’s magicians giving him advice all the time what to do and different pharaohs at different times, consulting their magic, their Delphi Oracles. And even within the priesthood of Judaism, you have this consulting the Urim and the Thummim, these special breastplates that the priest had that helped him resolve uncertainties. And so the question, of course, is what is legitimate magic and what is non-legitimate magic? In theory, in theory, it should work that anything that you can rationally explain is not magic, but something you cannot rationally explain very often is put down to magic. And, of course, there is what’s called white magic and black magic.

Now the Torah, we’ve already experienced a little of this when we dealt with the laws in Exodus, is very much opposed to consulting witches, magic, all kinds of things which by and large they consider to be both pagan on the one hand and non-rational on the other. You will then turn around and say, “Well, look, God is not rational.” But that’s quite true. But God is not anti-rational. And so if I could give you a kind of a difference between the two of them, if you go to a witch or to a mind reader, whoever it is, you are not certain what answer you are going to get. Or read the tea leaves, you don’t know, you might be told to go and lie in the middle of the forest at midnight naked and wait for some magic event to happen. Whereas, when it comes to Torah, you know in advance what you are going to be expected to do. It’s all laid out in advance. There’s no surprises. The surprise comes in whether we choose to abide by it or not. So this distinction between what we can explain and what we can’t explain, what we know we’re going to be asked and what we are not going to be asked is what lies at the distinction between magic and, if you like, religion. But, of course, in those days as in these days, human beings are insecure. They like certainty. They want to know for definite.

And that’s why, within all religions, there is still a tremendous amount of what we would call hocus pocus in the sense that we are involved in things that we can’t explain rationally, even though they might not be anti-rational or simply non-rational. And therefore what the Torah is saying, as people are telling us now all the time, “Beware of scams, beware of scams.” People are out to scam you all the time, to make a fast buck out of you. And therefore don’t rely on scams, don’t rely on magic. People can do these things. They can trick you, they can fool you, and don’t be fooled. So it’s with that that we turn to the whole question of what are we learning from this story of Bilam? Bilam seems to be a magician who communicates with God. Is that the same as one of the prophets who communicate or with Moses who communicates with God? What kind is it? And so we’re turning now to where we left off last time, and this was chapter 23. And chapter 23 is where we are today, that this magician was approached by Balak, and Balak, the king of Mo'av who is united with Midian. So the two people seem to be together on this. He is worried about the invading Israelites, and therefore he says, “Look, they have conquered two nations already.

There is Og of Bashan, and there’s Sihon of the Amorites, I’m frightened of them. They seem to be successful. Normal means are not going to conquer them, let’s try magic.” And he sends people to Bilam. Bilam then replies, “Look, very nice, but I have to ask God what I’m going to do.” He asks God, and God says, “Don’t go.” So he goes back and says, “I can’t go.” And then Balak is so furious, and he sends another large amount of people and says, “You know I’ll give you whatever you want, just do it.” And again, Bilam says, “Sorry, I’ve got to ask God what I can do.” Goes back to God, and God says, “This time you can go.” And I pointed out the difference between, one, the language God says when He says, “You can go, but you only say what I tell you,” and the language of Bilam when he goes in which it seems to be he’s going wholeheartedly to identify. And that’s where we have the incident of the ass that talks. An angel blocks the way as he is travelling, and Bilam doesn’t know why the donkey is reacting. He beats him, he hits him, and all of a sudden the ass starts talking. So here we’ve got magic again. The world of Bilam is a world of magic in which you listen to God and you listen to an ass. And Bilam, on the one hand, is very wise. And yet, on the other hand, look at the limitations. The wise ass seems to be much wiser and more aware of what’s going on in the world than Bilam does. But once again, the result is that Bilam is commanded by God, “Only say what I tell you to say.” And so he arrives, arrives at Balak, and he says to Balak in advance, “I want you to know, I can only say what God tells me to say.”

