Parashat Pinchas (Numbers 25:1-30:1)

On the weekend when we celebrate America’s 250th year of independence, we encounter a Torah reading whose themes speak to the experience of the Jewish people in America. The website Hebcal offers this pithy summary of Parashat Pinchas:

Pinchas opens with God’s promise of a “covenant of peace” for the zealot Pinchas, followed by a census. The daughters of Tzelophchad request and receive new laws regarding inheritance. God instructs Moses to prepare Joshua for leadership, and God describes sacrifices brought daily and on special occasions.

In the previous Torah reading, Pinchas, one of the grandsons of the High Priest Aaron, became outraged when he witnessed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman entering into a chamber near the Tent of Meeting, allegedly for the purpose illicit sexual relations and thrust his spear through both of them. Since this act of zealotry left Pinchas vulnerable to Midianite vengeance, God, in this week’s reading, blessings Pinchas with a brit shalom, a pact of peace. One understanding of why God so blesses Pinchas is that God wanted to reward Pinchas, whose horrific act also brought an end to an equally horrific plague that had befallen Israel, and wanted to protect him from being murdered by the Midianites.

The story of the Jewish people in America has little resemblance to this tale of Pinchas’ zealotry. What the two stories share, however, is that both Pinchas and Jewish Americans have been blessed with a brit shalom. While clearly the history of Jews in America is marked with tension and the struggle against antisemitism, by and large we have lived and flourished in peace in this “Golden Land.” This essay by Rabbi Ethan Tucker sums up the blessings of America for Jewish Americans without dismissing the challenges we’ve faced here as well: As America turns 250, Jews shouldn’t mistake it for just another exile

Among the blessings we can count as Americans is equal protection under the law as envisioned by the Founders in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The daughters of Tzelophchad were born into a patriarchal system that would deny them the right to inherit their father’s property after his death. Having no brothers to inherit for them, therefore, they appealed to Moses, who then consulted with God, and the women won the right they sought. It would be far from the truth to say that the daughters of Tzelophchad were according “equal rights” with men, but we see in this incident an outcome that was just and fair for its day. More than our biblical ancestors could ever have imagined, Jews in America, too, have benefited from a just, though imperfect society.

Further along in Parashat Pinchas, Moses appeals to “the lifebreath of all flesh” (Num. 27:16) to appoint someone who will lead Israel into the Land after Moses dies. Joshua, “an inspired man,” is, thus, appointed by God to replace Moses as Israel’s leader. We then see Moses lay his hands on Joshua and transfer to Joshua the authority and power that has hitherto been Moses’s alone. In this way, Israel’s future is ensured. It’s a striking scene, with Moses, Elazar, and Joshua standing before the whole community. It is, indeed, a bitter sweet, peaceful transfer of power to the next generation.

In concluding his essay about Jews having found a home here in America, Rabbi Tucker offers us a vision of the future no less grand than what would come for Israel after Moses’ death. In both cases, the people themselves are handed a mission to become agents in building the world they want to see — world governed by peace and love, a world of opportunity for all, a world of justice.

I am not a politician; and though I am, in a sense, the son of a politician, (His stepfather was Senator Joseph Lieberman, z”l.) I still don’t pretend to know if America’s best days are ahead of us. But I do know this: As long as there is hope that they are, we must do our part to make it so. When we build a culture of service from love, we should be building on a scale that thinks in thousands of generations. The idea of America is too precious to abandon. This is our democracy as much as anyone else’s, and internalizing that should gear us up for at least the next 250 years of answering George Washington’s call to create a more perfect nation “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”