Commentary on Parshat Balak (Numbers 22:2 – 25:9)
At the end of this Torah portion, the Israelite men are seduced by non-Israelite women who invite them to the orgiastic sacrificial feasting for their god. The men partake of the feast and bow down to that god, Baal-peor.
Israel’s God, in His fury, sends a plague upon the people of Israel, seeking to wipe them out.
In the midst of this trauma, while the Israelites are weeping in grief and terror at the Tent of Meeting, one of the Israelites brings one of the non-Israelite woman and, according to some commentaries, engages in intercourse in the sight of Moses and of the whole Israelite community.
“When Pinchas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped.” (Numbers 25:7-8)
Pinchas, in his act of zealotry “turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his zeal for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My zeal.” He, and all of his descendants forever, are thus rewarded with a covenant of peace, a pact of priesthood. (Numbers 25:1-13)
Much has been written about Pinchas’ zealotry. It often disturbs readers not, I believe, from a concern with Pinchas’ act but because of what his act, as well as this whole story, says about God and what it means to be a servant of God.
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Pinchas’s zealotry is a mirror image of God’s own zealotry; “For I, the LORD your God, am a zealous God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Numbers 25:1-13)
There is a thread woven through centuries of Rabbis that rejects this example of zealotry — probably precisely because of a great discomfort with being the chosen people of a zealous God, and what that would imply about us.
One of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) is halakhta bidrakhav — to walk in God’s ways. We understand this to mean that we are to imitate God’s ways. Are we then commanded to imitate God’s zealotry?
No.
Our sages say, in Talmud Sotah 14a:
Is it possible for a human being to imitate God’s ways? Has it not been stated: Behold, God, your Lord, is a consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24)?! Rather, [it means] one should follow the qualities of God. Just as He dresses the naked – you, too, should dress the naked; God visited the sick – you, too, should visit the sick; God comforted the bereaved — you, too, should comfort the bereaved; God buried the dead — you, too, should bury the dead.
Rambam (Maimonides) writes in Hilkhot De’ot:
Our Sages taught [the following] explanation of this mitzvah: Just as God is called Gracious, so you shall be gracious; just as God is called Merciful, so you shall be merciful; just as God is called Holy, so you shall be holy. In a similar manner, the prophets called God by other titles: Slow to Anger, Abundant in Kindness, Righteous, Just, Perfect, Almighty, Powerful, and the like. [They did so] to inform us that these are good and just paths. A person is obligated to accustom themselves to these paths and [to try to] resemble God to the extent of their ability.
Why does our tradition reread the Torah in this way? Why the emphasis on only imitating God’s kindnesses rather than zealotry? I believe it is because, in Jewish experience, God’s glory is revealed through acts of kindness and beneficence. Our tradition knows well the violence of indiscriminate violence and zealotry in the world and in our sacred texts. But there is a thread woven through our tradition that God’s nature is, ultimately, expansive kindness. And it is through expansive kindness that God is revealed in all the world.
In our social justice circles, we are often prone to making arguments for social action based on precedence in our tradition, moral imperative, and so forth. Seldom, if ever, do we read the kind of courage that our tradition has in insisting that our work is God’s will. I fear that this is an expression of our ambivalence toward God and our tradition. In my opinion, we, like our sages, must have the courage to assert our experience of God; when we work for human rights we can, and must, reread our tradition not only to assert the validity of our instincts about love, justice, and peace on the basis of where we find resonance in our tradition but to insist that our work is God’s will. We are the face of God. Our work reveals God’s kindness and beneficence in the world.
Rabbi Eli Herb is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Sholom in Salem, Oregon. Eli was ordained by Hebrew College in 2016.