“But nevertheless,” says Balak, “I wanted to give it a try.” And so, first of all, he’s asked to make some sacrifices and the all sacrifices, they then have a nice meal. And that’s where we left it before with verse 41 at the end of Numbers 22 when Balak takes Bilam to this high place where he overlooks some, only some of the Israelites. And then in chapter 23, Bilam says to Balak, “Build me seven altars and prepare us seven cows and seven rams. And Balak does whatever he’s told, sorry, Balak does what Bilam tells him to do.” And so in verse 3, this is where we ended. So Bilam turns to Balak and he says, “ , stand by your sacrifices so that you identify with them. And while you are there with them, , I’m going to go off and meditate , perhaps God will happen to meet me. It’s happenstance, I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I don’t know what he’s going to show me, but whatever he shows me, I will tell you.” And meanwhile, he went off alone to meditate by himself.“ And verse 4, ” And God happens to appear to Bilam. and you’ll notice that this word , which we had, in a sense, a verse above, it says . There’s a certain root there to call somebody. But also there is, as in the first word of the book of Leviticus, which should be , here’s a little aleph missing and/or the aleph is reduced. And so you have the word . And so seems to be a word which says, some things happen accidentally.

That whereas, as Maimonides says, you can prepare yourself to communicate with God, sometimes God appears and sometimes God doesn’t appear. Sometimes we get it and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we’re in a mood and sometimes we are not. But what it means is that the appearance of God to Bilam is not as intense or significant as when it is to somebody like Moses. And so God appears and Bilam says, “Look, we’ve prepared seven altars, and we’ve got everything ready for the sacrifice, and they’ve been sacrificed to You.” And at that moment in verse 5, “ . And God then puts the words into the mouth of Bilam. And He says, this is, "You go back to Balak, and this is what you are going to say.” Verse 6, “ . He goes back, , and he’s still standing there by the original sacrifice, he and the officers of Mo'av.” Verse 7, “ . And Balak lifts up or opens his .” is a parable. It’s also a poem, but it’s also an important message. So he starts off his message and he starts off, and this is poetry. And you’ll recognise it as poetry by the music of the language and the repetition of the language. So what we’re about to read now is very different in style and in content to the prose narrative we’ve been reading up to now. , verse 7, “ . He opens up and he says, . ‘Balak has led me full away from Aram,’” which is the Tigris and the Euphrates area.

“It is not only that Balak called me, but he is , the king of Mo'av. And he’s called me from the the mountains of the east,” nice expression, , the mountains of the east. “And he said, ‘Come and curse me, Jacob, come and curse Israel.’” And as we mentioned last week, there are seven different words for cursing. Is one different from the other? You’ve got curse me, curse Jacob, and then . is something revolting, make something revolting, make Israel revolting. So that’s what you’ve asked me to do. But in verse 8, “But what can I curse?” And now there’s a third word, not , not . “What can I curse who has not been cursed by God? , and what can I condemn or doom or call disgusting that God does not? From the head of the mountains I look, and I can see the children of Israel. From the high places , I can see how happy they are, how successful they are. And here we have something which is so relevant at this moment in our history and has always been. This is pure prophecy, and it’s coming from Bilam. , in verse 9, ” . This is a people who dwell alone and are not considered important by the rest of the nations or they just don’t fit in with the rest of the nations.“ There’s something unusual about this people. The term, , being alone and singular, is a very interesting word, because it also is the letters of a famous phrase that you have in the Bible and is a very important phrase both in the Talmud and in my personal history. Because also stands all your ways know him, which the Talmud says means if you behave in such a way that you consider the spiritual ramifications and the spiritual benefits of it, if you think of God before you act, then the phrase goes on in the Bible to say, "He will help you make the right decisions.”

And in fact that motto was the motto my father chose for the school that he founded, Carmel College, many years ago, which no longer exists. Anyway, so let’s carry on. “So I see,” says Balak, “this people, and they are a remarkable people. They are unique, they’re not like anybody else. And not only that, the other nations don’t want to be with them, don’t identify with them.” Verse 10, “ Who can count the dust of Jacob.” And remember this is because the children of Israel are being compared both to the dust of the earth and to the stars of the sky. “Who can number, who can count the number of Israel?” Well, we’ve shrunk pretty badly since those days or no, we’ve risen since those days, but we’ve shrunk in comparison to everybody else. But nevertheless the numbers, we have survived as Jews longer than anybody else. And then he comes with his poetic phrase, “May I die the death of the of the righteous. So I’d like to be the way these people are or to and like my end or my future to be like their future.” So he starts off by saying, “This is a remarkable people. Nobody’s like them, and I wanted to tell you I can’t curse them if God doesn’t want me to curse them, on the contrary. To verse 11, ” When Balak heard Bilam say this, he says, , ‘What have you done to me? I brought you here to curse my enemies, and you have blessed them.’ And Bilam replied, ‘Whatever God puts into my mouth, I keep that in order to say it. I can only say what He tells me to.’“

