Pinhas (Torah)

“Those who are zealous may smite him”

The title incident of Parshat Pinhas is split between the end of last week’s portion (Num 25:1-9) and the beginning of this week’s (vv. 10-15). It paints a vignette: the Israelites encamp at Shittim, in the territory of the Moabites, and some of the people begin to whore with their daughters and, as what seems a natural sequel, to participate in their pagan sacrifices. One man in particular, the son of one of the Israelite tribal leaders, has sex publicly with a Midianite princess—evidently a kind of ritualized, sacred prostitution, connected with the worship of their god Pe’or. The people, including Moses, observe this scandalous and shocking behavior, but don’t quite know what to do. Only Phinehas, grandson of Aharon the high priest, “rises from among the public” (v. 7), takes a spear, and kills them both—thereby appeasing the divine wrath against Israel. In the sequel, in this week’s parshah, God announces that, because Pinhas was “zealous for his God,” he will be awarded “the covenant of peace” and granted “an eternal priesthood.”

Traditional Rabbinic exegesis offers a rather strange explanation for this incident. Moshe and the others had forgotten the special rule applicable in such cases: “habo’el aramit kanaim pog’in bo” (“one who has intercourse with a non-Jew, those who are zealous may smite him”). Were that same zealot to wait and ask the Rabbis what to do, he would be informed that he may not touch him. Only his spontaneous, immediate reaction of zeal, of hot, sacred passion, enjoys this special protected status.

What is going on here? It is almost as if the Rabbis invented here a special legal category to cover those cases that fall outside of the normal purview of the halakhah. Other sexual offenses—adultery, incest, etc—have definite, clearcut legal sanctions: death penalty, corporal punishment, etc. The real problem here is: how is one to deal with situations for where there is no existing rule, no pre-set response? The zealot exercises a kind of “moral creativity”—he responds deeply, morally, passionately, to a situation which he sees as untenable and as endangering the moral integrity of the public as a whole.

But allowing those filled with the spirit to follow their own inner voice presents a real danger, leading ultimately to anarchy, to chaos. How is one to know whether the inner voice is truly speaking in the name of God, or whether it is, so to speak, that of Satan—particularly when one is dealing with acts of ultimate violence such as these? Such decisions are always fraught with ambiguity. Perhaps Hazal’s statement that Pinhas was acting on the basis of a “forgotten” halakha is their way of expressing this moral dilemma. The Rabbis were acutely troubled by the idea of relegating such decisions to the individual and his own initiative, however moral and “right” his intuitions may be. So they interpreted it as an “extra-halakhic halakhah”—in itself a paradox.

There are times when the emotional and moral intensity of the zealot, and his willingness to go outside of the law, is necessary. It is perhaps difficult for us to relate to this in the case of Pinhas, because the response here is one of violence, of bloodshed, and that relating to a situation of sexual licentiousness, concerning which are own sensibilities as modern people are often blunted. But zeal and “extra-legal” behavior may also take the opposite form. Many readers will remember the moral dilemmas confronting young Americans during the Vietnam war: the flourishing during those years of a passionately felt moral objection to the war, of civil disobedience and draft resistance, and the invocation of obedience to a higher moral authority than that of the state. (Ironically, this same issue has reemerged in Israel in recent years, again in the opposite direction: viz. the rulings of the rabbis of Gush Emunim to soldiers to resist orders to evacuate settlers in the event of a peace settlement. Not surprisingly, the liberal advocates of human rights close ranks in a chorus of support for the principle of the ultimate, immutable authority of the [democratically elected] state, against religious conscience following a higher authority. No one seems to see the irony of this position.)

