Two Minute Torah Podcast

Pinhas 5771 by William Friedman

Shalom.  My name is William Friedman, and I am the Rosh Kollel of the Northwoods Kollel at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, and director of the Eisenfeld/Duker Beit Midrash at JTS.  Welcome to Koach's Two-Minute Torah, a project of the College Department of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Parashat Pinhas is the literary turning point in Sefer Bemidbar.  To this point, we have been inundated with narratives describing the Israelites' complaining, their unrest, and even their outright rebellion against God and God's appointed leader, Moshe.  The culmination of those episodes is the enticement of benei yisrael to sexual sin and idolotrous worship.  Once again, they are narrowly saved from God's wrath by human intervention, but, for the first time, not Moshe's; instead, it fell to someone two generations removed from Egypt — Pinhas, the grandson of Aharon haKohen.

That Israel's savior comes from the generation about to enter the land foreshadows the moments of transition about to come, most poignantly Moshe's request to appoint a successor.  First, however, God commands taking a new census of able-bodied men.  The command is so abrupt that it literally interrupts the verse, beginning a new section without even ending the sentence first.  Hizkuni, the 13^th century French commentator, explains that this mirrors the suddenness with which the plague ended.  In a sense, God is so eager to move on to the next phase of the Israelite's journey, their entry into the land, that the Torah trips over itself to get there.

This census is no mere list, however.  As soon as Datan and Aviram are mentioned, their rebellion is recapped as well, including the bloody aftermath, as well as the tantalizing tidbit that Korah's sons did not die.  When Yehuda is mentioned, the deaths of his first two sons, `Er and 'Onan, are mentioned as well, although sanitized and without explanation.  When the tribe of Levi is described, the deaths of Nadav and Avihu for having offered foreign fire are mentioned as well.  Why, in a list purported to have definite military and national purposes, do these narratives creep back in?

The answer is as true as it is banal.  As benei yisrael look forward, they can't help but also look back.  The past must be remembered, coped with, and learned from, before the future can be fully embraced.  More significant, however, is learning from the hidden past as well, an insight brought to the fore by a comment of Rashi.  He reads significance into the way the familial names on the census are stated, with a prefixed hei and suffixed yod, claiming that by appending a shortened name of God — yod-hei — to each tribe, God is refuting the claim of the nations of the world that the Israelite women must have suffered rape at the hands of their Egyptian slavemasters.  Rashi is pointing out that the scars of benei yisrael's enslavement will remain with them, the spectre of how much worse it could have been raised over and and over again.  The response here is to be confident in their own identities, and to accept that while the past may have been tragic, a better future still awaits.  After all, if the sons of Korah did not die — and, in fact, merited to have contributed to the psalms — then there is hope for all of benei yisrael.

As we reach the turning-points on our own life journeys, may we be granted the fortitude to pause and take  stock of both the obvious and subtle experiences that have shaped us, so that our next steps will be guided by wisdom and self-awareness.  Shabbat Shalom.