Numbers Cycle Three Pinchas 25:10 to 30:1

Pinchas

Every Shabbat before we open the Torah we read these words from Deuteronomy 4:4: v’atem hadvakim ba’adonai elohechem chayim culchem hayom. Only you, the ones who cling to God are alive today. This line (in Torah) follows 4:3 which reads: You have seen with your own eyes what God did in Ba'al Peor. God annihilated every person among you who followed Ba'al Peor.

The memory of Ba'al Peor is therefore eternally tied to our Torah reading. The question, of course, is why do the sages choose to do this? Why is this line here in our liturgy? We only need to look at Pinchas, both the man and the parsha, to understand.

But first, a flashback. In the last parsha the Israelites celebrate Ba'al Peor then die (by the thousands) from a plague. Pinchas, in spearing the son of a priest and a Moabite woman, puts an end to both Ba'al Peor and the plague. A few more facts: the couple is engaged in sex outside the Beit Hamidrash and Pinchas (also a priest) only needs to use one spear.

This is hard to visualize without thinking of Fellini-esque scenes or HBO sequels on ancient Rome. What is Ba’al Peor anyway? According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, it’s a practice of sacrifice celebrated with wild orgies. To praise the god Peor the Moabite does it in the street. Of course, sex is sex. Torah comments on sex. However Torah leans though, it never supports sex as a sacrificial ritual nor as a replacement for prayer. Needless to say while sometimes we’d like to believe the contrary, in Judaism prayer is not sex and sex is not prayer.

So there we have it. We’ve been lured through the most tempting of channels, we’ve integrated evil, we’ve died by the thousands then Pinchas kills two people and stops it at the core. To me, this is amazing. Compare this. The leaders of our country continually locate what they call evil, and kill a lot more than two people. More like hundreds of thousands. And they seem to do it in the messiest way possible. So there’s a lesson here.

We can get some hint of the lesson if we look at two things. There’s the root word: kinay, the kuf, nun and aleph (25:10-13). The word itself means zealotry. There’s also the vuv in the word shalom on line 25:12 (here, it is split and the top half looks like it could be evolving into a yud).

First, let’s look at the use of kinay. It is repeated four times, first we read in his zealotry, then my zealotry, then in my zealotry and finally the adjective zealous. Therefore, there’s a process. Rabbi Greenbaum in his forward of his translation of Ramchal (1706-1747) elucidates upon the fact that while the Hebrew letters convey literal meaning, for the most part they can be read as signs…as we might read the elements. So as H2O is more than the idea of water, kuf nun aleph is more than the idea of zealotry. Here (though some modern rabbis might not agree) kuf nun aleph could be the enabling of the rush of the powerful energy of God towards a focal point. Here, this same rush is acting concurrently from human (his zealotry) to divine (my zealotry) to in the divine (in my zealotry) to something still in process (the adjective zealous). Therefore we can see inward and upward movement from the Holy Temple (that of Solomon) to the Heavenly Temple to (possibly) the Holy of Holies within the Temple to the Future Temple (which, according to Ezekiel, we are realizing). How is the Temple involved? Please remember that the action of Pinchas itself is directed at evil outside of the Beit Hamidrash. Protection of the Temple is very much our concern in this parsha.

Therefore, Pinchas, by realizing the Future Temple if just for a moment, is able to have directness of aim and complete divine integration. He is able to reach with senses beyond his human grasp towards the center of both light and darkness. He is able to discern between the two and fling his spear exactly where necessary.

The split vuv evolving into a yud in the word shalom can be seen as this: The yud predominates in the most sacred miluim of YHWH (in the world of Atzilut). Therefore, the wholeness Pinchas achieves with this new yud is greater than human wholeness (greater than shalom as we know it). Within this shalom compassion and kindness reach new levels unknown to us now.

So may we remember Ba'al Peor before chanting Torah and remember Pinchas and why we are Jews to begin with. May we honor our future capability of concise, clean and direct prayer. May we see that the action of Pinchas is divine. May we understand the true meaning of offering. May we offer ourselves to prepare ourselves for the Holy of Holies and to manifest the Future Temple in our Torah reading here on earth. May we know divine shalom.