Pinchas. Strength without fundamentalism

Strength Without Fundamentalism: This is truly the lesson of Pinchas.

And as is often the case with profound and subtle teachings, it is also why it has continually been betrayed by fundamentalist readings of the text, and by the actions these have inspired throughout History.

Parashat Pinchas does not recount the story of Pinchas. That story takes place at the very end of the previous parasha, Balak.

To summarize: While Israel, still en route to the Promised Land, has temporarily settled at Shittim, the daughters of Moab come and invite the men of Israel into debauchery. The temptation of sexual indulgence seems to succeed in weakening the people more effectively than the military attempts of the Amorite king or the failed cursing attempts by the king of Moab.

Indeed, our consumer society, which gratifies every sensory desire, is the most striking example of this dynamic: temptation is more effective than force.

Once again—just as after the sad episode of the Golden Calf—Israel is drawn toward Avodah Zarah: idolatry.

Idolatry, or in other words, missing the essence of things by giving all power to outer shells (klipot), to appearances—which are often so much more comforting. Idolatry really is to lose oneself unknowingly, swept up by the surface of things, mistaking it for ultimate reality.

The biblical text can be seen as one long warning against exactly this- starting with the way it asks to be read. Indeed, this text—so sacred to us—does not offer itself in the plain words that form the surface of its skin. It is not meant to be read at the level of pshat (the literal meaning).

That would be a terrible betrayal—or worse, a total misunderstanding.

Like eating the peel of an avocado and thinking that's the taste of the delicious fruit.

The literal meaning is only a veil. A colorful fabric—sometimes joyful, sometimes terrifying—of stories, parables, symbols that are nothing but coverings for many layers of teaching we are tasked to uncover, like hidden treasures.

Yes—the text is a pre-text: a veil that asks to be lifted, for it hides a deeper message—a timeless one—because it speaks to human nature.

"But then, why go through the detour of stories?" A student asked me this week.

"Why not go straight to the heart of meaning?"

I didn’t answer. I let the class answer for itself—each with a facet of truth

“To make us think,” said one.“To preserve our free will,” said another.“To let us walk our own path,” said a third.“To help us grow.”

Yes—we grow when we walk the path by ourselves.

And we better appreciate the taste of things—like the glass of water in The Little Prince, made delicious by the journey through the desert under the stars, toward the well that offered it.

That is why the teaching of Pinchas becomes tragic when it is distorted through a fundamentalist lens- as if what is written is what to be done. But who can pretend acting in the name of Morals or in the name of God?

In truth, fundamentalist reading is the ultimate form of idolatry: it clings to the surface of the story, draws simplistic conclusions, and mutilates the essential complexity needed to understand the deeper reality of life’s challenges.

The world today is full of idolaters. Just open any social media platform and you’ll see them: waving banners of hate, proclaiming simplified truths, where everything is black and white, where there are good guys and bad guys—and of course, "I" am always on the “good” side.

And yet—sometimes, we must draw a line. Sometimes we must recognize a dynamic that is destroying a system, and have the strength to cut right through it. So it happens in surgery. So it happens sometimes as well in meditation practice, with unhelpful thoughts.

This is the act Pinchas teaches us—but one we must receive with extreme caution.

Here is the pshat, the literal story:

After the episode of sexual indulgence with Moab, at the end of the previous parasha, a man takes a Midianite woman and goes to have intercourse with her inside the Tent of Meeting—the most sacred space in Israel.

Immediately, as if a reflex of the great collective body of Israel, a plague breaks out, and people begin to die in large numbers.

While the people, the text says, are standing and weeping at the entrance of the tent, Pinchas acts.He gets up, takes a spear, and pierces both entwined bodies.The plague immediately ceases.

And this week’s parasha opens with the consequence of that radical act:

“Behold, I give him My covenant of peace. ”הִֽנְנִ֨י נֹתֵ֥ן ל֛וֹ אֶת־בְּרִיתִ֖י שָׁלֽוֹם (Numbers 25:12)

Sfat Emet asks: why a new covenant, when Pinchas was already part of the special covenant of the priests (Cohanim)?

For the Hasidic master, this new covenant granted to Pinchas serves to restore balance in the Tree of Life—the structure of divine attributes (sephirot) that each of us is invited to embody.

The first two midot (spiritual traits) are:

• Chesed – limitless love and generosity

• Gevurah – strength and the ability to set boundaries
  

Before Pinchas, says Sfat Emet, the Cohen embodied only love and kindness, a form of love without limits:

אך כי כהן בחי' אהבה וחסד“He was a Cohen in the aspect of love and chesed—love, generosity, benevolence.”

But no living relationship can function solely on infinite kindness.Not even with ourselves.

Pinchas had the courage to come and restore balance, to teach us about limits, gevurah, in the form of what Sfat Emet calls Din—justice, or more precisely, discernment.

אבל פינחס זכה ג"כ בדין“But Pinchas also merited justice.”

This form of justice is what in spiritual practice we call "skillful means": the right response to a given situation.

It is hard for me to read -and write- these lines today, in times of war.

It feels explosive to revisit the teaching of Pinchas in a time when the idolatry of self-righteous hatred creates so much global violence.

This week I saw a letter written by my rabbinic colleagues from the Israeli organization Smol HaEmuni – “The Religious Left”, of which I am a part.

They rise up against the violence of Israeli settlers toward their Palestinian neighbors—extremists within my own people, convinced of their holy right to expel the "other" out of the Holy Land.

And I’m not even speaking of those on the other side, or in other parts of the world, who seek to cleanse that same land of all its Jews—though it bears their name.

Yes—more than ever, the teaching of Pinchas must be approached with extreme caution and great maturity.

How can we know whether a radical act of cutting through was necessary or inevitable? And I am not speaking of the example of Pinchas, which is an extreme symbol of that. I am talking about stoping speaking to someone toxic. Quitting a position where the dynamic was unhealthy. Doing Chemotherapy. Putting an end to a relationship or a destructive relational dynamics. These are all acts of Gevurah. These are all what Pinchas is, archetypically and exageratedly, showing us.

The criterion, Sfat Emet whispers, is the motivation—and the outcome, of the act.

In the case of Pinchas, the motivation seems clear from the consequences of his act in the biblical narrative: to put an end to a plague that was killing thousands. And the outcome is that he receives the Covenant of Peace.

Yes—peace sometimes requires radical means. But peace, self-preservation and health for any given system, should be the only criterion for invoking gevurah (strength) and din (justice) in a way that is fierce and radical, putting an end to what is destroying a system.

Maybe in your life today, on a much smaller scale,y ou see that there are places where you might be need to draw a line, to act with clarity and courage and cut through an unhealthy dynamic.

This, is symbolized in the unique spiritual energy of Parashat Pinchas. And I find it quite attuned with the special energy of these three weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av.

The burning heat of the summer, the sun’s merciless rays that pierce deep within us, it is as if the whole natural world was telling us: this may be the right time for clarity and discernment, the sine qua none conditions for putting gevurah into action.

The promise of tikkun—of repair—awaits us there too.