Well Balak doesn’t give up. In verse 13, ” Come with me to another place.“ Location makes a big difference, because in those days also, they believed that gods were gods of territory, the god of Egypt, the god of Canaan, the God of Israel. And they were all tied to the land on which they lived. You remember the famous case of Naaman, the general of the Arameans, the Syrians, who were stricken with leprosy. And he goes to visit Elisha, and Elisha tells him, "You have to dip into the River Jordan seven times.” And he is furious, Naaman, because, he says, “The rivers where I come from are much bigger than the Jordan. This doesn’t make sense. I thought you were going to perform some spell, some magic over me.” And Elisha says, about to turn back and go back home and his servants say, “Look, you know, give the guy a try. What do you got to lose?” Anyway, he dips in the river seven times, and he’s cured of his leprosy. And interesting thing, of course, is that what this indicates is there’s such a thing as faith healing, and it’s the extent to which you trust somebody that you can sometimes be cured. But anyway, he is cured. And then as a result he says, “Look, I realise your powers are greater than the magic I’m used to up in Syria. But he says, "I got to worship your God, but you have to understand I am the general of the king of Canaan. When I go back to Canaan, sorry, go back to Aram, Aram, Damascus, Syria. When I go back there, I will have to join him in his religious activity, ‘cause he’s the king and I’ve got to support him. So I’m going to have to go to his temple, and I’m going to have to bow down the way he bows down.

But what I ask as a favour, give me a sack of your earth, your earth from here and I’ll take back home so that when I bow down, I’ll be bowing, be bowing down on the earth of the land of Israel rather than the land of Syria.” So it shows how place is so important, the land location. So Balak thinks, well the only reason he couldn’t curse is because he’s in God’s territory. I’ll take him somewhere else. So he says in, verse 13, “Let’s go to another place, and you’ll see them from that position. You won’t see all of them but some of them, and curse that lot from there. So even if I can’t get you curse the whole lot, I get you to curse part of them.” Anyway, verse 14, “ . And he took him to a field where, they say here, Sedehzophim, but we all know the zophim are the scouts in Israel to this day. And zophim is to look out from a high place. Go, and this states , which is the highest place of all. He tries again with seven altars, and he offers the oxes and the sheep. And once again, Bilam says to Balak in verse 15, "Stand here by your sacrifice and I will see if I can get God to happen to appear to me. Verse 16, once again, ” . God appears to Bilam.“ Now also something dear, something precious, something you like. So does this mean that God likes Bilam? Well maybe He does. Maybe He thinks that Bilam is a cut above the rest of the pagans, and, after all, God is supposed to be God of the universe. And so he may recognise certain positive features of Bilam.

That’s a possibility. We are going to see evidence that might contradict it later on. ” He put something into his words, into his mouth and He said, 'Go back to Balak, and this is what you should say.’“ So in verse 17, he goes back to Balak, and he’s standing by his altar. And the officers of Mo'av there with him, and Balak says to him, "Well what did God say this time?” And so once again, off he goes, in his kind of state of ecstasy or prophecy. And he picks up his message, and he says, “Wake up, Balak, and listen, give ears to me, you son of Zippor. And this is a phrase, this repetition, we’ve had it before, and we’ll have it again when we’re going to say, ” listen to me, heavens, while I speak and the earth open up to my words.“ Repetition of the same thing ” what I have to say.“ "So listen to me, Balak,” verse 19, “ God is not a human being who lies or or a human being who will change His mind If He says something, will it not be done? If He says something will it not be followed up and fulfilled? I have been brought here to bless, and I can’t reverse it. I can’t do anything about it.” Verse 21, “ . There is no evil in Ya'aqov, and there is no evil in the work of Israel. God is with him, and God is calling blowing the shofar.” God is, if you like, speaking for him on his behalf and doing things for them. 22, “ God has taken them out of the land of Egypt.” is an unusual word, but here it’s used to mean the horns, the the glory of the , is a wild ox, is his. In other words, there is power in God that doesn’t exist anywhere else. And here is the line, 23, the most important line with regard to magic and superstition in Judaism, “ .” means a snake, but it also means to guess.

