Numbers Cycle 7 Pinchas

 Pinchas

In the crazy heat of summer when we seek out air conditioning or some strong iced drink,  we come once again to Pinchas, our  friend who is honored for spearing a son of an Israelite priest making passionate love with a heathen woman outside the temple.  Even worse, he throws that spear right into the genitals.  It’s the kind of action that if enacted in films like Son of God, the producer would be attacked for antisemitism. Yet there it is, right in Torah.

So for many of us the question is this: What do we do about Pinchas? Do we apologize for him, pretend he isn’t here, turn him into an archaic ghost, ignore the huge Talmudic and Mishnaic teachings about him, decide that our era and our advanced state of technology, empathy,  systems of dealing with impurity (for example through the use of tampax and condoms)  and consciousness (as compared to those Israelite pagans) is a far more satisfactory path? Do we reject Pinchas, and thereby reject Israel? Do we reject the God of that moment in Torah as we wisely pick and choose our favorite Torah scenes and stand by them myopically? Should we really buy into the rainbow but throw out the attack on the Midianites? Support our psychic freedom but bury the deaths of the Egyptian first born? I know.  Let’s have a spiritual shin dig in the mishkan but erase from our iPods the animals killed to create it. Let’s celebrate our festivals with glory and piety but chuck Pinchas out to dry.

I think not.

In fact, I don’t see any place in Torah where hypocrisy is cited as one of God’s attributes. Quite the opposite. And please don't misunderstand me. It's not about rewarding violence. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's about knowing those actions in their shocking truth not as ethical pointers but as transformative moments.  If we can begin to see Torah as a spiritual guide, as a guide to the soul rather than to historical or ethical truth, we can suddenly begin to translate the Pinchas debacle  (and all unsavory moments) into a modern language that points to the change we need. In fact, the transformation is so huge given the action of Pinchas that it’s astonishing.  And transformation is really what Torah is all about (Levinas and Heshel). 

So, I want to turn it. I don’t want to focus on how we deal with Pinchas but on how Pinchas can possibly deal with us.

Yes, in a world full of Palestinian corpses (even in the beautiful Jerusalem Forest)  and in a world filled with slain Israelite yeshiva students (they are everywhere online and in our hearts) and in a world filled with rape, violence, rockets, bombs and absolute impurity in the face of all that is holy, well, what do we do? If the earth is  both our animal and incense altar (and it is) how do we purify all of the offerings on it?  I’m not simply referring to the environmental focus (though that is important) I’m looking at the whole meggilah.  Pinchas, after all,  hurls that spear into those lovers not to simply make a scene. He has found the one spot that, if hit, can begin a cycle of healing.

Ah, wouldn’t that be amazing if we could do that today? Would we, knowing that all war and human idiocy would end, kill two people engaged in what we see as an impure act? If we knew we could transform the world, how far would we go? As I write this today (July 2014) all I can think is this…pretty far.

What would that action be though? No, clubbing someone on the head (as the rabbis have endorsed in the punishment of an impure priest who does the priestly duties) just won’t fit.

It would need to be a shock though, a sudden jolt, a blow to our way of life, a statement, an overwhelming action, an overwhelming cry in such a busy self obsessed, self apologetic and self assured world.

Then, when   finished, we could finally get back to the harvest and a celebration-time of our bounty. However,  bounty or no bounty, without a focused understanding of the Pinchas-way, we will continually be starving, slightly stoned in some almost-dizzying  way,  needing more and feeling less, ordered to make more and creating less, falling victim to an insecurity based on our more-obsession, our more-incapability, our more-failure. And as failures of a contented abundance we will continually revolve back to the lure of Baal Peor, that good fuck at the temple for lack of a one God, that apology for Pinchas who really was and must always remain a hero.  Sex is great. I don’t fight that. But I must jump in and say that the sex we all have witnessed this week at the temple is an act that continues for eternity as we study it and is stopped short for eternity as we study it and therefore is void of any climax for millennium.  I can’t imagine a greater hell. It's like war.

Finally, it’s not about a heathen woman. Just ask Moses. It’s about how we behave with anyone in a world set aside as a super-sized altar that fits all...as an altar formed by God for simple deep prayer and divinity.  It’s about an absolute and unfaltering knowledge that we are sacred. Apologizing for that…and therefore for Pinchas and for Israel…is the height of arrogance. Ah, but accepting our responsibility as facilitators of transformation can raise up billions of sparks and bring us to one exquisite moment of joy...and peace.