Tag: Pinchas

Parashat Pinchas: Who Told You That Was God?

The most dangerous sentence in religious life is not “God is dead.” It is “God told me to.”

Grant everything. God rewarded Pinchas. The plague stopped. The covenant was real. Let’s sit with that fully, without deflecting into questions of fallacy or anthropomorphism.

Then what?

Parashat Pinchas forces us to ask the question we would rather avoid: how do we distinguish between someone who genuinely heard a divine command and someone who dressed their own violent, irrational certainty in holy language?

Pinchas did not announce a prophecy. He did not consult Moses. He did not wait for the cloud to move. He felt something burning within him, seized a spear, and acted. The text calls it kana’ut, zealotry. And zealotry, by definition, does not pause to ask whether the voice it hears is God’s or its own.

This is not a theoretical problem. Yigal Amir was certain that God wanted Yitzhak Rabin dead and pulled the trigger on Israel’s Prime Minister. The settlers who burn Palestinian villages invoke divine command. The men who flew planes into buildings on September 11th believed, with everything in them, that they were doing God’s bidding. Every act of religious extremism in our lifetime has been committed by someone who felt what Pinchas felt: a burning, urgent, absolute conviction that the holy cause could not wait for process, permission, or the slower work of community discernment.

Pinchas heard God. We have stipulated that. But that settled question raises an unsettled one: what did the rest of us receive when God rewarded him? A record of a single grace, given to a single person in an unrepeatable moment? Or a template, permission for anyone who burns with enough certainty to act without constraint?

The tradition answers this with unusual clarity: it is not a template. The rabbis ruled explicitly that kana’ut cannot be taught, authorized, or legislated. What Pinchas did cannot be commanded because the moment you command it, you hand a weapon to anyone who has ever mistaken their own rage for the voice of God.

But this only sharpens the question. If we cannot rule it out, cannot authorize it, cannot teach it, then how does anyone know, in the burning moment, whether what they feel is revelation or self-deception?

Two traditions offer guardrails. The American tradition answers with the rule of law: no private conviction, however burning, overrides the collective agreement. The Jewish tradition answers with machloket l’shem shamayim, an argument for the sake of heaven. Hillel and Shammai disagreed about nearly everything, passionately, for decades. What made their argument holy was not that one of them was right. It was that neither of them picked up a spear. The argument itself was the faithfulness.

Korach, by contrast, was certain. He even had a point: all Israel is holy; why does Moses alone lead? But his argument was for himself, not for heaven. Certainty in service of the self, dressed in the language of principle, is exactly what kana’ut looks like from the inside. The difference between Hillel and Shammai and Korach is not the passion. It is whether you can stay in the room when you don’t prevail.

Both guardrails say the same thing in different languages: subordinate private certainty to collective process. Neither is sufficient on its own, and neither holds forever.

The law is corrupted. The argument for heaven devolves into paralysis. The judges weep at the entrance to the tent as the plague spreads. This is precisely the condition that makes Pinchas feel righteous, as he confronts a genuine emergency and a genuinely failed institution.

What does the tradition say, then? Not: pick up the spear. But also not: keep weeping. Stay in the argument, even when the argument is failing. Bear witness. Refuse both the violence and the paralysis. What we surrender is the clean story, the one where we acted, the plague stopped, and we knew we were right. What we keep is harder: the argument, the relationship, the refusal to let our certainty become someone else’s catastrophe.

Right now, both are under assault. The rule of law is openly contested by people certain their cause overrides it. The capacity for machloket l’shem shamayim, good-faith disagreement within a shared relationship, is nearly impossible to sustain in a world that rewards the spear and punishes the pause.

That means Pinchas is not an ancient problem we have learned to contain. He stands at the center of this moment, spear in hand, absolutely certain.

The question is not whether we recognize him. It is whether we recognize him in ourselves.

“The most dangerous sentence in religious life is not ‘God is dead.’ It is ‘God told me to.’”

Pushing back on the Torah

As a rabbi in the community, I spend substantial time with interfaith couples. There is an undeniable trend with many Jews finding life partners with people of other faith traditions. It is a challenge that Judaism can successfully navigate. And hopefully, we can see the beauty and opportunity arising from such unions.

The story of Pinchas in Balak relates to a fear of intermarriage. It demonstrates how the Israelites were concerned about maintaining their community’s purity and adherence to God’s laws. In the story, the Israelites were seduced by the Moabite women. As a result, they began to engage in sexual immorality and idol worship, which threatened their relationship with God and their identity as separate people.

As a zealous and devout member of the Israelite community, Pinchas took matters into his own hands. He killed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman who were openly engaging in such behavior. His actions were seen as a necessary and just response to the threat of intermarriage and the resulting erosion of the Israelite community’s values and identity. This story speaks against intermarriage, then or now.

However, times have changed since the era depicted in the story of Pinchas. And indeed, this idea is not the first time Jews have seen borders and boundaries as porous, opportunities to engage new ideas and be enriched by them.

Judaism has a rich history of connecting with other cultures and incorporating new ideas, practices, and beliefs. Here are some specific examples of how Judaism has been enriched through its interactions with different cultures:

During the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE, Jews were exposed to new ideas and practices from the Babylonian culture. This led to the development of new forms of Jewish scholarship and the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud, one of the central texts of Judaism.

In the Hellenistic Period in the 4th century BCE, Jews came into contact with Greek culture and philosophy. This led to the development of Hellenistic Judaism, which incorporated Greek ideas into Jewish thought. For example, Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, used Greek philosophy to interpret the Hebrew Bible.

During the Islamic Golden Age in the 8th to 13th centuries CE, Jews lived in Muslim-majority societies and were exposed to Islamic culture and philosophy. This led to the development of Jewish philosophy, such as the works of Maimonides, who used Islamic philosophy to interpret Jewish theology.

Sephardic Jews originated in the Iberian Peninsula and had a rich cultural exchange with the Christian and Muslim cultures around them. This led to the development of Sephardic music, art, and cuisine, which have become integral and celebrated parts of Jewish culture.

The Hasidic movement emerged in Eastern Europe in the 18th century, incorporating mystical and ecstatic practices arguably adopted from the surrounding Slavic and Turkic cultures. This led to the development of Hasidic music, dance, and storytelling, which have become central to Hasidic culture and across many Jewish denominations.

In modern times, intermarriage is more widely accepted and celebrated, and many people see it as a positive way to build bridges between different cultures and communities. In many cases, intermarriage can help to promote understanding and reduce prejudice between groups. We are blessed to live in a place and time where we can marry the person we love because of whom they are rather than feel threatened or risk being ostracized.

When welcomed into Judaism’s embrace, these people also hold special esteemed status, known as a Ger Toshav. They have supported the Jewish community in which they live and enriched us. Although considered our “first convert,” Ruth may have been a Ger Toshav.

While some still hold on to the fear of intermarriage and seek to maintain the purity of their community, many people now recognize that diversity and intermarriage can be positive forces for social and cultural change.

Rather than fearing intermarriage, we can welcome those who choose it, seeing it as an opportunity for growth, connection, and understanding. Judaism rises to the occasion with its rich knowledge of its universal core values that are a foundation for creating a meaningful life. It also helps the 21st-century Jew see identity in an inclusive and embracing way.

Judaism has been enriched by its interactions with other cultures throughout history. These interactions have led to the developing of new ideas, practices, and beliefs, which have become integral parts of Jewish culture. Using the past as a prologue, we should welcome these couples with open arms.