Last Sunday, I conducted a funeral, and my seven year old wanted to join me. Conceptually, I think it is important that children are exposed to these various life cycle events. I explained that I could not bring him this time because: this was a funeral for a person he didn't know, and I wouldn't be able his Abba, I had to be the mourners’ Rabbi. He understood. However I was intrigued by the request nonetheless. For my son, and for all our children, we want them to understand and accept these life cycle types of moments as a way of understanding how to live with the subsequent emotions due to the event. The most important gift my wife and I can provide for our children is the emotional strength to treat life and death as "matter of factly" as possible. That doesn't mean there are no emotions, rather those emotions are part of the process of dealing with these life cycle issues in a matter of fact type of way. In a sense we want them to be whole and complete people. We don't want them being scared of life and death, we don't want them to grow paralyzed by life and death, and we don't want them to become emotional basket cases or emotional zombies in regards to life and death. We don’t want their souls and their beings to remain stuck in the emotional intensity and extremes of life. This is our Brit Shalom - Coven anent of Peace for our children.
This Shabbat we read from Parsha Pinchas. The first few Psukim of the Parsha are a direct continuation of the previous Shabbat Parsha Balak. There is no elapse of time in the narrative. Balak concludes with a plague upon Bnai Yisroel for its worship of Moabite/Midianite god, Baal Peor. Aaron’s son Pinchas zealously acts by killing Zimri from the tribe of Shimon and Cozbi the Midyanite woman. God tells Moshe to reward Pinchas for his behavior by giving him the Brit Shalom, the Covenant of Peace. This covenant is only for Pinchas and his descendants. Keeping in mind that B’nai Yisroel has now concluded it 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and are poised upon the eastern bank of the Jordan River; a new census is taken. Just like we needed to know how many left Egypt, we now need to know how many will enter into Eretz Canaan. After the census is taken Moshe must judge a legal case concerning the laws of inheritance when a man has only daughters. This brief narrative is about the “Daughters of Tzelophchad”. Following this narrative, God commands Moshe to teach the new generation the laws for time bound offerings including the Shabbat offering, the Rosh Chodesh offering, the offerings for the Shelosh Regalim (Three Pilgrimage Festivals etc).
Isn't it odd, or perhaps even disturbing, that Pinchas' zealousness, his subsequent spear throwing and impaling his targets is rewarded with a Brit Shalom - a Covenant of Peace and Brit Kehunat Olam - a covenant of an everlasting Priesthood? (Num. 25:12). Through our modernist lens, I imagine that most people consider or at least can understand why some may consider Pinchas act to be nothing more than fanaticism or vigilantism. If we consider Pinchas' behavior to be no different that some fanatic or vigilante; then have a difficult time in understanding Hashem’s rewarding Pinchas. To offer Pinchas Peace and the Priesthood becomes seems incomprehensible. Ibn Ezra (Toledo, Spain 1090 – 1164) explains that God's Brit Shalom was a pledge that Pinchas would be protected from Zimri's kinsmen (the tribe of Shimon) and their desire to kill Pinchas.
The Torah Temima (Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein – Russia 1860-1940) explains that the reward of Peace and the Priesthood was God's way of demonstrating to Moshe, and the rest of the Elders, as well as ChaZaL - Our sages of blessed memory, that such a deed was the result of unadulterated zeal to advance the glory of God. Yet as I read that all I can think of is a terrorist perpetrating a similar act in God's name. The Torah Temimah explains that since we are unable to determine who acts selfishly thereby committing murder and who acts selflessly (advancing the glory of God); the Brit Shalom and the Brit Kehunat L'Olam would only have been given to Pinchas if he indeed acted selflessly. Again, The Torah Temimah's comment makes the assumption that God would never have rewarded someone for committing a heinous act; rather a reward could only have been the result of an act that had been deemed as "good".
However there is another way of looking at this "reward". The Neziv (Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Berlin Poland 1817-1893; the Rosh Yeshiva of the Volozhin Yeshiva) explains that the Brit Shalom is a guarantee of peace from an inner enemy from whatever lurked within Pinchas that caused him to kill another human being without due process. "The Holy One Blessed He blessed him [Pinchas] with the attribute of peace, that he should not be quick tempered or angry. Since it was only natural that such a deed as Pinchas' should leave in his heart an intense emotional unrest afterward, the Divine blessing was designed to cope with this situation and promised peace and tranquility of the soul." We can now begin to make some sense of these covenants. Once Pinchas committed his first act of zealous defense of God's glory, perhaps it becomes easier and easier to commit a second third of forty-eight act of zealous defense of God's glory. At some point, from the Neziv's perspective, the zealot's soul becomes damaged, the zealot's emotions are incapable of feelings, and the zealot's eyes become unseeing except through the lens of their zealousness. The zealot by definition is an extremist and we know that extremism in Judaism is frowned upon and Halachically unacceptable (see the laws of the Nazarite). Precisely because the zealot does not know peace when he/she commits such an act, in Pinchas' case the only gift God could give was that the tumult of his own soul should cease and he should be whole, complete and at peace.
From this perspective, that Brit Shalom was not so much a reward of external gain as it was a reward for internal “normalcy”, the Brit Shalom and the Brit Kehunat L’Olam seem much more appropriate. Isn’t that what we wish for our children? We know that during the course of their lives there will be moments of tumult. We know that they will experience tension between their belief system and the realities of daily life. We know that they will be exposed to extreme emotions of joy, of sadness, of anguish and of anger. Like Pinchas received a Brit Shalom, we offer that same covenant to our children. Indeed when they do experience extreme and intense emotions of life, we want pray that they will be able to return to a state of peace and contentment with themselves and their lives.
Peace,
RavYitz
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