Month: July 2022

Parashah Ponderings

Hold the line

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Parashat Pinchas 5782 / פָּרָשַׁת פִּינְחָס
Torah Portion: Numbers 25:10-30:1

At what point does an act of passion cross the line from acceptable to unacceptable, laudatory to abhorrent? At what point does a zealot cross the line from hero to criminal? When someone crosses that line, how should we respond as a society? 

These questions come up too frequently because the answers, whether we like it or not, are relative. The answers depend on one’s worldview and value system. For those of us who live in a society that values the rule of law and the sanctity of life, any unprovoked action that would take a life is murder; we would condemn the action and see that the perpetrator is brought to justice. Sadly, not everyone lives in such a society, or if they do, they find reason to defy the law and commit any number of acts that the rest of us would identify as heinous. We often read about radical adherents to certain beliefs who routinely take lives in the name of a “higher cause,” whether or not their own lives are in danger. We call them terrorists. They call themselves martyrs or even patriots.

When I watch the hearings of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, I am sickened by the callous abuse of power by our 45th president. It is clear by now that the individuals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020 thought they were performing their patriotic duty as determined and commanded by the President of the United States. To some of them, loss of life was a necessary means to ensuring their leader would remain in office. Our legal system is sorting out who among those people are criminals and is meting out justice accordingly. At the same time, too many supporters of the 45th president cling to the idea that those same criminals are heroes who had the “guts” to do what they thought was right.

A case of even greater moral ambiguity presents itself in this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Pinchas. In last week’s Torah portion, we read that Aaron’s grandson, Pinchas, took it upon himself to kill a blazingly defiant Israelite man and a Midianite woman who, in the sight of Moses and the whole Israelite community, entered a nearby tent, presumably to engage in sexual activity. This action comes on the heels of God’s commands to Moses to have Israel’s military officers slay all those Israelite men who had been tempted by Moabite women to worship the Moabite deity, Baal-peor. In the case at hand, however, Pinchas slays not only the Israelite man but also the Midianite woman. The Torah spares no words: “(Pinchas) followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Isralite and the woman, through the belly” (Num. 25:8).

Despite the seemingly extrajudicial nature of Pinchas’s zealotry, God, in the conclusion to the story in this week’s reading, rewards Pinchas with a b’rit shalom, a pact of friendship. “It shall be for him and descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites” (Num. 25:13). As a result of Pinchas’s action, God lifted a plague from Israel that had by then claimed 24,000 lives.

When I read about Pinchas, I am appalled both by Pinchas’s disregard for human life and by God’s approval of Pinchas’s zealotry. I wasn’t so keen on the idea of Israel’s military officials slaying the lustful Israelite men, either, but what Pinchas did violated all norms of civility and decency as he acted in such a public and violent way. I am not alone in my feelings. According to Jacob Milgrom in the Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary on the Book of Numbers (p. 215):

The rabbis were uncomfortable with Pinchas’s act. He set a dangerous precedent by taking the law into his own hands and slaying a man impulsively, in disregard of the law. Some argue that Moses and the other leaders would have excommunicated him were it not for the divine decree declaring that Pinchas had acted on God’s behalf. Regarding this, a recent commentator remarks: “Who can tell whether the perpetrator is not really prompted by some selfish motive, maintaining that he is doing it for the sake of God, when he has actually committed murder? That is why the sages wished to excommunite Pinchas, had not the Holy Spirit testified that his zeal for God was genuine.”

Clearly, the virtue of Pinchas’s action is open to debate. I wouldn’t say the same for the men and women who attacked the United States Capitol or for any other seditious actor or terrorist. Nonetheless, this week’s Torah portion should give all of us pause as we take stock of the events of January 6, 2020. The line between hero and criminal is thinner than we think. When despots appeal to the aggrieved and vulnerable with demagoguery, their fight soon morphs into a Holy War. Sometimes those holy warriors are rewarded, as was Pinchas. Sometimes they are punished, as is the case with those who attacked the Capitol on January 6th. The lesson for us is to constantly mind that line between virtue and villain lest the line disappear altogether and we lose all sense of right and wrong. Unfortunately, there are forces out there waiting for just such a moment. We must hold the line.

Parashah Ponderings

What happens when we feel abandoned

Daniel Aronson's avatarDaniel Aronson 1 Comment

Parashat Chukat 5782 / פָּרָשַׁת חֻקַּת
Torah Portion: Numbers 19:1-22:1

A recent article in the New York Times about gun violence in America asks why 25 percent of gun violence is so highly concentrated in areas that contain only 1.5 percent of the population. “A small sliver of blocks – just 4 percent in Chicago, for example – can account for a majority of shootings in a city or a county,” the article states. Faced with the obvious correlation between gun violence and the abject poverty that plagues all those areas of high concentration, researchers are asking “why violence and poverty are linked. Is it something specific to poverty, such as insufficient housing or jobs? Is it the environment that poverty fosters, in which people are stressed and desperate — and more likely to act out?”

The research into why America’s poorest neighborhoods are also the least safe has led experts to a finding that may also help explain why, in this week’s Torah portion, Moses loses control of himself and commits the sin for which God prevents him and his brother from ever stepping foot in the Promised Land:

One theory… blames the breakdown of “collective efficacy.” That might sound academic, but the concept is straightforward: When society’s institutions have unraveled, people feel that they are on their own. They are then less likely to watch over one another or come together to address common interests.

By reducing social trust, concentrated poverty hurts communities’ ability to enforce norms against violent behavior. And when people are left unchecked and feel they have nothing to lose, they are more likely to take extreme measures, such as violence, to solve their problems.

In essence, in the absence of community structures that bring people together and foster a sense of mutual responsibility, people are more likely to feel detached from the people around them and, thus, will feel less restrained to harm them. When banks, grocery stores, retailers and others avoid doing business in certain areas of our cities, they promote an environment in which people feel abandoned. Of course, the violence in those communities is largely why those businesses stay away in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle. Clearly, social service agencies, the police, and faith communities have been unable to break that cycle, despite their best efforts.

What does this have to do with Moses striking a rock to bring forth water to a thirsty, angry mob? Moses was told by God to speak to the rock, but in his frustration with the Israelites, he calls them “rebels” and proceeds to hit the rock twice, never once speaking to the rock as God had commanded him to do. Where is the connection to gun violence?

Just possibly, at the time when tempers were short among the Israelites and their leaders, they were feeling abandoned. As a result, they acted out violently, without concern for the consequences. The consequence for Moses and Aaron – that they would die before reaching the Land of Israel – was enormous. It effectively put Moses and Aaron in the same predicament as all but two of the Hebrews – Joshua and Caleb – who had fled from Pharaoh in Egypt. They now were all doomed to wander for forty years in the wilderness with only the children who would be born in transit having the good fortune to settle in the land. The punishment for the community of Israel, you may recall, came about because ten of the twelve spies who scouted out Canaan came back to their community with the belief that not even God could help them defeat the “giants” who inhabited the land.

Why were the people, but especially Moses and Aaron, feeling abandoned? Just prior to this incident, Moses and Aaron’s sister Miriam died. It was Miriam who had set the infant Moses afloat in the Nile, where he was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. But the Nile was not the only body of water that we associate with Miriam. Later generations of rabbis would attribute all the wells whose waters sustained Israel to exist for the merit of Miriam. As long as Miriam was with them, there would be water and the people would feel safe. The people feared that without Miriam they would also be without water. They felt abandoned by the one person who could ensure that the water they needed for life itself would always be there for them. It was this fear of abandonment, on top of the grief of having lost their sister, that caused Moses to violently strike the rock to bring forth water, thus diminishing the sanctity of God before all of Israel.

The analogy between Moses hitting the rock and the scourge of gun violence in America is far from perfect. The poverty and political, social and economic abandonment experienced by our poorest urban neighborhoods is historical and systemic. That’s far different from losing a loved one upon whom you relied for sustenance. The emotional and psychological impact of the former kind of abandonment is radically different from the latter. But I don’t think they are all together unrelated. In both cases, there is a deep sense of loss and detachment that leads people to act in ways that are not healthy for them or for society.

The lesson here is that we need each other. People need other people to care for them and help them feel safe. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. And they are our keepers. We must not become a society where it’s every person for him- or herself and people behave badly as a result. That’s what happens, though, when people sense that no one cares about them. 

I hope our congregation is a place where no one feels abandoned. I hope ours is a community where we all assume responsibility for everyone else’s welfare. To the extent that this hope is unrealized, we have some work to do. But I know how we take care of each other and how we take care of the hungry, unhoused, and poor in our neighborhoods.

I don’t know what role we can play in fixing the problems of poverty and abandonment in our big cities, problems that contribute to gun violence. But I do know that we can take steps in our own lives to ensure that people in our own congregation and in our community know that they are loved. We need to be grateful that we don’t feel abandoned. And we need to work to keep it that way so that our neighborhoods stay safe and so we have a fighting chance of seeing our most precious dreams come to be.