Pinchas 5773

Pinchas 5773

Did you ever have a conversation with someone and their response was so different than what you expected that you began to wonder what was actually driving that comment, because the conversation itself couldn’t have been the reason? This is how I felt when I looked at this week’s parsha, Pinchas.

Pinchas, as you may remember is a Jewish zealot. At the end of last week’s portion, when the Israelites come in contact with the Midianites, the people succumbed to the cult prostitution of the Midianite people and with it, the worship of Ba’al. In the frenzy that followed, Moses proved himself to be an ineffectual leader. And it was Pinchas that stemmed this horrible moment and the danger of God’s response by killing an Israelite and the Midianite cult prostitute.

In this week’s parsha, named for Pinchas, God awards him with a Brit Shalom - a covenant of peace. The rabbis in their commentary say that Pinchas and Elijah are the same person. It’s a strange comment, there’s no support for it in the text. While Elijah, like Pinchas, is zealous, they live 100 of years apart. The rabbis clearly know this, so why would they connect these two personalities? What is driving this comment? I want to suggest to you that there were historical concerns for the rabbis. Before the destruction of the Second Temple, the driving force for the revolt against the Romans came from a group called the Sucari, named for the dagger that many of them carried in the folds of their robes so that if there were Israelites that did not want to participate in this revolution, they were seen as traders and they were killed with the daggers. In this spirit of zealotry, a revolt was created and in the end, the temple was destroyed.

Perhaps the rabbis were concerned about such zealots and did not want to see them put in a position of honor with a Brit Shalom, but rather understood the Brit Shalom as God’s way of taking Pinchas, and with him Elijah, off the grid - making them no longer part of the normal society, as if to say to each of us that zealotry is never the right answer. Yes, there are occasions when zealots lead us to the proper place, but as a mode of operation for society, it is never the Jewish path. Hence, the rabbis made a comparison between Elijah and Pinchas. Did they actually believe they were the same person, or were they simply sending us a message? Pinchas may have saved us in one age and Elijah in another, but they are anomalies in Jewish history and there are paths to create the covenant of peace other than the ones they chose through their acts of zealotry.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Michael Siegel

Balak 5773

 Balak 5773

This week’s Torah portion Balak which both one of the most familiar and popular of parshot and one of the most difficult to understand. Balak, the King of the Moabites, is afraid of the power of the Israelites, who are coming into his territory.  In effort to secure victory in battle against them, he hires Balam, the most famous of the non-Jewish prophets, to curse the Israelites. But Balam, on his way to go and do the cursing, first encounters trouble with his donkey when it won’t go any farther. And when he beats the donkey, the donkey talks to him and the donkey shows him an angel that is there to do evil to Balam.  Then Balak takes Balam to see the Israelites from three different perspectives, trying to get him to see something that he can use as the basis for a curse But each time Balam opens his mouth to curse the Israelites, he blesses them instead.

What is all of this supposed to mean?

Is this just a silly story with a talking donkey, a ne’er do well king, and a prophet who cant seem to get a curse out of his mouth?

The secret to understanding this Torah portion comes not in the words of the Torah at all, but at the very end of the haftarah. Here we see what the prophet Micah tells the Jewish people.

“He has told you O’ man what is good

and what the Lord requires of you.

Only to do justice and to love, kindness, and

to walk modestly with your God”

How does this verse at the very end of the haftarah help us understand this message of Parashat Balak? It is ultimately this modesty that is the undoing of Balak and Balam, the villains of the story.  Balak’s fear of the Israelites comes not from the ordinary fear of a king who is going into battle with another people. Balak and Balam, like all of the villains of the Torah who have come before fear not only the Israelites, but what the Israelites represent, because the Jewish people are the people who proclaim God’s dominion over all things. The Jewish people are the people who remind the world that human accomplishment is not the be all and end all of existence, but that our actions, as the prophet Micah points out, will be judged on the moral quality of our behavior, not merely on any measure of worldy success. It's Balak’s refusal to walk modestly, Balak’s inability to acknowledge that he is but a part of things and not the sum total of all existence that leads him to seek a curse on the Israelites. And it is his immodesty, his refusal to recognize God’s role in the world that is ultimately his undoing.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Abe Friedman

Chukat 5773

Chukat

I have wonderful memories of my maternal grandmother whose 27th yahrtzeit was observed last week.  She lived with us from the time I was a child and we used to make each other laugh.  Occasionally she would tell me to do things and I would ask her “Why?”  Sometimes I really wanted to know “why” and sometimes I just wanted to annoy her – and so I would keep asking “why?” until she would answer, “Y is a crooked letter.”  And I would keep asking “why?” and running out of patience she would tell me that “Y is a crooked letter”.

Although it was a simple game between a grandmother and grandson, somewhere in that response was a profound life lesson that we do not always get answers to our questions.  It is a lesson that is echoed in this week’s parasha, “Chukat.”

Chukat includes one of the strangest if not most mysterious of Biblical laws, the law of the Parah Adumah (the red cow), usually referred to as the law of the Red Heifer. According to the text the ashes of this unique creature would be mixed in a solution of water to be sprinkled on those in a state of ritual impurity so as to purify them.  However, the Kohen tasked with preparing the solution would be considered as impure for having been in physical contact with the carcass. In other words, the rituals of the Parah Adumah make the impure pure and the pure impure!

Rabbi Wolf Kelman, of blessed memory, suggested that the Parah Aduma was therefore a classic example of a PARA-dox!  No reason is offered explaining why this ritual was observed other than “zot hukkat ha-Torah / this is a law (statute of the Torah)”.  The words “hok” (the root of “hukkat”) refer to a particular category of Biblical law for which no explanation is given.

In contrast to such ethical teachings as “do not steal” or “love your neighbor as yourself” or ritual teachings commemorating historical events such as the celebration of Pesah (mitzvot which we probably regard as more compelling and meaningful than the red heifer ritual) a ”hok” demands equal respect even if no rationale is evident. 

For many observing a law simply because God tells us to do so is not sufficient.  We want to understand why and so many explanations have been offered (for example) for the laws of kashrut.  But because the Torah itself does attempt to explain why we are to keep these laws they fall into the same category as the Parah Adumah – laws to be observed because God said so.

I admit that not having a logical rational for specific mitzvot is not always comfortable for moderns – for most of us have been demanding explanations since emerging from adolescence. We stopped accepting answers like “because” when we were children.  Observing a commandment simply because the Torah says so, flies in the face of our modern sensibilities. We don’t like the idea of being told to follow a rule without a good explanation for its existence.

So we feel torn. Reason demands an explanation for the things we do. Faith challenges us to trust powers greater than ourselves. We live in a state of tension. Which path should we follow?

Perhaps all of this is preparation for bigger questions which will have no answers for soon after the details of these hukkim, we read of the deaths first of Moshe’s sister, Miriam, and then of his brother, Aaron.  The tradition teaches that the death of Miriam leads to a lack of water and the lack of water leads to the story of the rock.  And Moshe in his grief could have screamed and shouted that he had enough.  But he was still tasked with leading his people and so even if he had paused to ask why it is unlikely that he would receive a satisfactory response.

Moshe’s strength to continue must be drawn from his faith and not from reason.  Sometimes the answer to “why” is “because” and in matters of faith that must suffice.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Matt Futterman
Senior Educator