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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋu |
2002.07.04 Daniel Doron, The Jerusalem Post, p. 9 – Last week's Torah portion, Pinhas, extols Pinhas – the son of the priest Eleazar – who stabbed to death an Israelite leader and his Midianite consort in order to assuage G*o*d's wrath when the Israelites whored after foreign idols. It is not easy on modern, liberal sensibilities, on those who believe in understanding and compromise and are repulsed by violence, to accept the Torah's approval, even praise, of such an act.
To confound matters, the Haftara (supplementary reading from the Book of Judges) praises Elijah 's slaughter of Baal's priests, and his support for a war that would kill many thousands of idol worshipers.
And as if such praise were not difficult enough to digest, most of Pinhas is devoted to sacrifices – how ritual slaughter of animals expiates human sins, another bloody act that we find revolting.
Let us consider first this "lesser evil," the slaughter of sacrificial animals.
Had we all been vegetarians, living on fruits and vegetables as did Adam and Eve in Eden, then our disgust for the killing of sacrificial animals would be morally consistent and understandable. But most of us are carnivorous, though we repress the fact that the meat we buy in the supermarket comes from an animal that was butchered in remote abattoirs. In this way, we can indulge our appetite without agonizing about the blood spilled to satisfy it.
It may be that animal sacrifices were ordained to force people to confront what the slaughter of an animal means. It made people experience very graphically the agony of death, the price paid for satisfying this particular lust. Is modern man, who totally suppresses the pain and sacrifice involved in eating meat, really so morally superior to those who personally confronted it by offering sacrifices?
In his enlightening commentary on the Torah weekly portions, Meir Tamari points out that sacrifice (korban)is suggestive of the word for closeness, kirva.
Judaism has generally adopted a moral strategy of not rejecting basic, life-sustaining human passions (such as sex or commerce) but of "civilizing" them and making them strengthen social bonds. Endowing them with divine sanction also helped curb their worst excesses. In this, Judaism differs radically from Western, Christian morality that condemns men 's "baser instincts" and seeks to have them denied or rejected.
The idea of participating in ritual slaughter to come closer to the Divine may seem bizarre at first. But then is not our most common expression of conviviality to celebrate closeness to family or friends by sharing a meal together (often with a meat barbecue)? Is it not the custom in most cultures to throw great feasts in honor of an important event or person as do the Beduin in their hajla? Most of us enjoy these festive celebrations even if they require that we avert our gaze from the slaughter of sheep that usually precedes it.
Sacrifice must have been such an expression – a social feast in the presence of G*o*d – of the sharing of our bounty with Him so as to lend a touch of sacredness to our "baser" needs.
Zealotry is even more offensive to the modern sensibility than is sacrifice. Zealotry implies a determination so strong in pursuit if a cause that it even sanctions violence. If there is anything contemporary society is proud of, it is its condemnation of violence. It is for this reason that the praise of zealotry that opens the portion of Pinhas, a praise reiterated in the Elijah episode, is so difficult for us to accept.
[Like most commentators, Mr. Doron makes no mention that Pinkhas acted in response to the lawful decision of the beit din, not vigilante “street justice.”]
Remarkably it is the Lord himself who states in the opening verses that Pinhas "...has turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, in that he was very jealous for My sake." The commendation is repeated in the sparse biblical text twice, stressing not only its Divine sanction, but also its great significance.
In fact, G*o*d bestows on Pinhas's zealotry – which some liberal interpreters considered an expression of wanton destructiveness – not only a great temporal prize, "a covenant of everlasting priesthood," but surprisingly, also a "covenant of peace," the highest moral and spiritual reward.
So does the Haftara. Elijah – escaping the wrath of Queen Jezebel after he butchered her Baal priests – explains his escape by repeating the very same words used about Pinhas: "I have been very jealous for the Lord " For just as in the time of Israel's fatal encounter with the Midianites, "the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant..." and were again seduced by Baal's cult of death, by the sacrifice of innocent children and other such cruel abominations.
Immediately thereafter, in the very moving moment when G*o*d reveals himself to Elijah, not in a violent storm, nor in a destructive earthquake or fire, but in "a still small voice;' Elijah answers again G*o*d's query about his actions with exactly the same words: "I have been very jealous for the Lord... for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant. .." And what does G*o*d command Elijah to do in this moment of silent, peaceful introspection? To go anoint a foreign king, to replace Ahab with another Israelite king and to appoint Elisha his successor. And all so that they will wage war on the Israelites and kill off all those who were contaminated by Baal's abominations.
In our post-modernist age where all is relative and therefore anything goes, an age that does not accept that there are red lines, such as protecting the life of the innocent, zealotry is considered repulsive, beyond the pale of liberal humanity.
But if we conceive of zealotry, such as the acts of Pinhas or Elijah, as acts of utter devotion to basic moral precepts, whose breach could eventually destroy Israel or any other society; if we accept that human survival often depends on the determination of outstandingly moral people to use extreme violence, even to kill in order to curb those who threaten human life or the social order that maintains it, we might come to appreciate certain zealotries, and understand why G*o*d considers them a prerequisite to His "covenant of peace," no less; why he praises them so lavishly and rewards them generously (just as even we would do to someone who killed a rampaging murderer or someone who stopped someone who "just" attempted to rape a woman).
In the contemporary world where so many find political and even theological justification for terror, where understanding and empathy are extended to the putative "victims" of political discrimination but denied to real victims; in a world where killing is sanctioned as a proper response to any number of "grievances" but is ostracized when used to protect human life; in a world where it is not fashionable any more to sacrifice one's life because one is 'jealous" for the preservation of those red lines that protect our so fragile civilization from chaos and mayhemin such a world mass killings will inevitably recur, and even a Holocaust can happen again.
Just as there are true prophets and false ones, the Torah insists there is also a benevolent zealotry, and a malicious perverse one. The first is 'jealous" in its utter commitment to the sanctity of life, the latter is identifiable by its willingness to countenance violence and murder for political or social ends, "social justice," "equality," anti-globalization, animal rights and Palestinian statehood at any price. The fanatic zealots are the ones who, paradoxically, in the name of justice, compassion and mercy would trample on all of them for the sake of "politically correct" causes.
Our sages have already observed that those who in trying to avoid zealotry have mercy on the cruel, will end up being cruel to the merciful.
The writer is president of The Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, an independent pro-market policy think tank. E-mail dorondun@012.net.il
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