It bears remembering – especially in our day and age when tolerance has become the greatest virtue (although someone once observed that tolerance is 9/10 indifference) – that Pinchas received the “covenant of peace” from G-d for killing two people!
Indeed, not only did he receive this covenant; he and all his descendants for the rest of history merited to become kohanim. He also later “became” Eliyahu HaNavi (according to one opinion), the man who will usher in the era of Moshiach.
Why did Pinchas merit all this? Because he killed a man and woman sinning publicly.
“It was not the inactive standing apart of the masses,” writes Rav Hirsch, “it was not even the tears of those who stood inactive at the entrance of the Sanctuary weeping at the treason; it was the honest brave act of Pinchas that saved the nation and restored his peace with G-d and His law and thereby brought back the basis for real true peace on earth.”
Love didn’t win the day. Nor did tolerance. Zealotry did.
Why? Because if “a challenge to G-d finds no champion amongst a circle of human beings and the consciousness of the Rights that G-d has on them has disappeared from this circle, then they have lost G-d and thereby their own future existence” (which is why a plague started spreading among the Jews).
Many people dismiss the world as crazy and unsalvageable. But Rav Hirsch seems to be saying that we have to protest nonetheless. Someone has to stand up for Hashem’s honor.
If someone gravely insults a woman, she will be hurt if her husband doesn’t at least attempt to defend her. The insult may remain in her memory regardless, but she will take great comfort in knowing that her husband stood by her. The Chofetz Chaim writes that Hashem acts in a similar manner. If somebody attacks Him, He doesn’t get upset as long as His children – the Jewish people – defend Him. If we don’t, He grows angry at us.
We all love peace and harmony. But he “who, for the sake of so-called peace, quietly leave the field to people who are really at variance with G-d” stands “with the enemies of the bris shalom on earth” – since true peace between men “rests on the peace of all of them with G-d.”
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.