PINHAS, SON OF ELAZAR, SON OF AARON THE PRIEST, HAS TURNED BACK MY WRATH FROM THE ISRAELITES BY DISPLAYING AMONG THEM HIS PASSION FOR ME, SO THAT I DID NOT WIPE OUT THE ISRAELITE PEOPLE IN MY PASSION. SAY, THEREFORE, I WILL GRANT HIM MY PACT OF PEACE.

(Bamidbar 25: 11)

 

 

My Pact of Peace - Reward or Safeguard Against Psychological Damage?

As reward for pacifying God's wrath and anger, He blessed him with the quality of peacefulness, i.e., that he not be strict or upset. This was necessary because the act committed by Pinhas, of killing someone, naturally leaves a strong emotional impression, but since it was performed for the sake of Heaven, he received the blessing that he always be calm and peaceful, and that this matter [of having killed] should not affect his heart.

(Ha-Amek Davar 25:12)

 

The act of killing a human being in the name of religious zeal can make a person indifferent to killing. That is why Pinhas required a special blessing from God, so that his zealous deed performed for the sake of Heaven would not change him into a wicked person. The boundary between shedding blood for the sake of Heaven and blood-shed for the satisfaction of human drives can become blurred... Both Pinhas and Eliyahu acted out of devotion to God, and not out of the hatred of sinners. A person who is zealous for God because he hates sinners does not genuinely serve God; rather he is motivated by his drives and urges and a quest for self-satisfaction. There is no service of God in that - rather it is a case of self-deception.

(Y. Leibowitz: Sheva Shanim Shel Sihot al Parashat Ha-Shavua, pg. 730)

 

 

The Deed of Pinhas and the Breaking of the Tablets

Pinchas Leiser

 

Popular Jewish culture views the Kohanim as anger-prone. I am not sure whether there is any basis for this notion in rabbinical literature; the Sages characterize them as zrizim - quick and diligent. If we consider some of the incidents involving the Levites, we will discover that some of them include acts which, at least at first glance, may be characterized as impulsive, and as sometimes motivated by religious fervor.

The earliest such story known to us is that of Shimon and Levi, who avenged the rape of their sister Dinah, massacring the men of Shechem. Their father Jacob condemned the slaughter; Let not my person be included in their council, let not my being be counted in their assembly... I will divide them in Jacob, scatter them in Israel (Bereishit 49:6,7). While the Levites are rehabilitated, the tribe of Shimon is excluded from Moses' blessings.

The next story is Moses' slaying of the Egyptian: He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen... He struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand (Shemot 2:11-12).

The third story is the breaking of the tablets by Moses, as he descended from Mount Sinai.

The fourth story is the striking of the rock by Moses and Aaron.

The fifth story is Pinhas's killing of Zimri ben Salu (chieftain of an ancestral house of the tribe of Shimon) and Kozbi bat Tzur (daughter of the chieftain of Midian).

I might also add the tragic story of Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, who sacrificed a strange fire. Although this action involved no violence, it did spring from spontaneous religious fervor.

In each of these stories, the protagonist belongs to the tribe of Levi.

Now I would like to deal with two of these stories: Pinhas's killing of Kozbi and Nadav, and the breaking of the tablets. (The latter incident is timely, since it was one of the five catastrophes which befell our ancestors on the 17^th of Tammuz).

Chapter 25 in our parasha describes what happened to the Israelites in Shittim, the provocative act of the Israelite man (Zimri ben Salu), and Pinhas's spontaneous reaction to it. The plain meaning of the text leaves almost no room for a reading of the text that does not celebrate Pinhas's deed - after all, it stopped the plague!

According to such a reading, the pact of peace is understood to serve as a reward for the heroic deed. Pinhas acted in a moment of spiritual eclipse and saved Israel.

Despite the plain meaning of the text, we do find the Sages and latter exegetes relating in a more complicated way to Pinhas's zeal.

On the one hand, the Sages transform the spontaneous action of a religious zealot into the observance of a halakhah which came to Pinhas's mind when faced with Zimri's behavior. And so, the Talmud Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin 9:7) explains:

It is written: When Pinhas, son of Elazar, son of Aaron the Priest saw this. What did he see? He saw the incident and recalled the halakhah: "One who has sexual intercourse with an Aramite woman - the zealous kill him."

