Bamidbar, 22:28: “And HaShem opened the mouth of the she-donkey and it said to Bilaam, ‘What have I done to you struck me these three times (regalim)”.
Rashi, 22:28, Dh: Shalosh Regalim: “It alluded to him, ‘you are trying to uproot the nation that celebrates the three Foot- festivals in the year’.”

Bilaam is on his way to Moav to curse the Jewish people, when his she-donkey suddenly refuses to go further. Bilaam hits her three times, and the donkey miraculously opens her mouth and asks why Bilaam has, without justification, struck her three times. The Torah uses the word, regalim for the word ‘times’, instead of the more standard word, ‘paamim’, and the Sages expound that God, through the medium of the donkey, was communicating to Bilaam that he would be unsuccessful in destroying the Jewish people because they observe the three Foot-festivals (Shalosh Regalim), Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot. The obvious question is what is the connection between the three Foot-festivals and Bilaam’s journey to curse the Jewish people?

One possible approach is that the three Foot-festivals are symbolic of the Three Fundamental tenets of faith that the Sefer HaIkrim outlines: The existence of God; that God gave the Torah; and that God oversees us (Divine Providence). These are the basic pillars on which our belief is built. While all of the three Foot-festivals have elements of all these fundamentals, it seems that each one corresponds in particular to one of the three: Pesach essentially establishes the existence of God, Shavuot is about the giving of the Torah, and Sukkot stresses the idea of Divine Providence in that HaShem protected the Jewish people in the desert.

Bilaam was trying to uproot the Jewish nation, whose foundation is their Emunah, as is manifest by their belief in the three pillars of God’s existence, that God gave us the Torah, and Divine Providence. Accordingly, God told Bilaam that he would not succeed because of the people’s Emunah. However, it still needs to be explained further why the three Foot-festivals in particular were used as examples of the three pillars of Emunah. In order to fully answer this, it is instructive to understand another example of how God showed that Bilaam’s efforts would not succeed because of the merits of the Jewish people.

When Bilaam set off to curse the Jewish people, the Torah tells us that he got up (vayakam) early in the morning. The Midrash Tanchuma says that on seeing this, God exclaimed, “Wicked man! Avraham, their father already superseded you’ as it says [in the story of the Akeidah], “Vayashkem baboker.¹” The words ‘vayakam’ and ‘vayashkem’ both mean getting up from sleep, however ‘vayashkem’ implies getting up even earlier than ‘vayakam’. Thus, God was telling Bilaam that Avraham arose earlier in the morning on the way to the Akeidah than Bilaam did on the way to cursing the Jewish people. What is the significance of this Midrash? Rabbi Moshe Feinstein² explains that Bilaam was trying to portray the Jewish people in a negative light by showing that he would act with greater eagerness in his evil than they did in their service of God. However, Hashem told him that the father of the Jewish people, Avraham, already demonstrated greater eagerness in doing God’s will than Bilaam did in contradicting it. Consequently, Avraham’s descendants inherited his characteristic of alacrity and possessed enough merit to withstand Bilaam’s attempt to portray us in a negative light.

Returning to the allusion to the three Foot-festivals, it is possible to suggest that Bilaam was also attempting to portray the Jewish people in a negative light by demonstrating his willingness to travel a long way in order to curse the Jewish people, and to contrast it to the fact that they would not be willing to travel the same distance for the sake of God. Accordingly, God, through the medium of the donkey, told him that Bilaam’s effort would also fail, because the Jewish people are indeed willing to travel long distances for God’s sake, on the three Foot-festivals where they would all willingly leave their homes and travel to offer Sacrifices in the Temple.³

Two important lessons can be derived from the above explanation. Firstly, the importance of the three Foot-festivals because they enable us to instill in ourselves the foundations of Emunah. Secondly, it teaches us of the idea that making an effort and travelling for the sake of God is of great value, in that it demonstrates a person’s willingness to make significant effort to connect to God. This could manifest itself in many ways, including being prepared to make effort to find a suitable place of learning, or to connect to a suitable Rabbi. May we, like our ancestors, warrant to be protected by them merit of properly observing the three Foot-festivals.

1. Balak, 22:21 with Rashi.
2. Darash Moshe, Bamidbar, 22:1. This idea was originally heard from Rabbi Chanoch Harris.
3. It is true, that at that point in time, the Jewish people had not yet had the chance to do the Mitzvot of the three Foot-festivals, but evidently, even at that time, they were on the level were they would do it given the opportunity, and God knew that they would do it in the future, therefore it was considered as if they already had that merit.