Pinchas | A Cold and a Broken Hallelujah

וַיַּ֗רְא פִּֽינְחָס֙ בֶּן־אֶלְעָזָ֔ר בֶּֽן־אַהֲרֹ֖ן הַכֹּהֵ֑ן וַיָּ֙קׇם֙ מִתּ֣וֹךְ הָֽעֵדָ֔ה וַיִּקַּ֥ח רֹ֖מַח בְּיָדֽוֹ׃

וַ֠יָּבֹ֠א אַחַ֨ר אִֽישׁ־יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל אֶל־הַקֻּבָּ֗ה וַיִּדְקֹר֙ אֶת־שְׁנֵיהֶ֔ם אֵ֚ת אִ֣ישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְאֶת־הָאִשָּׁ֖ה אֶל־קֳבָתָ֑הּ וַתֵּֽעָצַר֙ הַמַּגֵּפָ֔ה מֵעַ֖ל בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

When Pinchas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand,  he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was checked.

Numbers 25:7 (from Balak, last week's Torah portion)

 

This week's Torah portion begins after a horrifying act of zealotry...or a courageous act of skillful compassion, depending on your point of view, perspective, and perception.

פִּֽינְחָ֨ס בֶּן־אֶלְעָזָ֜ר בֶּן־אַהֲרֹ֣ן הַכֹּהֵ֗ן הֵשִׁ֤יב אֶת־חֲמָתִי֙ מֵעַ֣ל בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּקַנְא֥וֹ אֶת־קִנְאָתִ֖י בְּתוֹכָ֑ם וְלֹא־כִלִּ֥יתִי אֶת־בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל בְּקִנְאָתִֽי׃ לָכֵ֖ן אֱמֹ֑ר הִנְנִ֨י נֹתֵ֥ן ל֛וֹ אֶת־בְּרִיתִ֖י שָׁלֽוֹם׃ וְהָ֤יְתָה לּוֹ֙ וּלְזַרְע֣וֹ אַחֲרָ֔יו בְּרִ֖ית כְּהֻנַּ֣ת עוֹלָ֑ם תַּ֗חַת אֲשֶׁ֤ר קִנֵּא֙ לֵֽאלֹהָ֔יו וַיְכַפֵּ֖ר עַל־בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

“Pinchas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion. Say, therefore, ‘I grant him My brit ha shalom — covenant of wholeness. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.’”

Numbers 25:11-13

What is the nature of this "covenant of 
peace," a brit ha shalom? In the Torah scroll, the Hebrew letter vav in the middle of the word shalom is split, the only time in Torah we see such a thing.

This is the cold and broken hallelujah. The shalom is broken. And through repair, something else can be birthed. So Godding calls in Pinchas by creating a new covenant with a broken shalom, calls him in to learn and be a part of a new way. Pinchas' violence is not a model of action; even though the action results in the ending of a plague, this is not the way of Torah. The end does not justify the means. The instruction to us from Torah is to participate in continuing creation without anger and violence.

This is our tikkun, our healing, our Torah and dharma — our truth. This is why, even though Pinchas' action has stopped the plague, Joshua, rather than Pinchas, will become the new leader of the Israelites.

God gives Pinchas “my covenant of peace,” meaning that he will never again have to act the part of a zealot.

— R. Jonathan Sacks, Pinchas (5772) – The Zealot
 

Rabbi Sachs recognizes the covenant Pinchas receives as a corrective, not a reward. The karma, the continuation of Pinchas' action, is a broken brit shalom. Pinchas is called in to learn something new.

Rabbinic interpreters of this text introduce rejection of zealotry and even reincarnation to highlight the depths of Pinchas' error: Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (the "Kotzker Rabbi'') acknowledges that Pinchas acted decisively to stop the negative karma of the actions set in motion by worshipping false gods. And then Kotzker asks, “Why was Joshua appointed by Eternal Presence to succeed Moses rather than Pinchas?” The Kotzker’s answer: “A zealot cannot be a leader.” Leadership requires patience, thought, and respect for the rule of law. Zealotry may sometimes result in short term problem-solving, but at our tradition’s core, it is not the path we are taught to follow.

A teaching attributed to the great Kabbalist, R. Isaac Luria, the Ariza'l, is that Kozbi, the Midianite woman with whom the Israelite Zimri coupled on the altar, was a reincarnation of the soul of Dina, and the soul of Shechem (Dina's slayed lover or abuser, depending on the interpreter of the story) was reincarnated in the soul of Zimri. The attempted union between Zimri and Kozbi was a second attempt to heal the rupture that had been created generations earlier.

The rabbinic mystics point to the needed correction of the relationship between the masculine and the feminine as the evolutionary corrective that we need to move into our human promise. The way Zimri and Cozbi united — perhaps too fast for the rest of the people, perhaps on the wrong altar — pulled us back from our evolutionary direction. Pinchas sensed this; and yet his methods were tragically flawed. His action needed to be purified, its karma redirected.

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

— Leonard Cohen, Anthem

The path of Pinchas the Israelite priest is like Arjuna, the prince in the Hindu scriptures. Both are caught in the dilemma of how to act as humans in the midst of battle in service of higher values. Both need tutoring from the divine energy of the universe. In the Hindu Scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, divine energy appears in the form of Krishna, who takes the reins of the chariot in which Prince Arjuna rides into a great battle.

