Questions of Survival: Pinchas

Questions of Survival

D’var Torah for Parashat Pinchas

By Boaz D. Heilman

This week’s Torah portion, Pinchas (Numbers 25:10—30:1), reads like the morning headlines:  murderous religious fanaticism, armies poised for war, and minority legal rights.

Clearly the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Middle East is still divided along sectarian lines.  Jews versus Moslems, Moslems versus Christians, Shiite Moslems versus Sunnis—all along a vicious cycle that goes back centuries and even millennia.

The current war between Israel and Hamas is only the latest installment in this cycle of hatred. 

From the first genocidal attempts against Israel, in Pharaoh’s Egypt, down to the Holocaust of our own day, the existence and survival of the Jewish people depended on various factors. First and foremost, of course, was physical safety.  That is why one of Moses’s first acts in organizing the people was raising and training an army.  Miracles may account for our long-term survival, but on a daily basis, nothing works better than effective self-defense.

It’s a lesson that the modern State of Israel has learned well. 

The battle for defining our Jewish identity is just as grim as the war for our physical safety.  Through the eons, forced conversions and assimilation have resulted in the loss of millions of our people.  Our history is filled with examples.  In the past 500 years alone, from 15^th century Spain and Portugal to early 20^th century Europe and even in America today, many Jews have found it easier to simply hide or cover up their Jewish identity than to constantly fight for it.

This week’s portion, Pinchas, shows that even as far back as 3200 years ago, practically a heartbeat following the Exodus and Sinai, assimilation was already a problem.  Fanatic zealotry was one way of dealing with it.  The Torah describes how a priest named Pinchas takes a spear and slays an Israelite man who, in full view of Moses and the entire community, in a clearly rebellious act, was fornicating with a Midianite woman.  For this act, which the Torah praises, God establishes an “eternal covenant of priesthood” with Pinchas and his descendants.

There is no mistaking or avoiding the clear intent of this passage.  It condones religious fanaticism, a trait that modern liberal attitudes find abhorrent, but yet one that runs like a tectonic fault that lies deep within our very humanity, causing upheaval, terrorism and wars.

Yet, recognizing that violence leads only to more violence, the Torah offers another way of maintaining Jewish identity, as it reiterates the rituals associated with the Sabbath and the major holidays.   And in truth, more than anything else, Shabbat, Passover, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur have kept our people alive throughout the centuries.  Even during the days of the Inquisition, when other forms of Jewish worship and life were forbidden, as simple an act as avoiding eating bread for seven days in the month of April served to maintain Jewish identity and keep it going for generations.

Massive synagogue turnout during the High Holy Days proves the effectiveness of this teaching of the Torah.  The holiday of Hanukkah still serves to help American children identify themselves as Jewish.  And in the ex Soviet Union, the holiday that celebrates the beginning of the annual cyclical reading of the Torah, Simchat Torah, was a day on which entire Jewish communities, relegated to underground status for all other days of the year, came out and gathered en mass in and around temples and synagogues—a phenomenon described beautifully in Elie Wiesel’s Jews of Silence, and one that I personally witnessed in Moscow in the fall of 1987.

Jewish involvement in minority rights is another distinctive Jewish characteristic that many of us are familiar with.  The Civil Rights struggles of the mid-1960’s saw Jews marching with, struggling with—and dying along—African Americans throughout the South.  In modern Israel, minority rights are recognized as values that, for some, may have even gone too far.  Few other countries in the world (and certainly none other in the Middle East) can boast of freedoms of speech, assembly and the press as does the State of Israel.  Voting rights are granted to all, and in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, just about every sector of the population is represented, including Arabs that don’t bother to hide their hatred of Israel.  Gay rights are so extensive in Israel that, in worldwide surveys, Tel Aviv was declared the world’s best LGBT travel destination.

The roots of this famous involvement of Jews in liberal politics is also found in Parashat Pinchas, right alongside religious fanaticism.  It’s an irony that has us all scratching our heads.  Even Moses can’t help but wonder where to draw the line between the two extremes.  As he divides the Land of Israel among the tribes, Moses does so along patrilineal lines.  The five daughters of a man named Zelophehad come to Moses with a legal complaint:  their father had died in the desert, leaving no sons, only daughters.  How would the land he should have been allotted be divided?  Would the five women go homeless because they are women? For once, Moses is speechless.  He promises to “bring their case up before God.”  The answer he receives is astounding for the time, but not surprising to us.  The five women have legal rights as full citizens; they will inherit their father’s land.

For all its complexity and difficulties, this portion’s lessons are far reaching.  Like Moses, at times we, too, wonder where we stand, where the borders of our Jewish identity lie.  Are we observant enough?  Or are some of our traditions antiquated and no longer pertinent?  Where does religious fervor end and fanaticism begin?  And, no less important today than 3200 years ago, at what point does justice become revenge and self-defense, aggression?

These are questions Moses asks and which we, Moses’s descendants, still reflect upon and ponder many centuries later.  Our survival depends on our answers.

It’s part of our heritage, an inherent portion of our Jewish identity.

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman