Pinchas 2008

According to Pirkei Avot, a much loved minor tractate of the Talmud, there are four kinds of people. One says “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours.” That is the usual kind. One says “What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.” That person is ignorant. One who says “What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is yours” is pious, and one who says what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine” is evil.

Who would argue with a statement as obvious as that? The difficulty is knowing what belongs to you in the first place. For example, the Louisiana legislature recently decided to vote themselves a pay raise. If that the money is already the government’s money, then they have the right to decide what to do with it. What’s mine is mine. Most voters disagreed. 

If the money really belongs to the taxpayers, then it’s a different story. If the purpose of the money is to benefit the citizens of Louisiana as a whole. then the legislators may be making off with someone else’s money. From the viewpoint of the taxpayers, legislators were saying that what’s yours is mine.

This week’s Torah portion, Parasha Pinchas, contains the first mention of the daughters of Zelophehad. Zelophehad, who died in the wilderness, had five daughters and no sons. When land was apportioned in Canaan, the daughters went to Moses and demanded their father’s share of the land. At this time in history, no one had ever heard of women inheriting land. But Moses asks the Eternal, and the Holy One Blessed be He says that the plea of Zelophehad’s daughters is just. Not only that, but Gd makes a law for all time, that from then on, daughters will inherit the land if a man dies without sons.

Reform Judaism loves this story. It upholds the rights of women, and unusually, it mentions the women by name. Not just once, but over and over. Machlah, Noah, Choglah, Milkah, and Tirtzah. We love this story because it is feminist, but that was certainly not why this is in the Torah. No one was thinking about feminism 3000 years ago. 

This story is in the Torah not to show that women have equal rights under the law, because they did not, until very recently. This story is here to show that even for women, even for those who are marginalized and oppressed, justice is justice. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours. 

The most powerless person in society with the most worthless possession has the right to keep that possession. How much more so is this true when the possession is the most valuable thing one has?

Two days ago, the earthly remains of two Israeli soldiers were returned to their families. Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. I say ‘soldiers,’ but not just soldiers. Each was a son. A brother. One was a husband. Two young Jewish men, whose families had been waiting for two years and five days, since the men were kidnapped by Hezbollah. 

Until Wednesday, their families had been hoping they were alive, hoping they would come home to laugh and dance and live the lives they should have lived. What the families received on Wednesday was so much less than what they had hoped for. Nonetheless, they received perhaps their second most valuable possession.

So what is the most valuable possession? The most valuable possessions are our fragile lives. Hezbollah took those lives from Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. What is yours is mine. 

But our lives don’t belong to us. They belong to Gd. We acknowledge that there is something sacred in the creation of life, and the Torah forbids us to murder. The laws of kashrut tell us that we may not eat meat with the blood still in it, for blood is life, and life belongs to Gd. That is why taking a life is so terrible. It is stealing from Gd! 

In return for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the Israeli government gave Lebanon the bodies of 199 Palestinian and Lebanese fighters who had died in battle, four Hezbollah fighters who had been in Israeli prisons, and one more prisoner, Samir Kuntar. 

Samir Kuntar snuck into Israel in 1979 with the sole intention of killing Israelis. One of the people he killed was the father of a four year old girl. He killed him in front of his daughter’s eyes. Then he beat the four year old with his rifle butt until she died.

What’s yours...what’s Gd’s-- is mine.

Samir Kuntar did not return to Lebanon yesterday with his head hanging down, in shame. He went home like a hero. To a cheering crowd, he vowed to continue the fight against Israel. Behind him were banners that read “Divine Victory,” and “Gd’s achievement by our hands.” Because unbelievably, Samir Kuntar and people like him are doing what they believe Gd wants them to do!

The end of last week’s parasha and the beginning of this week’s tell the story of Pinchas, Aaron’s grandson. Gd speaks to Moses about the men who have attached themselves to Moabite women and worshipped their god. The Eternal tells Moses to have them killed. Just then an Israelite shows up with a Midianite woman. Pinchas grabs a spear and kills them both.

Gd approves of this, and gives Pinchas a “ברית שלום,” a covenant of peace. What’s the difference between this story and the story of Samir Kuntar?

The rabbis of the Talmud recognized that there was a danger in the story of Pinchas. They stressed that Pinchas alone was given permission to execute someone without due process of Jewish law. In fact, according to the Jerusalem Talmud, the sages of the time were about to excommunicate Pinchas, and that is why Gd had to butt in, and give him a covenant of peace. The 19th Century Lithuanian rabbi Baruch Epstein said that Gd only accepted Pinchas’ action because Pinchas was completely free of hatred for the two people he killed, and completely free of joy afterwards.

While the sages could not give this text a negative meaning, they did realize that it could lead to fanaticism, violence, and terrorism. This they rejected completely. Perhaps that is why Judaism is not known for acts of violence.

Last week, in the haftarah portion which Ben Sheiber read so beautifully, we learned that the Eternal asks of you only this: To do justice, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your Gd. To do justice: What is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours. We may not take what belongs to others, and we must never take a life, which belongs to Gd.

To love goodness: To always err on the side of forgiveness, on the side of peace, and on the side of reconciliation. 

To walk humbly with your Gd: To always try to behave as we think Gd would want us to behave, but never never presume that we know for certain what that is. That means never telling someone that their behavior has caused a natural disaster, never telling someone that Gd hates it when you do such and such, and never, never killing in the name of Gd.

This Shabbat is very different from the last one for the Goldwasser and Eldad families. I pray that we will someday see an end to all broken hearts, and an end to all violence in the name of religion. Shabbat shalom.