And so there is no guesswork, “no augury,” as the translation has, “no magic in Jacob, no divination, no hocus pocus.” In other words, that area has no impact on Israel whatsoever. Magic has no impact. If you let it, that’s your decision to let it have an impact. If you want to be superstitious, that is your superstition. But as far as the relationship between God and the Jewish people, there is no magic. There is no superstition. Don’t be fooled. “ So this is what God is saying about Israel, And what God does is going to happen. And therefore I’m telling you about this people.” Verse 24, “ This is a people that will rise like a young lion and we’ll jump up like,” actually is a young lion. Some people say it’s a lioness. There are different translations. So you’ve got, is a term for a lion. is a term for lion. There are other words for whelps and so forth. “But he, Israel has this capacity to rise like a lion or like a lioness. He doesn’t rest until he’s eaten his prey and drunk the blood of those who oppose him.” It hasn’t always been that way. But there are times in history when it has, and hopefully we’re in that position at the moment. “ Balak turns other Bilam again and he says, ‘ I can’t bear this, if you are not going to curse them, at least don’t bless them as well. This is terrible what you are doing.’” Verse 26, “And once again Bilam answers and he says to Balak, ‘ I spoke to you very clearly in black and white, and I said to you that this is what’s going to happen.’ I said, ‘Whatever God tells me I have to do.’” Balak doesn’t give up. Verse 27, “ Let me take you to another place. Maybe God will be happy with that place and let you curse from there.

So once again, This is the head of Peor.” Now it’s interesting because Peor is the second name of Baal, Baal Peor. And Peor actually is another word for defecation, because part of the religious activity of Baal was not only sexuality that one had to give of one’s body, whether a male or a female in the temple to their priests and to God, but also you had to give of your body through defecation. So anyway, this is clearly therefore a pagan site. Why he’s chosen it? Because he hopes that his god will be stronger than the God God. And it’s looking towards . And can be translated as a wasteland, but it can also be translated as a particular area that is associated with magic. In verse 29, “ And once again, Bilam says to Balak, ” third time, “build me these seven altars.” And remember three times repetition comes throughout the Torah on almost every issue, narrative, legal, and so forth. Narratives are repeated three times and events are repeated three times and laws are repeated three times. So he goes there, “ And Balak did what Bilam told him and he comes up, offers his sacrifices there.” And once in chapter 24, we have a new Bilam. “ And Bilam no longer goes to ask God what to do. This time he takes it upon himself because he saw it was the right thing, that God wanted him to bless Israel. And he didn’t go each time before he was going to say anything to check with his magic, with again.” So it seems, hasn’t said up to now that each time he had seven cows and everything offered up a sacrifices, he was not just listening to God, he was also covering his bet with his own magic. So he’s not going to his own magic anymore. “

And he looks towards the wilderness where he sees the children of Israel.” Verse 2, “ Bilam lifts up his eyes and he looked at Israel as they were encamped in their tribes.” So he saw they had a system, they had a structure, they had families and units. “ and the spirit of God came over him.” And in verse 3, “ He started his declaration and he said, ‘ So says Bilam the son of Beor and so speaks the man. ” Now translation here is “eye is true,” so I’m telling the truth. But it can also mean the person . Even though is with the verbal sound of the same will come out in poetry. And it could be, I’ve been blinded up to now, but now I’m telling you the truth. “ So speaks the person who listens to what God says, who could actually see the visions that God gives him. All of a sudden my eyes have been opened.” And either means the blockage has fallen off my eyes or it means I prostrate myself to God. And here you have a phrase that most of you are going to be familiar with in verse 5, “ How good are your tents, Jacob?” I don’t know why he has to put the O in there, O Jacob or O Israel. But again, that goes back to the King James. “Your tents are good.” That is to say your family life is good. “ The way you live, you’ve got the answer. By the rivers, you are spread out, like gardens by the river, you are planted like,” is tents, but also it can mean certain plants. “ Like the cedars of Lebanon by the water you are planted, well-planted by water.” It’s very interesting, the opening of the book of Psalms talks about the righteous person as opposed to the wicked person and describes the righteous person as, “ Like a tree that is planted by fountains of water.”

