Thus, Monotheism is the
Divine paradigm for monogamy.
Returning to the narrative
of Parashat Pinchas, when an Israelite man named Zimri brings his Midianite
lover Cozbi to engage in intimate sexual acts before The Tent of Meeting in the
sight of Moses, Pinchas, in an act of passion, "rose up from among the
congregation and took the javelin in his hand" running it through the
illicit lovers.
According to the text,
this graphic and brutal killing appeases God's anger and Pinchas is given a
Brit Shalom, a Covenant of Peace.
Let’s examine the
biographies of the players in this story. Zimri is not just any Israelite; he
is a prince from the tribe of Shimon. And Pinchas is not just any freelance
crusader, he is none other than the son of Elazar and grandson of Aaron the
Priest.
Significantly and
troublingly, Pinchas's act of zealotry became the Halakhah: "He who
cohabitates with a heathen woman is punished by zealots" (Sanhedrin
82a).
This presents a
conflict for contemporary Jews of the moderate persuasion. How do we balance
our personal and collective disdain for zealotry with the Halakhah of
Pinchas?
The commentators were
troubled by the text as well. The Talmud Yerushalmi resolves the problem by
stating that this was not the normative Halakhah, meaning that it was a
minority opinion or limited to specific circumstances. The Talmud Bavli takes the argument further,
justifying Pinchas's act but limiting it to Pinchas alone by creating a set of
circumstances by which no other person would possibly be able to be justified
in doing the same. Rashi solves the problem by making Pinchas a vessel of God
who was enacting the Divine will. In
other words, don't try this at home, only when God intervenes, can one respond
in this way. Of course, this explanation
raises all sorts of problem in identifying when exactly God's will is at play.
Still, why would
Pinchas earn the Brit Shalom? Why the
Covenant of Peace to a man who committed a violent act of passion?
One, nuanced
understanding of Pinchas’s Brit is that is more like a badge of protection,
akin to the Mark of Cain. Another way to read this ostensible reward is that
the Brit is a way of reining in future zealotry. By institutionalizing the
incident, it falls under the jurisdiction of Jewish legal authorities. This
second interpretation acknowledges the dangerous act for what it is.
Indeed, the Torah
itself preserves our unease with the Brit.
The vav in the word “Shalom” is broken, as if to remind us for all time
what Reb Moshe Katz teaches us, "that we shouldn't rush to praise"
those who are not praiseworthy, or at least those for whom praise is
complicated.
The takeaway from Parashat Pinchas
has special resonance for me, writing, as I am, from Jerusalem. A shocking
aspect of contemporary Israel is the unwelcome mat extended to the non-Orthodox
by the Chief Rabbinate. Or, put another way, the conditional nature of the love
that the State of Israel has towards Jews.
In Eretz Yisrael, to paraphrase Animal Farm, “All Jews are created equal
but some Jews are more equal than others.”
The inequality is manifest in a
myriad ways – from the limited access that egalitarian-minded daveners have to
the Kotel plaza – to the curtailed rights that the same prayer services have to
assemble in Israeli hotels.
In recent months, Israel’s Chief
Rabbinate has threatened to withdraw the kashrut certification from hotels that
permit non-Orthodox prayer services on their premises. A punitive gesture such
as this, which threatens hotels with severe financial repercussions, is the
very definition of zealotry.
Israel’s rabbanut should take heed of
the lessons learned from Parashat Pinchas and the ancient rabbis’ efforts to
rein in the human impulse towards rash action borne of the conviction that one
is acting as God’s proxy, meeting out Divine Justice on Earth.
The zealous nature of the Israel
Chief Rabbinate’s actions are highly unjust. Worse, like Pinchas, they drive a
spear into Israel’s democratic heart and soul.
Shabbat Shalom
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