Pinchas: Point of Perpetuity
Pinchas: Point of Perpetuity

( Sent by author to Arutz Sheva. See www.naaleh.com for more articles)

Eliyahu Hanavi… Bimharah … yavo elenu im moshiach ben Dovid. As we leave the table after havdalah, or as we sit around the Seder table we sing, “Elijah the prophet … may he soon come to us with Moshiach, son of David.”

When we attend a circumcision, there is Eliyahu’s seat, where we place the baby momentarily and symbolically expect Eliyahu to witness the ceremony.

When danger lurks, we feel Eliyahu himself has come to save the day.

According to the Medrash, Eliyahu Hanavi is none other than Pinchas, grandson of Aharon Hakohen, of this Parsha. What is the secret that transformed Pinchas into this powerhouse of redemption?

This Parsha picks up where last week’s Parsha ended. The Midianite women had seduced the Jewish men to sin and to worship their gods. Zimri, a prince of the tribe of Shimon, brought his Midianite paramour into the camp and publicly sinned before Moshe in front of the Tent of Assembly. A terrible plague immediately broke out, killing twenty four thousand Jews. While all watched in shock, Pinchas got up from amidst the assembly, took a spear and killed both Zimri and Kosbi. Immediately the plague stopped.

Our Parsha picks up at this point. Hashem validates Pinchas’ action and announces that he extends to Pinchas “His covenant of peace” for “he had zealously avenged Me among them so I did not consume the Children of Israel in My vengeance.”

One would expect zealousness and avenging acts to be products of anger, the results of violence. Yet, Hashem sees Pinchas’ acts differently.

Rav Chaim Hakohen analyzes this seeming contradiction in his sefer Tallilei Chaim. He explains that Pinchas arose from the midst of the congregation, from the holiness and kedushah that is the essence of Bnei Yisroel. He witnessed the actions that were incongruous with this kedushah and that severed the special connection between Hashem and our people.

Pinchas’ zealousness, explains the Tallilei Chaim, is an expression of his love for the inner character of Bnei Yisroel, his people, and for Hashem. His action is his attempt to reconcile the two and repair the relationship, to “return the hearts of the Father to the children and the hearts of the children back to their Father,” just as in the near future (we hope) Pinchas/Eliyahu will do the same as he heralds the arrival of Moshiach.

By comparing this sin with the Midianite women to the other sins committed by the desert generation, such as the sins of the golden calf and of the spies, Rav Pincus in Nefesh Chaya offers an additional perspective on the sin of Bnei Yisroel and on Pinchas’ action. Those sins, posits Rabbi Pincus, were all intra family. While the actions were wrong and God began exacting punishment, prayer mollified Hashem, and punishment was eased.

Not so with this sin, for this sin went out of the bounds of the Jewish family. The sacred privacy of the home that we built with Hashem was broken, and Hashem would have taken vengeance on the entire nation had not Pinchas stepped up and upheld the honor of the people and of our God. Pinchas restored the humility (the daled) into the four letter name of God to again create the essence of our people, of YeHU-D-aH. Pinchas awakened in Bnei Yisroel the realization that their actions in this physical world were inappropriate and unbefitting their higher, spiritual nature, and Bnei Yisroel returned to Hashem.

As the Siach Chaim says, this sense of love that triggered Pinchas’ action and reignited the love of Am Yisroel to Hakodosh Boruch Hu is now instilled for all future generations.

With this thought in mind, we can understand why the Tiferet Shimshon compares intermarriage to this sin. When a Jew marries a woman outside his faith, the children of that union will not be Jewish. That man has not maintained the continuity of his relationship with Hashem. Even if his children convert, they will not be considered his children according to Jewish law, but would be the sons of Avraham Avinu, as are all converts who are “reborn” as Jews.

Continuing this reasoning, posits the Tiferet Shimshon, explains why Eliyahu is invited to every bris milah when a Jewish child enters the covenant of Avraham Avinu. The presence of Eliyahu/Pinchas highlights the concept that circumcision is not just a technical mitzvah, but a commitment to remain sensitive and true to the essence of a Jewish soul and not befoul it with inappropriate external ideas or materials from the physical world in which we live.  

This unity in holiness between the physical world and the spiritual world is the key to Pinchas’ immortality, explains Rabbi Friedman, the Shvilei Pinchas. Pinchas represents the ideal that Hashem had in mind when He created the world, that Man would live interchangeably between the physical and the spiritual worlds, as one can move freely between the upper and lower levels of his home.

But when Adam sinned, he lost that ability, and the only way he would be able to ascend again to the upper realms would be to shed the trappings of the physical world, to die.

That Pinchas attained immortality through his action proves that his action reestablished the unity of his holy soul with his physical body, and that he could now remove his “mortal coil” and yet continue to live as an angel in the heavens or, when necessary, don his physical body again and move among the mortals to give hope and help to the living. Since he achieved this unity, he is always remembered for good, zachur latov, for it is separation and disunity , as the separation between heaven and earth that prevents good from being actualized.

Pinchas’ mission, continues the Shvilei Pinchas, is to help Bnei Yisroel achieve this same unity of body and soul, to reconnect our spiritual essence (lev avos) and our physical reality (lev banim) so that we live our lives through the truth our heavenly souls imbue into our bodies.

True, we are human and will therefore err and sin. However, Rabbi YitzchakSchwartz, in Da es Atzmecha teaches us, we need not despair when this happens. Our inner essence, our soul always remains pure and untainted. Sin has merely soiled our external trappings. Through teshuvah, we can remove them and wash them.

Therefore, we must never become depressed when we fall, but use the opportunity to repair our actions and thoughts so they are again in sync with our spiritual core. That soul that Hashem has placed within us remains forever pure, even if the action itself was improper. The sin does not fit the purity of the soul, and it remains external to the soul.

Self talk can be very effective in maintaining the proper, exalted image we should have of ourselves. If we remind ourselves several times a day that our souls are pure, our actions will eventually strive to maintain that inner purity.  But we must learn to access our inner core, to meditate in solitude, to learn to appreciate who we are and enjoy the moment of connection with ourselves, with others, and certainly with God.This is what Pinchas teaches us, that we have the ability to merge our lower, physical selves with our upper, spiritual selves and achieve the harmony Hashem envisioned for mankind.

(summary by Channie Koplowitz Stein)

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