A Time For Action
July 27th, 2024
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Beth-El, Richmond, Virginia
Both we and this Torah portion of Pinchas live in tumultuous, difficult and dangerous times. Eerily, there are parallels between the time of Moses in the wilderness of Sinai and 2024. Maybe there is a divine hand orchestrating the timing, that this sedra comes after two such weeks. We need to look carefully at the end of last week's sedra of Balak coupled with the beginning of today’s sedra of Pinchas and the threat posed to existence of the Children of Israel. And in that moment we must reflect on the threat to our democracy.
Will both threats be averted?
Will they and we be saved?
By whom?
How?
In this sedra Moses stands alone. Aaron and Miriam have previously died. He is being tested time after time after time. He even has to debate Korach. He is one hundred and twenty years old.
Will God change His mind and allow Moses to finish the job, bring the Israelites to their ancestral home?
Or will God adhere to what He had previously decreed, that Moses would die in the wilderness like his siblings?
If so, who will succeed Moses? Will it be Pinchas from our sedras who acted with zeal to thwart the threat? If not Pinchas, then whom?
Reading these Torah portions shake us; demands our attention; commands us to use its text as a mirror to understand what is at stake now! To think about these two episodes and that in neither could anyone just sit back and let events unfold.
This Torah portion demanded engagement. It demanded action.
And it does of us too!
As in the past, now, too, WE DARE NOT FAIL!
As I mentioned last week, the Egyptians tried to destroy us through slavery and Amalekites tried to do it militarily. Balak then uses Bilaam to curse us and with magic destroy us. That too fails. Yet with no external compulsion, the Israelite men start having sex with the Moabite women which leads them to idolatry, named after the place and its god “Ba’al Peor.” This behavior will abrogate the covenant and spell the end of Israelites! God commands the death of the ring leaders. But then, flaunting all convention, displaying utter vulgarity, Zimri the son of Salu, a chief in the tribe of Simeon, brings a Midianite woman, Cozbi daughter of Tzur, a Midianite chief, and flagrantly acts towards her in front of Moses and the people at the Tent of Meeting. The plague of God’s anger had already broken out. Everyone was paralyzed. Moses, the chieftains were frozen in place. The end was nigh!
Only one person had the courage, had the bravery, had the audacity to extinguish the threat to the existence of the Children of Israel. Pinchas picks up a spear and rams it through both of them. This is not a story for children. Maybe the sedra specifically ends here with us anxiously waiting what comes next. What will happen to Pinchas? The Rabbis are clearly unhappy with this scenario and its violence and make all kinds of excuses. They are not happy with God’s rewarding him with a special covenant and have to make allowances. He took the law into his own hand. He didn’t bring them to court. All kinds of excuses. But after 24,000 Israelites died – let us not get wrapped up in the exact number – no commentator suggests an alternative to save them! And if we would not condone violence, and I don’t suggest that we do, especially after the past Shabbat afternoon, and I suppose that most of us here remember JFK, RFK, MLK and Yitzchak Rabin,
then at least let us be stirred,
let us be inspired,
let us be motivated that someone stood up,
someone had the courage,
someone had the guts,
someone cared enough to put it on the line,
to do something to save us!
Eschewing violence against others, abjuring hatred of those who hold alternate ideas, it is clear to me, that these are perilous times with the threat to our democracy being promoted and sponsored in every corner of social media and by political parties and on tv stations. The Southern Poverty Law Center publishes a yearly compendium of such groups and people. I read it cover to cover. The more I think of January 6th, 2021 the more I am scared and concerned for January, 2025.
Will we be encouraged by Pinchas to use our civil rights, to protest, to vote, to donate, will we at least do something, or will we sit as Moses and all the leaders and the rest of the people, paralyzed and do nothing?
We as Jews are the proverbial “canary in the mine.”
We cannot forget Charlottesville.
We cannot forget the torches.
We cannot forget the chanting “You won’t replace us.”
There was nothing good there!!!
I have often wondered what it was like to be a Jew in Germany at the end of the 1920’s and the 1930’s. I know what is to be a Jew in the United States in 2024.
It is time to be like Pinchas.
We all know that God affirmed his judgement to Moses, that he would not lead the Children of Israel into Canaan. There is a most touching piece of our sedra, that after God reminds Moses and gives him a sneak preview, that Moses asks God for God to appoint a worthy successor. “Let the Lord, source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community who will go out before them and come in before them, and who shall take them out and bring them in, so that the Lord’s community may not be like sheep without a shepherd.” And the Lord answered Moses: “Single out Joshua son of Nun, an inspired man…Invest him with some of your authority…” We met Joshua previously at Mt. Sinai. He led the battle to defeat Amalek. He was Moses’ faithful and loyal servant. In these few verses in our sedra the peaceful and lawful transition of leadership was effected.
In Joshua there was no confusion, there was no hesitation, there was no question. It was a time for action! It was a time to accept the staff that Moses had carried since he stood before Pharaoh and go forth, as God had commanded.
The past demanded it.
The future commanded it.
Our destiny was not to be and need not be denied.
Is our time any different?
The parallels from our past to our present are so eerily the same.
I see no other way but for us to act as the descendants of Pinchas.
I see no other way but for us to act as the descendants of Joshua.
The future of this democracy demands it.
The welfare of our people and all peoples commands it.
No sitting on the sidelines.
No after the fact “should’ve, could’ve would’ve.”
These days are A Time For Action, by us and by all.
The future of this democracy demands it.
The welfare of our people and all peoples commands it.
May God who stirred those leaders of our past inspire us now.
May God protect us, the United States, Medinat Yisrael, and the Jewish people throughout the world, now and “forever and ever.”
Shabbat Shalom