And planted by fountains of water means its roots will thrive, its leaves will never wither, and whatever it does, it will succeed. Whereas the wicked person is like, “ Like the dust that is driven from place to place,” doesn’t have a solid base. So this use of planting trees and plants by water is an important theme that you get throughout the Bible. “ Water comes from either their buckets or overflows Their roots or the plants are based on water, ” And all of a sudden from switching that, he then puts in the line, “And you’ve managed to overcome Agag,” the bad guy, “ And your sovereignty will be exalted.” Now Agag could mean going back to Gog, . It could be a reference to the Amalekite king, Agag. It could be a general term to describe our enemies. Verse 8, “ God took him out of Egypt .” And once again referring to what we said before, this wild ox, it’s not just an ox, but this is a , a huge manged powerful ox with horns, almost a prehistoric animal and referring back to these prehistoric animals. And there were oxen of great strength in Europe until relatively recently that were far stronger, They were called the aurochs, and maybe it’s a reference to them or maybe it’s a reference to these huge dinosaurs that once existed on earth, and saying basically, God took them out of Egypt because of this powerful force, this almost prehistoric force. “ They will eat up their enemies.

They will crush their bones. And smash their arrows.” Now I’m always uncomfortable with these phrases of we’ll defeat and smash our enemies and destroy them. I suppose one can understand that this is what happened to the Israelites often enough and has happened to us. And so it’s inevitable that we, in a sense, hope and dream of triumph. But nevertheless, it does seem a little primitive. But this is poetry. And once again, the Israelites, “ will crouch and ready to pounce like a lion, or lioness or a young lion; Who can stop them and who can prevent them. Whoever blesses you, Israel, will be blessed, and those who curse you will be cursed.” And haven’t we seen that wherever the Jews have been driven out of, the people who drove them out, the nation that drove them out, in the end, however long it takes, ends up declining and suffering. Maybe that’s what’s going to happen to Europe today, who knows? Who knows, of course could go the other way, but let’s not think bad thoughts. 10, “ And Balak got angry with Bilam, ,” this is verse 10, “And he clapped his hands, he smacked them together. And Balak said to Bilam, ’ To curse my enemies, I called you to come here, but you have instead blessed them these three times!‘” Verse 17, “ You flee back to your place! Get out of here. I said I was going to honour you. Your God has prevented you from getting any glory out of this.” Verse 12, “ And Bilam says to Balak, he says, ’ I have told your messengers at the beginning when you sent them to me, if Balak were to fill my house with silver and gold, I can’t go against what God tells me for either good or bad. What God tells me, I’m going to have to say.”

Verse 14, “ And now, I’m going back home. I’m going to give you a little bit of advice as to what’s going to happen in the future.” And in verse 15, he says once again, “ And he lifted up his message and he said, once again, ‘Listen to me, Bilam the son of Beor, and listen to me, the words of the man who can see things clearly. Listen to what the words of God are and know the mind of God. I can see the visions of God. Because of now seeing things so clearly it’s been resolved to me. What I see about the children of Israel might not be happening right now. And the things I say that are going to be good for them might not be soon. But in the long run, a star will rise out of Jacob, and the rule or independence will come to Israel. They will destroy Mo'av and the whole of the foundations of the descendants of Seth who surround them. Edom, powerful at the moment, will be consumed or be taken over and possessed, and that will go all the way to Seir; and Israel will succeed. And the victory will come to Jacob and he will get rid of what is left of those who oppose him.” Verse 20, “ And he looks from there around where he can see Amalek, the tribe of Amalek, the arch enemy. And he lifts up his voice and he says, ’ Amalek may be now one of the greatest nations; but it’s going to perish.‘ And on the other hand, he looked at .” The are the descendants of Jethro. They don’t merge with the Jews. But on the other hand, they ally with them. “ And he looked to them, he says, you will have a strong, secure place. Your nest will be solid amongst the rocks.

