Pinchas
Summary
This week begins in the middle of the story of Pinchas. Pinchas is the son of Eleazar, and the grandson of Aaron. Because of his zeal in putting a spear through the Israelite man and the Midianite woman with whom he was consorting (in the last chapters of last week’s sidra), Pinchas is to receive a special reward: that of the priesthood – he will inherit the priestly line that began with Aaron.
The sidra continues with Moses and Eleazar taking a census of all the male Israelites who are over the age of 20 years and who are able to bear arms – the total is over six hundred thousand. Also counted are the twenty three thousand Levite males from the age of one month, counted separately as they will not do military service nor will they inherit land.
Of those counted, only Joshua Caleb and Moses had been counted in the first census in the wilderness – everyone else from that generation had died.
God tells Moses that the land is to be divided among the tribes according to the census. Each section of land however is to be assigned by the casting of lots.
The text then changes focus, telling the story of the five daughters of Zelophehad who come to Moses to protest the injustice that land will not be given to their family because their father had no sons. Moses consults with God who tells him that the pea of the daughters is just. So Moses sets out the general rule that property is to be inherited in the following order: - sons are to inherit first, but where there are no sons then property is to be assigned to daughters. In cases where there are no children then the property passes to brothers, or other near relatives.
God tells Moses to ascent the mountains of Avarim to see the land given to the Israelites but he will not enter. Because of his actions at the waters of Meribah he will not set foot in the promised land.
Moses asks God to appoint a new leader over the community and is told to ordain Joshua son of nun in the sight of Eleazar and the whole community of Israel. The portion concludes with a review of all the sacrificial offerings of the festivals.
D’var Torah
Why is the story of Pinchas interrupted – his zealous act was committed in last week’s sidra, but God’s response to him is in this week’s? Some say it is because the rabbis who decided the order of torah readings could not bear to see his horrible zealous actions rewarded so immediately. Even though God appears to be so pleased by Pinchas, saying “Pinchas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned My wrath away from the children of Israel, in that he was very jealous for My sake among them, so that I consumed not the children of Israel in My jealousy. Therefore say: Behold, I give to him My covenant of peace; and it shall be to him, and to his seed after him, the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was jealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel.' (Numbers 25:11-13 the tradition has never been comfortable with the plain reading of the text.
One of the most curious things – besides the deliberate separation of act and reward – is the way one of the words in this verse is written. The text about the brit shalom – the covenant of peace which is given to Pinchas is deliberately written in an incomplete way. While the halachah of writing scrolls is strict, so that every letter must be written completely, and if any letter is too faded or partly illegible then the whole scroll is invalid, there is on exception. The scribe must write the letter vav within the word shalom with a break in the long vertical line like this:
Eric Ray z’l who was a scribe of great learning and humour once told me that he always expected a slew of phone calls from worried Torah readers the week after Pinchas is read, each telling him he must mend their scroll promptly – a vav seemed to be broken.
Yet this is prescribed by the earliest torah scroll writers – the word ‘shalom’ which has a root meaning to be ‘complete’, ‘whole’, ‘together’, ‘perfect’ – is itself written with deliberate imperfection.
It is as if they are saying that the violence of Pinchas’ act has caused a blemish in the world, that the blessing he is given in the covenant of peace is itself somehow not quite perfect.
In the Talmud, in Kiddushin 66b we are told that the Hebrew letter 'Vav' of the word "Shalom" should be written "broken," i.e. in two disjointed pieces. As the Gemara puts it, "The Vav of Shalom is to be cut”.
In this way, the Hebrew could be read not as if Pinchas has a covenant of peace (shalom), but a covenant of perfection (shalem) – in other words Pinchas is to be given the covenant only when he becomes whole and complete, when his imperfections are gone from him, and not before.
Rabbi Ofek Meir of the Leo Baeck School in Haifa gave a shiur at the Reform Movement Conference recently in which he discussed the root meaning of “shalom”. We are used to the word being described as ‘peace’ but it is a much more complex and rich word. A whole, he said, is made up of many parts. It is not one thing, but a gathering together of many different things – otherwise it would be ‘one’ or ‘unique’ it would not be ‘shalom’ (complete). The word for parts is chelek – from which we get the word for discord – machloket. One can get the state of shalom only when all the different halakim are brought together, when all the machlokets (differing arguments and viewpoints) are brought into the same space and allowed to coexist together. So shalom, peace will only come when we do not try to suppress viewpoints and narratives, nor impose viewpoints and narratives. Peace will come when we bring together the different voices, strands, identities, needs, stories and give them value and a place in which to live. Until we are able to do this, the world will be full of machloket and argument, of loud voices trying to drown out the other.
What can we learn from the rabbinic view of Pinchas – a covenant of peace cannot be created from violence. All the peoples must be brought together and their pieces brought into the puzzle that will eventually create the solution. Till then, as long as fundamentalists and zealots are allowed to speak the most loudly, peace will remain far away.
Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild