PINCHAS: WHEN MEETING BRINGS A PLAGUE

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow
 

Two peoples meet. There is danger in their meeting. Perhaps there is also a possible profit. Perhaps there is even possible delight. But among at least one of the peoples, the leadership is frightened and forbids all contact.

But there is contact anyway. Some of it is literal, physical contact: sexual relationships. As a result, Reality Itself may bring on a plague of death.

For example: When the age-old barriers of Ocean were torn apart in the 16th century, two cultures came together that had never met. The result: Measles decimated the Native Americans; syphilis, the Europeans.

Sometimes the contact is so fraught with fear and rage that the result is deliberate death. Murder. Mass murder.

For example: Israelis and Palestinians. Americans and Iraqis. Some Jihadis and some Westerners.

Was this because their intimate connection was in itself a “sin”? Or was it because the rush of new connection outran the care necessary to make the connection caring, peaceful, healing, holy?

When the Sea splits or ghetto walls fall or airplanes obliterate national boundaries, best make sure that as the boundaries that had been sharp and high between you become newly fuzzy, you tie sacred “tzitzit”— conscious fuzzy fringes—to mark the contact points. Take care!

But what about those who do not take sufficient care?

The Torah’s story of Pinchas is perhaps our sharpest test. The Israelites made friends with the people of Moab, joining with them sexually and celebrating their gods. God—that is, Reality Itself, YHWH Who is the Zealous Breath of Life—sent a plague upon them.

Then Pinchas, a priest and one of Aaron’s sons, sees an Israelite and a Midianite having sex. In rage he flings his lance at them, transfixes and kills them both. The plague ends. And the Torah continues (Num. 25: 10-13):

“YHWH so-worded it though Moses, saying:

” ‘Pinchas has turned back my hot wrath from upon the Children of Israel by expressing-zealously My zeal [b’kano et-kinati] amidst them. And so I did not finish off the Children of Israel in My zealotry [b’kinati].

” ‘Therefore say: ‘Here! I give him my Covenant of Shalom; it shall be for him and his seed after him a covenant of priesthood forever, because of/ replacing [tachat] his zealotry for his God, through which he made-atonement for the Children of Israel.’”

Most readers have taken this to mean that God was pleased with Pinchas. But try reading God’s words this way:

“In a blind rage, consumed with jealousy/zealotry, I began killing My people with the plague. Then Pinchas imitated Me: he turned his hand to zealous killing.

“His jealous/ zealous act opened my eyes. I saw him as a mirror of My Self. He shocked me into shame at what I Myself was doing. That is why I stopped the plague; that is why I made with Pinchas my covenant of shalom/ peace. I said to him, ‘You stop and I’ll stop. Both of us must be bound by this Covenant of Peace.’”

In this reading, God does tshuvah. God grows. The God Who begins by bringing a plague upon the people ends by making a covenant of peace. The God Who is horrified by Pinchas also sees in Pinchas’ face one facet of God’s Own Face.

But if we mean by “God” not an white-bearded old man in the sky but rather the Breath of Life Whose Name we hear; if we try to pronounce the “YHWH” with no vowels at all; if we mean that God Who is within us, among us, beyond us—then what does it mean for that God to do tshuvah?

What do we mean when we say “God” brought on the plague and halted it, ordered a genocide and made a covenant of peace ?

We mean that the deep processes of the universe—the Very Breath of Life Itself, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, a spiral process of Becoming—act in subterranean ways to bring on genocides and plagues, and also to call forth human intervention to prevent, to soften, and to heal them.

Sometimes I image this Deep Process as a double spiral or helix of I-It and I-Thou. I see both of them as Divine attributes that arise in the very process of the arousal of the universe: one devotedly pursuing more and more self-reflectiveness in order to become more efficient; the other devotedly pursuing more and more self-reflectiveness in order to become more loving.

One I-It, one I-Thou. Both, aspects of One God. Perhaps more satisfying and more accurate than the classic (Kabbalistic) sense of male and female aspects of God.

Alone, I-It consumes everything around us, everything we grow from, ultimately ourselves. Alone, I-Thou dissolves us into an unboundaried pool of complacent admiration. When the one leaps forward or the other hunkers down, the universe must “do tshuvah”—must make a crucial turn on the spiral of sacred history, in order to mirror the Infinite God more fully. 

And what does it mean for us today? A surge of I-It power within both the Jewish and Palestinian peoples has given each of them a political strength and toughness that neither had, one century ago. And that surge of volcanic energy has thrown them into conflict with each other, as they erupt in each other’s faces in the one Land they both call home.

Out of this I-It collision, each people has already given birth to more than one Pinchas. Zealous murderers, zealous home-demolishers, zealous suicide bombers, zealous olive-uprooters, zealous wielders of asphalt and steel to bury farmland and divide communities, zealous assassins-from-the-sky to execute alleged terrorists without a trial, meanwhile killing the surely innocent as well. 

What we need is a new surge of I-Thou. a new Covenant of Peace.

For Jews, that means not only making sure that every Pinchas among us abides by God’s Covenant of Peace. Not only undertaking a public, clear, explicit, and vigorous effort to reeducate all Jews to see that God learned from Pinchas to repudiate such acts of zealotry.

It also means that we must shape our contacts with other peoples in as much mindfulness as the macrame-weaver shapes the fuzzy, intricate boundaries of tzitzit. Fringes. For it is not good fences make good neighbors; it is good fringes. 

When Palestinians and Israelis join with each other and the President of Israel to mourn those who have died at each other’s hands, that weaves a sacred fringe between us.

When our peoples join in a “Seder of the Children of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah,” remembering our ancient loving family, the conflicts that erupted between us, and the peace that Ishmael and Isaac created at their father’s grave—that Seder weaves a sacred fringe between us.

When Israelis and Palestinians work together to rebuild the homes destroyed by order of the Israeli government— that weaves a sacred fringe between us.

When Israelis refuse to serve in an army of occupation and Palestinians insist that terror campaigns cease, that weaves a sacred fringe between us.

These are the common ceremonies, the common tasks, we can weave onto the edges of our peoplehoods so as to create a Covenant of Peace.