According to the Talmud in Sanhedrin the three cardinal sins (aveirot chamurot) that any Jew is forbidden to transgress even when threatened with death are: 1. Idolatry (avoda zara); 2. Murder (shefichut damim); 3. Forbidden sexual relations (gilui arayot). In addition the Talmud in Yoma teaches that it was the Jewish People's transgressing these three serious sins that brought about God's wrath and the subsequent destruction of the First Jewish Temple by the Babylonians.
This subject has deep and profound roots in the Torah. For example, following the Torah portions that describe the failed efforts of Bilam and Balak to curse the Children of Israel there comes the subject of a new strategy: The Midianites and Moabites sent out their young women to seduce the men among the Children of Israel. The Torah reports that 24,000 Israelite men succumbed to this mass sexual seduction. As part of the seduction the Midianite and Moabite women would induce the Israelite men to worship idols of Baal Peor when the Israelite men reached arousal and desired to consummate their physical desires with the Midianite and Moabite women.
The Torah continues that this saga culminated when Zimri ben Salu an Israelite prince publicly caroused with Cozbi bat Zur a Midianite princes taunting Moses and the leaders of Israel. In the midst of all this in an act of zealotry, Pinchas arose and executed Zimri and Cozbi. The Torah recounts the 24,000 tally of Israelite men who had been seduced and worshipped the Baal Peor idol that were then punished and put to death.
In retrospect these events contained the three cardinal sins mentioned above: Forbidden sexual immorality, idolatry, the resultant tragic death of 24,000 Israelite men who succumbed to the sexual seduction and Baal Peor idol worship of the Midianites and Moabites.
There is a principle that is taught by the Ramban (Nachmanides 1194-1270) based on Midrash Tanchuma that "ma'ase avot siman lebanim" (the deeds of the forefathers are a sign for the children) and therefore looking to earlier sections of the Torah that may have been roots and "templates" and "deeds of the forefathers" that subsequently becomes "a sign for the children".
The beginning of the Torah, from the very start of the book of Genesis lays down foundational axioms and truths that guide all subsequent world history, especially Jewish History. In particular the story of Adam and Eve and the seduction of Eve by the primal Serpent breaking God's command to Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (etz hada'at tov vara) because, says God in the Torah, on the day you eat from it you shall die. This core sin contained the primal source of the three cardinal sins: Disobeying God's command equals "idol worship"; succumbing to the Serpent's seduction is imbibing impure "immorality"; Cain murders his brother Abel and brings death into the world as well as all humankind now having to die.
The true Tikkun Olam ('fixing of the world") is to restore the level of humanity, the descendants of Adam and Eve to the high spiritual level they were on prior to them having sinned by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This historical task is started by the ancestors of the Children of Israel; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah. the Twelve Tribes, and then the Children of Israel who are then called the Jewish People later in history.
Jacob's son Joseph is regarded as being on the level of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Joseph earns the title Yosef HaTzadik (Joseph the Righteous) because he remains true to his father Jacob's heritage when after he is enslaved in Egypt he refuses to be seduced by the wife of Potifar. Joseph's act of fleeing from succumbing to the wiles of his erstwhile mistress is an act that goes beyond his personal bravery but also reverses the end-result of Eve's seduction by the Serpent and gives the Children of Israel an important role model for future times.
What transpired in the test that Joseph endured with the wife of Potifar resonates and even resembles and resonates in the actions of Pinchas who acted against the immorality being committed by Zimri and Cozbi. Both Joseph and Pinchas in their own ways impose a moral code on themselves for the greater glory of God and the Children of Israel with profound consequences for their own fate and glory. However, while Joseph's act of fleeing from the wife of Potifar is a personal act concerning his own life, Pinchas's act of executing Zimri and Cozbi concerns the fate of the entire People of Israel not succumbing to total immoral destruction. Joseph acts in the context of a singular person (yachid) and the particular (prat), while Pinchas acts in a communal sense (rabbim) and the general (klal) community.
When God commands the Children of Israel in the Torah: "You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy" (Leviticus 19) the classical commentator RASHI (1040-1105) says that this means that God is commanding the Children of Israel to separate themselves from sexual immorality. Thus the Torah's definition of a state of holiness is to desist from sexual immorality.
That is how Joseph, by fleeing from the seduction by the wife of Potifar became a Tzadik (righteous) and how Pinchas saved the Children of Israel from the plague of sexual immorality of the Midianites and Moabites and thereby earned the rights to be part of his family's priestly heritage. By taking the moral high ground both Joseph and Pinchas negate and reverse the sexual and immoral decline of the world that began with the disobedience of Adam and Eve and the seduction of the devious Serpent.
It is not enough that Joseph and Pinchas are triumphant in their quest to fight against immorality, Joseph individually and Pinchas communaly during the early times surrounding the formation of the Children of Israel, but their influence of the spiritual "genetic code" of the subsequent Jewish People must also be played out in the future. The subsequent lost Ten Tribes of the northern Kingdom of Israel were sent into exile by the conquering Assyrians as a punishment for their idolatrous ways. The people of the southern Kingdom of Judah witnessed the destruction of the First Jewish Temple and were also exiled by the conquering Babylonians because they were guilty of the three cardinal sins: Idolatry, sexual immorality and murder.
It did not end then. The world is ensconced in the three cardinal sins of widespread sexual immorality, denial of the true God and idolatry, and mass murders committed in the names of false religions, evil schemes and ideologies. According to Judaism, this period of modern history, know as the End of Days (acharit hayamim) that we are living in has seen the wholesale destruction of religious and spiritual life and values in the face of mass materialism, mass genocide such as the Holocaust, religious madness and falsity and over-all moral mayhem.
At its religious core and heart the Jewish People pray that this too shall pass, in the spirit and merit of Joseph and Pinchas, and all the Jewish forefathers, moral order will be restored to a very chaotic world with the arrival of the Days of the Jewish Messiah (yemot hamashiach). Then the world will once agains be restored to the level of Adam and Eve before they sinned by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil!
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015
He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at izakrudomin@gmail.com
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