POLISH TRANSLATION HERE.
Thoughts on Parashat Pinchas 5785
Our parasha starts in the middle of the story that concludes our previous Torah portion and talks about the Israelites getting involved in an idolatrous cult:
While Israel was staying at Shittim, the menfolk profaned themselves by whoring with the Moabite women, who invited the menfolk to the sacrifices for their god. The menfolk partook of them and worshiped that god. Thus Israel attached itself to Baal-peor, and יהוה was incensed with Israel. (Num 25:1-3)
What is going on here? Let me quote some verses I consider crucial to focus on for a better understanding of this story:
“Take all the ringleaders and have them publicly impaled before יהוה, so that יהוה’s wrath may turn away from Israel.” (Num 25: 4)
It looks like God has already issued a decree, early on.
The severity of this decree seems to be rather justified: In the Torah idolatry is a grave transgression and the punishment for it is death by stoning. This applies to individuals who worship other gods or who persuade others to do so. That was definitely the case in this story:
Israel attached itself to Baal-peor, and יהוה was incensed with Israel. (Num 25:3)
It all started with the Israelites being seduced into this idolatrous cult by Moabite women, a pagan cult which involved promiscuous sex, possibly with multiple partners, at the same time.
This constituted a fundamental betrayal of everything that was revealed to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, roughly 40 years after the Exodus from Egypt, just before the Israelites entered the Promised Land! Given how many years had already passed and the scope of this betrayal, it can be compared only to the incident with the Golden Calf. Yet, God did not decree to exterminate the whole Israelite nation, as it was the case back then. No, He softened his judgment and ordered only the tribal leaders to be impaled.
Ok, but what did Moses do? It seems that after hearing the Divine decree he added a caveat to it, namely, instead of impaling all tribal leaders indiscriminately (v.5), Moses ordered the death penalty only for those who attached themselves to the cult of Baal-peor and authorized every Israelite official to conduct the decree. The first part sounds pretty nuanced and speaks to our contemporary, Western mindset, that fundamentally opposes the idea of group responsibility, maintaining that judgments, especially like these, should be done only on a case-by-case basis. However, since God explicitly said ALL of them, it looks like Moses ‘softened’ the Divine judgment, again. The fundamental difference between God’s position and Moses’ position on it is that the one of Moses may have required some kind of a formal court that would determine if someone is guilty or not. The Divine position here does not require anything like that. God had already said: impale them all!
Then the Torah brings us this desired, individual case:
Just then a certain Israelite man came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions, in the sight of Moses and of the whole Israelite community who were weeping at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. (Num 25:6)
And soon after that young, vigorous man, Pinchas, a grandson of Aaron enters the stage to fulfill the Divine judgment in front of the nation’s elite who took no action other than weeping.
Seeing all of this, Pinchas takes a spear and kills that Israelite man and that Midianite woman.
What can we make of it? What’s the message here? Our tradition has come up with a lot of takes on this story. But I’m not going to go over them here, I will stick to the way I read it and come up with my own conclusions. Pinchas, most likely, didn’t hear the original Divine decree; he heard Moses’ decree. He saw a man, Zimri, a leader of the Tribe of Simeon, attaching himself to the idolatrous cult. He saw the elders who were supposed to be judges here doing nothing but weeping. He heard the decree, saw the crime and the inept court so he took matters into his own hands.
Why is this story even controversial? Yes, the circumstances here are unusual but everything actually seems to be in its place here: the two highest judges of Israel, God and Moses, issued a direct and clear decree for every Israelite official. And here, I believe, I may have reached the bottom of things: Pinchas might have not been ‘officially’ authorized to conduct that decree. He might have been too young and was not counted among the Israelite officials.
The Torah doesn’t mention that. My judgment is based on the rabbinic reception of this story which for the most part is very critical. It looks like people create structures and protocols they can rely on in order to judge and distinguish between right and wrong. But those, who act intuitively, trust their judgment, but ignore the structures, are judged more harshly, even if they are right. Therefore, we should remember that the structures and protocols we create to help us with judgment are not to replace our individual judgment and sense of right and wrong. Therefore, only when we are aware of the influence of the tools we use, can we make our judgments pure and righteous.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Mirski
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