Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on parashat Pinchas 5784
There is an old Japanese story about a samurai and a fisherman. One day, the samurai went to collect a debt from the fisherman. “I’m sorry,” the fisherman said, “but this last year has been a very bad one for me, and I regret to say I do not have the money to repay you.” Quick to anger, the samurai drew his sword and prepared to kill the fisherman on the spot. Thinking fast, the fisherman boldly said, “I have been studying martial arts and my master teaches that you should never strike out of anger.”
The samurai looked at him for a minute, then slowly lowered his sword. “Your master is wise,” he said quietly.
“My master used to teach the same lesson. Sometimes my anger gets the better of me. I will give you one more year to repay your debt, but if you fail even by a penny, I will surely kill you.”
The samurai returned to his house, arriving late at night.
He crept in quietly, not wishing to wake his wife, but to his shock, he found two people in the bed, his wife and a stranger dressed in samurai clothing. With a surge of jealousy and anger, he raised his sword to slay them both, but suddenly the fisherman’s words came back to him: “Do not strike out of anger.” The samurai stopped for a moment, took a deep breath, and then deliberately made a loud noise. His wife instantly woke up, as did the “stranger,” who turned out to be his mother.
“What is the meaning of this?” he yelled. “I almost killed you both!”
“We were afraid of robbers,” his wife explained. “So I dressed your mother up in your samurai clothes to scare them off.” A year passed and the fisherman came to see the samurai.
“I had an excellent year, so here is your money back and with interest,” the sherman said happily to him. “Keep your money,” replied the samurai. “You repaid your debt long ago.”
The moral of this story seems to be as follows: do not react out of anger-or indeed out of any negative emotion such as fear or guilt. Numerous expressions of rabbinic wisdom also condemn impulsive action, especially on anger etc. The whole talmudic concept of yetzer hatov (good inclination) and yetzer hara (bad inclination) recommends prudent and deliberate actions designed to subordinate our impulses to moral actions directed toward a specific goal. However, the story of our parasha for this week seems to convey the opposite message: grandson of Aaron, the Priest, not only seems to be acting on negative emotion – anger – but on top of everything he is rewarded for his actions by God himself. This leads us to perceive the story of Pinchas as a story of righteous indignation and what is crucial here is the context: the Israelites were committing grave sins through illicit and lewd sexual interactions with Moabite women and through idol worship stemming from it. These practices became more and more widespread and at some point they brought a terrible plague upon Israelities. The main problem was that nobody was actually trying to do something about it. Therefore, Pinchas took matters into his own hands and did a thing that was both ugly and right at the same time.
The story of Pinchas does not undermine the principle of not acting on negative emotion mentioned above. It only tells us that there are situations in which a not-pretty thing may be necessary to be done in order to solve a specific societal problem. It also teaches us that there are things beyond human comprehension and that even knowing the entire Torah (and its ethics) through, and having a very sensitive heart does not make us always and ‘automatically’ right.
Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Mirski
Leave a Reply