It is interesting to follow the career of Pinhas. He lives on and on, well into the end of the period of the Judges. He appears in the episode of the concubine at Gibeah as a timeless old priest, advising the tribes by means of the oracle of the Urim and Tummim to go to war against the Benjaminites (Judges 20:28; interestingly, again involving zealotry relating to a sexual scandal, albeit here a violent gang rape culminating in its victim’s death). Unlike Eleazar or Joshua, his contemporaries, his death or burial are never recorded, no doubt providing the basis for the legend that Pinhas lived on in the person of the prophet Elijah. The latter mysterious, timeless figure was “very zealous for the Lord,” and participated in such scenes as the confrontation with Baal on Mount Carmel and the return to the caves of Sinai where he hears the “still small voice.” He lives on and on, making an appearance at every Passover Seder and at every Brit; or, in countless Hasidic tales, as the mysterious beggar, who comes from nowhere and disappears without a trace; or, ultimately, as the harbinger of Messiah…

A Watershed Chapter?

The Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, explains the overall thematics of this portion, with its seemingly diverse and unconnected subjects, as introducing “a new form of behavior for the generation of those who were to enter the Land” (Pinhas, 5640, s.v. semikhut parshiyot; but for an interesting counterpoint to this, see 5663, s.v. hemshekh haparshiyot). This was, in brief, a fundamental change in the pattern of the Israelite’s relationship to God. In a nutshell, whereas until this point the life of the Israelites in the desert was under miraculous, transcendent Providence, it now turned to a more down-to-earth, reality bound path, based more upon human initiative. The previous generation was sustained through miracles, all of their physical needs being provided directly by Heaven: they ate manna, drank water from a miraculous well, their shoes and clothing did not wear down, etc. Moreover, they heard the Divine voice and their leader, Moses, received directives from God face to face.

This week’s parashah gives several signs of the transition: the appointment of Joshua as the successor to Moses; the second census of the people, marking the end of the 38 years (which, as we mentioned in the introduction to Bamidbar, is the second major watershed in the Book of Numbers); and the rules concerning the fixed animal sacrifices, establishing a regular, ritualized worship—temidim kedsidram umusafim kehilkhatam. (This possibly relates to another issue: the entire problematic in religion of fixity vs. emotion. Was this a transition from the spontaneous, charismatic prophetic leader to that of the priest, as in Ahad Haam’s essay on “Prophet and Priest”?)

Two incidents in the chapter are particularly characteristic. We have already noted how Pinhas’s act was marked by human moral initiative. But no less interesting is the story of the daughters of Zelophehad, who approached Moses to ask what would happen to their father’s inheritance, seeing as how he had died leaving only five daughters and no sons. A mundane concern—but one of great importance, insofar as it concerns the working of justice, the application of principles of equity and fairness in immediate, practical situations.

There seems to be an interesting dialectic here: the generation of the desert were in some sense closer to God, seeing with their own eyes the constant miracles He performed for them; but their existence was also more child-like, bereft of the responsibility and choices that typify adult life. Some Hasidic teachers, and Midrashic motifs, see the desert period as an almost Edenic existence (or, for that matter, Jeremiah 2:2: “I remember for you the devotion of your youth, your bridal love, following Me in the wilderness, in an unsown land,” which coincidentally was read as this Shabbat’s haftarah for entirely different reasons). In any event, the entrance into Eretz Yisrael, which is tantamount to “real life,” demands leaving the womb.

One can connect this with a larger tension within spiritual life, if not in life generally: that of quietism vs. activism. Is the truly authentic religious posture that of sitting quietly, waiting upon God, doing what one has to do, but with a certain inner sense of dependence, of being a mere vessel or channel of God acting through one? Or is it that of the active person, always striving to do more, judging himself against the yardstick of his ideal, constantly seeking to fill his life with more positive contents: more Torah, more kavanah (inner devotion), more creativity, more deeds of kindness towards others? Christian mystics may have a more highly developed language for this sort of thing—via activa and via passiva, Martha and Mary, etc.—but it is certainly a central theme in Jewish thought, in Hasidism and elsewhere.