On the hand, however, a halahkic analysis of the case reveals that things are not so simple. Pinhas's action is quite problematic, and only after the fact does it elicit a kind of justification or empathy, as we may find in the Babylonian Talmud:

Rava bar bar Hana said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: If one comes for advice [regarding zealous killing] - he is not to be instructed. Not only that; if Zimri had desisted and Pinhas killed him anyway - he [Pinhas] would incur the death penalty for it. If Zimri had turned around and killed Pinhas, he [Zimri] would not incur the death penalty, since he [Pinhas] was about to kill him. (Sanhedrin 82a)

This dictum emphasizes a clear and unambiguous halakhic principle: The law cannot be served through zealous deeds. It was only the uniqueness of the situation and the spontaneity of Pinhas's action that decriminalized his zealous act.

The discussion in the Jerusalem Talmud mentioned above gives voice to an alternative opinion:

We learned: Against the wishes of the Sages and Pinhas [who acted] against the wishes of the Sages. Rabbi Yuda bar Pazi said: They wanted to place a ban on him, but the Holy Spirit jumped up on his behalf and said, It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time (25:13).

Later exegetes point out how problematic it is to kill someone in a fit of zealousness.

Rabbi Barukh Epstein, author of the commentary Torah Temimah writes:

This must be performed in an authentic spirit of giving honor to God. If so, who knows? Perhaps the zealot claims to be motivated by zealousness for God, but is in fact pursuing some external interest, killing someone whose death is not really demanded by the law.

Rabbi Epstein postulates that we can never be sure of the purity of a zealot's motives; thus proper legal procedure is set at risk.

The NeTziV views the pact of peace given to Pinhas not as a reward, but rather as a blessing that every zealot (Pinhas included) is in need of. The killing of a person injures the soul of the perpetrator. Even though Pinhas's intentions were pure, there is no guarantee that the zealot's soul will emerge unscathed by zealous killing, even if that killing appears to be justified. The NeTziV writes:

As reward for pacifying God's wrath and anger, He blessed him with the quality of peacefulness, i.e., that he not be strict or upset. This was necessary because the act committed by Pinhas, of killing someone, naturally leaves a strong emotional impression, but since it was performed for the sake of Heaven, he received the blessing that he always be calm and peaceful, and that this matter [of having killed] should not affect his heart. (He-Amek Davar 25:12)

As opposed to Pinhas's zealotry, which involved extra-judicial bloodshed, Moses' breaking of the original, divinely-crafted tablets in response to the sin of the golden calf is viewed by the Sages and later exegetes as an act of supreme courage. For example, Rashi writes in his comments on the Torah's closing verse:

Before the eyes of all Israel - This refers to the fact that his heart inspired him to shatter the Tablets before their eyes, as it is said And I broke them before your eyes (Devarim 9:17), and the opinion of the Holy One blessed be He, regarding this action agreed with his opinion, as it is stated that God said of the Tablets, asher shavarta [which you broke] (Shemot 34:1) yiyshar kohakha [may your strength be fitting] because you broke them. (Rashi Devarim 34:12, based on Silberman translation)

Perhaps the difference between the two stories has nothing to do with religious fervor and the feeling that a strong statement must be made in order to forestall further deterioration of a situation. Rather, the difference is that between the breaking of the tablets (God's handiwork) and the killing of a person (God's image). Objects, even if created by God, lack holiness; only a person can strive for holiness through his own actions. Rabbi Meir Simha of Dvinsk writes in his commentary on the Torah, Meshekh Hokhmah:

All of the types of holiness, [that of] the Land of Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple, they are but details and branches of the Torah, and they are sanctified through the Torah's holiness... Do not imagine, God forbid, that the Temple and the Tabernacle are intrinsically holy objects! God dwells among His sons, and if they, to a man, have transgressed the Covenant (Hosea 6:7), all holiness is removed from them, and they become like profane vessels "intruders came and desecrated it." Titus entered the Holy of Holies with a prostitute and was not harmed (Gittin 56b) because its holiness had been removed. More than that - the Tablets - the writing of God - are not Holy in themselves, but only for you. When the bride [Israel] went a whoring in her bridal canopy [the sin of the golden calf] they became like earthen shards lacking any intrinsic holiness, but only [holy] for you, when you observe them. At the end of the day, there is nothing in the world worthy of worship and submission. Only God is holy in His necessary existence, and to Him praise and worship is fitting. (Meshekh Hokhmah Shemot 32: 19)

