By Rabbi Noson Weisz
I just wanted to express my HaKaras HaTov to Rabbi Noson Weisz who wrote the Mayanot Parsha Articles over 20 years ago. I re-read and teach from them almost week.
Here is an excerpt from his explanation of Pinchas Zealotry based on Rabbi Dessler.
You can read the whole thing here.
“God spoke to Moses saying: Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aaron the Kohen, turned back My wrath from among the children of Israel, when he zealously avenged Me among them, so I did not consume the Children of Israel in My vengeance. Therefore, Behold! I give him My covenant of peace. And it shall be for him and his offspring after him a covenant of eternal priesthood, because he took vengeance for his God, and he atoned for the Children of Israel.” (Numbers 25:10-13)
The background to the story: Zimri, the head of the tribe of Shimon, one of the 13 most prominent Jewish citizens of the generation known as the “generation of the wise,” engaged in relations with Kozbi, a Midianite princess, with the knowledge of the entire Jewish public. He may as well have committed the act in the public square.
While his deed was no doubt morally reprehensible in the extreme according to the moral standards of the time, it was not a capital offence. According to the dictates of Jewish criminal law, he could not have been tried and executed for the sin of having relations with a non-Jewish woman under the due process of law. Nevertheless, a zealot was allowed to kill him! (Talmud, Sanhedrin, 81b) Pinchas’ execution of Zimri was a legally sanctioned act of zealotry. The official arm of the law could not touch Zimri, and it delivered him into the hands of the zealot to deal with.
This law of the zealot is one of the most difficult Torah concepts for the modern mind to deal with. Pinchas earned eternal priesthood and God’s covenant of peace by killing Zimri in cold blood, an act that impacts on most of us modern thinking people as a horrendous expression of savage vigilantism. Let us see if we can learn to relate to it.
ANCIENT CRITICS
We are hardly the first to question the acts of Pinchas. Rashi’s first comment on the Parsha quotes a Midrash that deals with this very issue. The Midrash asks: why does the Torah begin our Parsha by introducing Pinchas to us as the son of Elazar the son of Aaron, when it had already told us his full lineage a mere three short verses ago at the very end of Parshat Balak?
The Midrash responds: the Jewish public was horrified by Pinchas’ act of zealotry. Jewish public opinion took the position that it was impossible to relate to murder as an act that a Jew could commit under any circumstances. The urge to commit zealous murder was attributed to Pinchas’ non Jewish genes. Pinchas’ mother, Elazar’s wife, was Jethro’s granddaughter. The consensus of opinion held that had he descended from pure Jewish stock he could never have committed such a savage murder no matter how many Jewish lives its commission saved. The Jewish people were convinced that such blood lust must have originated in non-Jewish genes.
Concludes the Midrash: God instucted Moses to emphasize Pinchas’ lineage in order to inform the Jewish public that the inspiration for this act of ‘savage violence’ originated in the genes of Aaron, acknowledged by tradition as the Jewish individual who most perfectly embodied the ideal traits of “lover and pursuer of peace” through the ages.
But weren’t the Jews right? How can such an act be regarded as emerging from a zeal for pursuing peace?
You can read the whole thing here.