On another level, Judaism speaks of this problem in terms of the debate between Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (Berakhot 35b). The former insisted that one must live a normal life, engaging in worldly activities: “and you shall gather your grain.” The latter protests that, “if a person sows at the time of sowing, plows at the time of plowing and reaps at the time of reaping,” when will he have any time left to devote himself to Torah? Rather, when Jews fulfill the will of the Almighty, “their work is done for them by others.” In brief, work and other worldly activities are a necessary evil, to be avoided if at all possible. This is a perennial debate: Are spirituality and worldliness in fundamental conflict with one another, or can they be reconciled? Or, in William James memorable phrase, is ones religion “world-affirming” vs. “world denying”? This is, of course the crux of the conflict today between Haredi Ultra-Orthodoxy, which fosters a cloistered, life-long study-centered pietism, and other schools in religious Jewry, and first and foremost religious Zionism.

* * * * *

The discussion of balance and various kinds of dialectic tension calls to mind a more personal kind of discussion, prompting me to engage in a semi-confessional mode. Much of what I have written in these pages over the past ten months or so relates to an underlying personal agenda: the attempt to create a personal theology and philosophy of Judaism, through my own reactions and associations and commentaries and wrestling with our most sacred and pivotal text—the Torah. I have tried here to define my own position on the multitude of issues raised by the Torah, which, ultimately, is as broad as life itself (giving an added meaning to the phrase Torat Hayyim).

If asked to summarize in one word what I am trying to do here, I would respond: to create a balance: between faith and reason; between modernity and tradition; between the worlds of the yeshiva and the academy; between a passionate but too often close-minded Orthodoxy, and an inquiring, critical but often alienated approach to our tradition.

But beyond that, perhaps this agenda, and my attempt to create a balance within it, has its roots in certain antinomies in my own life and background. Recently, hearing someone speak of her own rebbe, and the tones of reverence and commitment to learning and growing along the path of one particular spiritual teacher, I felt a strange mixture of envy or jealousy and distance. How simple and easy life might have been if, at certain critical points in my life, I could have devoted myself wholeheartedly to becoming a disciple of one teacher, whether this would have been a conventional Orthodox master such as Rav Soloveitchik, the Bostoner Rebbe, or the Lubavitcher Rebbe, or a more marginal figure such as Shlomo Carlebach. Yet I knew that such a path was not for me, and that for better or worse I was too independent-minded for such humble submission.

I recall a phase from one of the popular New Age guide books of recent years (a genre which I generally don’t take overly seriously): James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy. He writes that every person’s ultimate spiritual task is to reconcile and harmonize the diverse worlds of his own parents who, by virtue of being two distinct individuals, embody two worlds. I thought of the diverse spiritual and cultural elements in my own home background: my mother’s passion for art and music; my fathers focus on the rational worlds of mathematics and science; both together making the spiritual journey from a radical socialist political commitment focused on America to reaffirmation of Jewish identity and Zionism, culminating in aliyah to Israel. In recent years, I have semi-humorously identified Beethoven and Einstein as the two “household idols” of my childhood home (quite literally: busts of these two men graced my parental home). More recently, in terms of Jewish background, I have come to learn more of the heritage of my two grandfathers: my paternal grandfather, a “matmid,” a perpetual Talmud student, whose early training was in the great Lithuanian Torah centers of Kovna, Vilna, Grodno, and Volozhin; and my maternal grandfather, who grew up in the moderately Hasidic atmosphere of central Poland, and whose own grandfather, who also raised him, was a hassid of Rav Simhah Bunem of Psyshcha. In some subconscious way, I have tried to integrate the worlds of Psyshcha and Volozhin: the piercingly honest, penetrating, somewhat “puritanical” “third stage” in Hasidism—seeking truth, honesty, personal integrity and wholeness, coupled with Hasidic service through intense prayer ; and the Lithuanian yeshiva, with its all-encompassing, encyclopedic knowledge of Torah. Finally, in terms of my own life, there is the tension between the stern, at times even harsh, halakhic and scholastic tradition of my teacher, Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ztz”l, and the Heterodox, mystical, “non-dualistic” spirituality of my friend and teacher Art Green (may he enjoy a long life!)—two figures, each of whom may be seen, in their own way, as gilgulim, translated into the modern idiom, of Volozhin and Psyshcha.