...None of the holy places are founded in religion, but rather from the nation and the roots, such as Mount Moriah from which man was created (Sanhedrin 38b), and there Abraham offered up Isaac, and it was chosen by a prophet. Religion only spoke of a place which God shall choose (Devarim 12:5, etc.). [As for] Mount Sinai, the place of religion, as soon as the Divine Presence left it - the sheep and cattle climbed up it (Shemot 19:13)! God forbid that emotions should confuse us to relate any form with religion. Jerusalem and all of the Land of Israel and Mount Moriah are built solely on their relation to our fathers, the roots of the faith, and the unification of the nation with its roots, so that all of the emotions [regarding those places] should be for the sake of the nation's unification. (Meshekh Hokhmah Shemot 12: 21)

The midrash in Eikhah Rabbah (4) also expresses the difference between the destruction of stones (even those of the Temple) and the killing of human beings:

It is written, A psalm of Assaf. O God, the heathen are come into your inheritance (Tehillim 79:1) The text should have used a phrase like, Weeping of Assaf, Lament of Assaf, Dirge of Assaf; why does it say, A psalm of Assaf? It may be likened to a king who erected a bridal-chamber for his son which he plastered, cemented, and decorated; but his son entered upon an evil course of living. The king forthwith ascended to the chamber, tore the curtains and broke the rods; the [the son's] tutor took a piece of rod which he used as a flute and played upon it. People said to him, "The king has overthrown his son's chamber and you sit playing a tune!" He replied to them, "I play a tune because the king overturned his son's chamber but did not pour out his anger upon his son." Similarly, people said to Assaf, "The Holy One, blessed be He, has caused Temple and Sanctuary to be destroyed, and you sit singing a Psalm!" He replied to them, "I sing a Palm because the Holy One, blessed be He, poured out His wrath upon wood and stone and not upon Israel." That is what is written, and He has kindled a fire in Zion, which has devoured the foundations thereof. (Cohen translation)

Will our generation also learn to internalize this important principle: that human lives come before stones and soil, that objects possess no inherent holiness, and that holiness is dependent upon the actions of human beings who strive to become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation?

Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat Shalom, is a psychologist

 

 

Women took no Part in the Sins of the Golden Calf and of the Spies

Then drew near the daughters of Zelafhad (Bamidbar 27:1): In that generation the women built up the fences which the men broke down. Thus you will find that Aaron told them: Break off the golden rings, which are in the ears of your wives (Shemot 32:2), but the women refused and checked their husbands; as is proved by the fact that it says, And all the people broke off the golden rings which were in their ears (32:3), the women not participating with them in making the calf. It was the same in the case of the spies, who uttered an evil report: And the men... when they returned, made all the congregation to murmur against him (Bamidbar 14:36), and against this congregation the decree [not to enter the Land] was issued, because they had said: We are not able to go up (13:31). The women, however, were not with them in their counsel, as may be inferred from the fact that it is written in an earlier passage of our section, For the Lord had said of them: They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Kalev the son of Yefuneh (26:65). Thus the text speaks of a man but not of a woman. This was because the men had been unwilling to enter the Land. The women, however, drew near to ask for an inheritance in the Land. Consequently, the present section was written down next to that dealing with the death of the generation of the wilderness, for it was there that the men broke down the fences and the women built them up.

(Bamidbar Rabbah 21, Slotki translation)

 

Whereupon the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them p with Korah - when that band died, when the fire consumed the two hundred and fifty men - and they became an example.

(Bamidbar 26:10)

 

The voice of your brother's blood: Soil which has soaked up innocent blood does vengeance against its sons

And Rav Yehudah the son of Rabbi Hiyya said: From the day the earth opened its mouth to receive Abel's blood, it had not opened again, for it is said: From the end of the earth we hear singing: Glory to the righteous! (Yeshayahu 24:16), and not from the mouth of the earth.

His brother Hezkiah questioned him: [What about the verse] whereupon the earth opened its mouth?

He told him: It opened for evil, but it did not open for good.

(Sanhedrin 37b)

 

 

 

 

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