And overall, I’m telling you, if Kain disappeared,” the children of Kain disappeared after seven generations, “ What’s going to happen to Asshur?” Although that could be translated here as “When Asshur takes you captive.” And it could be that he means that bad things are going to happen as well as good things are going to happen. And that’s perfectly possible. And once again, verse 23, “ He continues his speech, and he says, , he says, 'Woe to anybody who thinks that they can survive if God’s not on their side. Look at what happened to Crete and the Greeks. They came and they conquered Assyria, but even they have disappeared.’ Bilam got up and he went home and Balak went his way.” And that’s where the story ends. What do we make of all this, these predictions? The predictions are of course that we are a unique nation unlike any other, that we will be going through tough times and yet we will survive. Obviously part of this is directed to the moment in history when they are coming up towards the River Jordan and about to invade Canaan. And so on one level, it’s the description of giving them confidence to invade Canaan despite all the other nations around. But it does seem, by referring to nations whose empires rise after this period, not just the descendants of Esau and Midian and so forth, but Assyria, Crete, the Kittim is also sometimes referred to, the Phoenicians, the sea peoples coming. The area is going to be in a constant turmoil, and yet through it all the Jews are going to have to survive. And it will be bitter and it will be tough. But if, the message goes, we behave ourselves. If we adhere to our traditions like family traditions, our ethical traditions, our spiritual traditions, we will be able to survive and we won’t need magic to survive. Magic might give people some psychological therapy or some instant gratification, but that’s not reliable. The total message of history, of divine involvement in history, is what’s behind these chapters. So I will stop here and turn to the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Julian asks a very good question.

Well, Debbie says, “Hello.” Hello, Debbie, good morning.

Q: Julian says, “Why won’t Balak give up?”

A: It’s an excellent point. Well, one way of course is from a literary point of view, it makes much more of this issue. But the other is that people don’t give up. Pharaoh didn’t give up. People don’t readily give up their biases. You are not going to persuade those people who are demonstrating in the universities that they might be wrong or that there might be another point of view. They will just persist and they’ll go on until eventually they’ll give up. So some people are like that, they won’t give up. But on the other hand, it does seem that this is an opportunity for the Torah to say that there is wisdom and there is poetry beyond the boundaries of the Jewish people, and some people there can recognise it. Not everybody outside is your enemy. At this moment, Bilam seems to be supportive of us. There’s going to come an episode later where we might question this, but at this moment that’s what it sounds like.

Romain says, “Yes, language is very, very important. And much of the language in the Torah is relatively easy compared, certainly, to the language of the prophets and, certainly, to the book of Job.” But it is a rich, rich language. One has to consider with this language, whenever you think and how old you, we can argue about how old it was, is a language that is certainly two and a half thousand years old. And look how rich it is. It’s amazing that a nation can produce this language and produce this literature.

Q: Yisrael, hi, Yisrael. “I don’t know if I’m reading you correctly, but you seem more sympathetic to Bilam’s position or role in this story than I’ve ever read or heard over the years. You seem to imply he’s not such a bad guy. He’s placed in a difficult position. I guess I get this feeling from the way you seem to talk about his relationship with God. Am I understanding you correctly? If so, how do you arrive at this perspective?”

A: Well, yes, you are absolutely right Yisrael. I am suggesting that God’s prepared to talk to Bilam, why shouldn’t I? That God is putting the message in his hands shows a certain universalism of God. And in this universality, there are people on different levels. And some have gifts. And these gifts can help us, whether it’s scientific or literary or anything like that. So you are right, that is exactly my position. I look at this text and I look at the words, and I see God having a conversation with him, telling him what to do, telling him what to say makes a lot of sense to me. And I think it should make a lot of sense to us, because however much we feel ourselves oppressed and abandoned by the nations of the world, not everybody is like that. We must look for those who are our allies, our supporters, and those who understand what we’re all about. So in that sense, it is a message of hope for us.

So with that, I’ll bid you all , goodbye, and hope to see you next week.