From Steven Cope's the Great Work of Your Life:

As the [Bhagavad Gita] tale ... opens, our friend Arjuna. has collapsed onto the floor of his chariot. Arjuna. is undone by the doubts and conflicts he faces about his own actions — his own calling — on the field of a great battle that is about to be engaged. "What am I really called to do in this circumstance?" He asks Krishna. "Do I fight this battle, or not?" How do I act in such a way that I do not destroy my own soul and the soul of the world? How do I act in such a way that I fulfill my dharma?

The Bhagavad-Gita was written precisely to show us how to make the world of action an arena for spiritual development.… It portrays the "battlefield" of life — real life, everyday life-as the most potent venue for transformation.

Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, the 19th century Polish/Lithuanian rabbi known by his acronym as the Netziv, shows that God gave Pinchas a fixable shalom, the broken wholeness, to teach him and all of us that our violent actions infect our very souls; we are harmed as well as others.

Pinchas was promised he would not become an agitated and angry person, for the nature of the act he did — killing a person with his hands — leaves a strong impression.

— Haamek Davar, the Netziv, on Parshat Pinchas

The Netziv is pointing to the notion of moral injury, that one may be deeply and emotionally impacted by acts carried out, especially acts that have harmed others. Pinchas, reflecting on his own destructive past, would likely face a plethora of feelings: guilt, shame, anger, hopelessness.

Many veterans experience severe PTSD due to the lingering effects of moral injury, as they consciously and subconsciously recognize the harm and damage they may have committed during their service. In addition to the immense and ongoing pain experienced by victims of violence, it is evident that acts of harm leave a wide trail of suffering behind them. According to the Netziv, the brit is meant as a healing salve. God knows the ways committing acts of violence may leave a permanent scar on those who commit them. Perhaps God is speaking from experience.

— Aaron Portman, Tru'ah blog

The story of the daughters of Zelophehad presents a radically different and successful model for organizing the new society. The feminine coming into voice and power corrects the movement toward violence. The daughters present communication and advocacy, speaking truth to power, as the corrective for Korach and Pinchas, both leaders who turned to violence and division to meet individual and collective needs.

וַתִּקְרַ֜בְנָה בְּנ֣וֹת צְלׇפְחָ֗ד בֶּן־חֵ֤פֶר בֶּן־גִּלְעָד֙ בֶּן־מָכִ֣יר בֶּן־מְנַשֶּׁ֔ה לְמִשְׁפְּחֹ֖ת מְנַשֶּׁ֣ה בֶן־יוֹסֵ֑ף וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ שְׁמ֣וֹת בְּנֹתָ֔יו מַחְלָ֣ה נֹעָ֔ה וְחׇגְלָ֥ה וּמִלְכָּ֖ה וְתִרְצָֽה׃

The daughters of Zelophehad, of Manassite family—son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh son of Joseph—came forward. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.

Numbers 27:1

Five sisters from the lineage of Joseph, the daughters of Zelophehad, come forward and argue their case before God and Moses. They have no brothers and want to inherit their father's wealth. They model a new way of meeting needs. First, they unify. Unlike Korach or Pinchas in previous episodes in the desert wilderness, they act together, in the interest of the collective. They find their power by stepping forward in unity. They speak and advocate for their needs, making a specific doable request: “Let us inherit our father's wealth.” And they show how their request also serves the long term needs and vision of God and Moses: to preserve wealth for the generations of Israelites to come.

In the language of Torah, not only did they care about their own private inheritance, they also showed tribal and familial responsibility and made their will match the will of G-d. Their request, presented after the instructions about apportioning the land, indicates their concern to maintain their inheritance in their father's name, as follows from the laws of the Torah.

Their way of approaching power and the Divine is a healing of improper approaches made by their clansmen, from Nadav and Avihu, even back to Moses who reacted with anger and killing as a young man.

The daughters are filling Miriam’s shoes, opening Torah's wisdom to reveal that the rising of the feminine is a corrective to brute power, to placing power first. Torah is calling on us to recognize that the ones who have been excluded from the system, denied the privileges, are the ones who need to be heard, are the ones who know what needs to be done to repair and move forward.

We see this throughout the world today, where statistics show that villages where education, power and resources are distributed to women are the villages where collective wealth increases the most . Countries led by women have the lowest Covid rates. Peace movements led by women have the most successes.

Creating right relationship to land means that women, all orphans and dispossessed, have ownership rights. The five daughters speak for women and for all the orphans who will enter and inherit the Promised Land. They model the uplifting of society when women lead and have access to power and resources. They reconnect the broken vav, creating the wholeness that brings peace.

Exercise in Nonviolent Communication Advocacy

• Think of something you want to change that involves how power and/or resources are shared
• What is a specific doable request you can make to address this, and to whom?
• Imagine their objections; what needs of theirs wouldn't be valued in the way you have framed the suggestion?
• Can you think of needs of theirs that would be valued with your suggestion?
• Rework your framing to show that you value those needs of theirs

...But then I said, ‘If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.’

Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that ‘I even want education for your children as well.’ And I will tell him, ‘That’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.”

― Malala Yousafzai

 

---

 

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, maybe there's a God above
As for me all I've ever learned from love
Is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
But it's not a crime that you're hear tonight
It's not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the Light
No, it's a cold and it's a very broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well people I've been here before
I know this room and I've walked this floor
You see I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But listen love, love is not some kind of victory march, no
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove she was moving too
And every single breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Now I've done my best, I know it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come here to London just to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand right here before the Lord of song
With nothing, nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

— Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah