podcast #22 Parashat Pinchas

The friends discuss the weekly Torah portion, Parashat Pinchas, which is read frequently throughout the year. They explore the themes of sin and repentance, the qualities of a leader, the dangers of zealotry, and the importance of peace. They also discuss the transition from Moshe to Yehoshua and the significance of succession in leadership. They emphasize the need for critical thinking and growth, and how the Torah provides guidance on managing organizations and facing challenges. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. It's good to see you again. This is a great weekly practice that we have here. I agree. It leads me to do a lot of thinking and a lot of reading. Yeah, yeah, me too. And we have an incredible parasha this week. In fact, it's a parasha that we read more than any other parasha throughout the year. It's parasha Pinchas. And the reason we read it so often is because we read it on every Rosh Chodesh. Every holiday. Why is that? Why would they choose that for Rosh Chodesh? Because it has, in the middle of the parasha, it has the Luch Hashanah, the annual cycle of sacrifices. So it's read every Rosh Chodesh. And since we have a bar mitzvah pretty much on every Rosh Chodesh, even when we don't have services here at Shul, if it's in the middle of the week, I get to hear it very, very, very often. So it's a great parasha. It has some major difficulties, but that's why we love the Torah, because it forces us to think and grow and expand. And to explore the dark corners, Elisha, one of the things I teach my students about innovation is not to do the obvious, to look in the dark corners. And that's something you do very well with your droshot. So, for example, in this parasha, everybody does droshot about Tzlav Chad and the five daughters and how they fought for their rights and they got women's rights and they succeeded. But you find a dark corner about Tzlav Chad dying in his own sin. And we'll discuss that. And I don't remember anybody discussing that. And that's the theme of your droshot. Aha, okay. Well, first of all, thank you for these sweet words. Yeah, I saw these words and thought to myself, you know, he died through in his own sins. Why are they bothering saying that? And we could give a simple answer to it, but why go for a simple answer if you can find something complicated? Exactly. Exactly. And so this raises a question, Aisha, you kind of answer it in your droshot. You make the point forcefully that we all have our own sin. We own sin. It's part of life. And you don't say this, but I think it's true that it's an important part of life. Sometimes I read science fiction and I'm imagining a science fiction book about a world where nobody ever sins. Everybody's Mother Teresa. Good heavens, what an awful place that would be. Why? Why would this be an awful place? It would be absolutely deadly boring because nothing would be unusual or unexpected or no drama, no ups and downs, no life. No life and no growth. But you point out this idea that we all sin. Well, the Christians kind of talk about this, but this is totally different. You note that there's a difference between the Jewish concept of sin and the Christian original sin idea. What's the difference? Well, I have to be very careful here because I don't want to put down any other religion. And since I'm not an expert on Christianity, I'm going to say it very carefully. The way sin comes across very often in Christian contexts is that it's certainly a very bad thing. Hell awaits those who sin and there's eternal damnation and concepts like that. We just finished our course this Sunday. We finished our course on the afterlife in Jewish sources. And we saw that there really is no eternal damnation in Judaism. And even if there is a concept of hell and fire, etc., it's a purgatory kind of fire that cleanses you, actually cleanses you kind of lovingly and allows you to ascend up to heaven or up to wherever a person goes up to. So even if we don't believe necessarily in the afterlife, I personally do, but even if we don't, it's really refreshing to see a religion that recognizes that a sin or a transgression is missing the mark. In Hebrew it's very clear, chet is l'achti, to miss the mark. And apparently that's also the meaning of the word sin. I learned that recently. But so much so that in Judaism sin comes along with tshuva. There's a remedy for sin. You do tshuva. Sin is part of life and therefore there's a mechanism called tshuva. And through tshuva not only do we cleanse our plate, or slate I think is the better word, we even ascend. Since there's no one who's never sinned, we all sin, the big question is not if you've sinned or not, it's have you done tshuva, have you repented, have you learned anything from it, have you grown from it, have you made amends. And if you have, then your standing is much higher than anyone who's never ever sinned. That's an incredible statement. Exactly. Sinning essentially is learning by doing. Yes, you have to do things and we don't always do the right thing. The important thing I guess is always to contemplate and think about what you're doing critically. And learn from it and adjust your course. Just like a ship does correcting its course all the time. Right, and correcting the course is tshuva and that's how a ship gets to its destination. So we need to. You said something very deep right now, you said something that we all sin, there's no life without sin. And I want to try and be a little bit even more radical. It's not just if we do, we may err, we may make mistakes. I think every action, even a good action, harms someone. Whenever we do something for a particular cause, we take away energy or funds or whatever from another possible cause. Whenever we take a breath, we breathe in all kinds of organisms in the air that die in our body. So every action we take is at the expense of something. That reminds me of a comment by Woody Allen. I have to mention this. So he said, so mankind faces a choice between the terrible destruction of nuclear war and perishing totally because of environmental warming and poisoning of the air and the ocean. May we choose wisely. Alisha, I want to talk about something important in the Parsha, about choosing a successor. I've just come from meeting a group of young Chinese managers. They're visiting the Technion. I gave them a talk. They're family business people, they're second generation, and they're taking over their dad's or their mom's business. And the idea is to help them out and give them some tips, because succession is a really tricky thing, passing on from one to another. And in this Parsha, Moshe is dealing with choosing a successor. And he knows it's not going to be Gershom and Eleazar, his sons. They're not going to be the ones. And he defines perfectly the qualities of the person who should succeed him. May the Lord God of the spirits of all flesh choose a person over the congregation who will go out before them and come in before them, who will lead them out and bring them in like sheep, like we do with sheep, so that the congregation of the Lord will not be like sheep without a shepherd. And I love this, Alisha, because I seem to recall that at Kibbutz you are a shepherd as well. You are now our spiritual shepherd. You were once a real shepherd. What about this idea of a leader, not as somebody with a big mouth who yells very loudly, but who is a shepherd who knows where his sheep are and looks after every single one of them, including the little lambs? Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I'm delighted you bring this up, because that's our theme this evening. We have our men's club. For those who are listening in America, I'm sure you're pretty used to having a men's club. For us, it's a novelty. We just started our own men's club. We meet once a month to study. It's called Masichet Avot, the chapters of our fathers. We talk about our own fathers, ourselves as fathers, and the fathers of our nation. And the topic we're going to be studying tonight is succession. It's exactly what you just bring up. So I've been studying this this morning. And you're right. It's such a beautiful quote, which you just quoted now. It really is a beautiful quote. Especially, I just want to add to what you said. Moshe was just told a minute before the quote that you quoted that, like, you see the mountain over there, Ha'avarim, ascend this mountain, and you're about to die. Essentially, we're actually at the very end of the Torah right now. The fact that it continues beyond Parashat Pinchas is quite amazing. And it's kind of the answer to what you're referring to. It kind of suggests Moshe could have said, oh, thank God, finally, I've been waiting for this day. Guys, I'm going. Here's this mountain. I'm climbing. I'm out of here. He's been waiting for this moment for such a long time. His brother and sister passed away already two parashat ago, which could have also just been like a week ago, as far as the narrative of the text. But he doesn't. There's a whole few more parashat in Bamidbar, and there's a whole of Deuteronomy. Moshe is kind of saying, okay, okay, okay, great. I'm really looking forward to moving on and resting in peace. But I'm not leaving this people without a shepherd and without a book of laws, which is where the book of Deuteronomy comes in. And he really prepares for his departure, and that's such an incredible, incredible compliment to Moshe. We know of our leaders today. We're not going to mention any names because we don't want to get too political here, who do everything they can in order not to raise a future leadership. Exactly, Alisha, I was thinking about that. The pattern today for political leaders, not just in Israel, but elsewhere very often, is to try and destroy your closest competitors so they don't threaten you. And in management, we teach the first thing you do when you become the head of a company, a CEO, the first thing you do is you take a slip of paper, and you write the names of three people who could replace you, and you put it in the drawer, and then you develop them and train them and teach them so that when you leave, maybe unexpectedly, there will be somebody to take your place. That's the logical thing to do. In politics, it's the opposite. It's sad. Yes, it is. It is very sad. And then, as you said, Moshe is looking for a person who, I mean, every word here is a gem. People need to, I think, photocopy it and put it up on the refrigerator because it's such a beautiful model for leadership. Moshe recognizes that Joshua is a person who has spirit, has ruach, and can really see the other person, and enters and exits, and can really see people around him. We could obviously go much deeper into it, but I think it's really beautiful. Moshe, we know about Moshe. Moshe was a shepherd. In fact, all the great leaders in the Tanakh, not just the Torah, they were all shepherds, and it's not a coincidence. There's a great tension throughout the Tanakh between the farmers and the shepherds. And Cain was the farmer, Abel was the shepherd, and it's an archetypal rivalry between the two. And the Torah does not like the farmers. The Torah loves the shepherds. Moshe did not want to be a shepherd of people. He wanted to. He loved his job. He enjoyed it. And the Midrash is a beautiful Midrash. The kids are always taught in Sunday schools. How did Moshe find the burning bush? He happened to be looking for a lamb that was lost. He had this huge flock of sheep, but one lamb, one lamb managed to lose its way, and he would not return back home before this one last lamb was gathered into its herd. And according to the Midrash, especially the way it's rewritten for children, God looks from above and just sees Moshe looking for this one lamb and says, this is my leader. This is my leader who could see the one, the weakest link in society, and just like with the daughters of Tzrofchad, women were the weak link in society, and he could have so easily just brushed it off and said, oh, come on. You know, you guys know what the rules are. Men inherit. Your dad had only women. Well, that was his fate. So he does not get any land in Israel. But he heard every single voice, and that leadership is trying to make sure that that kind of leadership continues and looks like Yahushua has that quality. But Yahushua has another quality. You mentioned it. He's a fighter, and the children of Israel are about to enter the Holy Land, and a huge battle lies ahead of them. In fact, there's controversy or was controversy in the schools, Elisha. Is it right to teach the book of Yahushua, right, in schools? Because, boy, that is one book full of wars, killing, battles, fighting, and so on. But there's a point here. Moshe's successor, Yahushua, was the right person for that time. They needed a fighter, somebody who would lead them through really difficult battles to secure their place in the Holy Land. This is true of every organization, by the way. Organizations change just like people, and sometimes the given leader at a given point in time is not the right person for the job. And then they have to say, this is not for me. We need someone different like Yahushua. This is a lesson. There's so many things about the Torah that teach you management, not just ethics and morality, but how things should be run, and logically. Yes, yes, yes. And if we look at this transition between Moshe and Yahushua, we can see that when Moshe goes out to battle, the way the battle is won is when he raises his hand. It's like miraculous. God is intervening, and all he has to do is raise his hand. When it comes to Yahushua, the time of miracles is over. It's now us connecting with the soldier within, with the daring warrior within, and that's a tough one. And that's probably the greatest achievement, and some won't like what I say now, I realize that, but I still think it's one of the greatest achievements of the Zionist revolution. It transformed us from a people who went as lamb to the slaughterer, and I have a lot of respect for people who walked the way they walked to their death in the Holocaust. I don't want to in any way, shape, or form put that down. There's tremendous bravery in that, but there's a huge transformation. The narrative, the legacy of the State of Israel is that no one is going to push us around, and no one is going to deny us our right for self-preservation, and we're going to fight for our existence. Of course, but the key point here is that we now have a country. We are a people. Somebody, Arthur Kessler, once said that the Jews were a nation without a shadow because we had no country, and we got a country, and when you have a country, you're organized, rather than just a collection of individuals. Right. But, Elisha, there is something in the Parsha, and in the Haftora as well. I have the honor of reading the Haftora, the Shabbat, which is from the prophet Elijah, and we have to deal with this issue of Pinchas the fanatic, Pinchas the zealot, and this has always troubled me because he is praised for his zealotry, which is rather murderous in the Parsha, and I wanted to find out what do our rabbis, our sages, what do they say about this? And with the help of Rabbi Sacks, who I always turn to, I found out that the rabbis, our sages, do not like the fanatic zealotry of Pinchas or of Eliyahu. They condemn it, and there's a lesson here because, Elisha, today we see quite a lot of religious zealotry. Let me just read this Midrash that Rabbi Sacks came up with. This is from Chazal, from our sages, from the Talmud, and they reinterpret as a Midrash the conversation between Eliyahu and God, and Eliyahu is one fanatic boy. Eliyahu says, the Israelites, the Bnei Israel, have broken God's covenant. He's criticizing, he's attacking, he's a prosecutor. God says, hey, is it then your covenant? It's your breit, and Eliyahu says, they've torn down your altars. God says, were they your altars? And Eliyahu says, they've put your prophets to the sword. God says, hey, you're alive. Eliyahu says, I alone am left, I'm the only one. And then God says, and this is a punchline, instead of hurling accusations against Israel, should you not have pleaded their cause? Instead of being a prosecuting attorney, you should have been a defense attorney, an attorney for the defense. That's the Rabbi's position. Absolutely, absolutely, and we know that for his zealotry, he was fired, and fired literally, figuratively, went up in a storm of fire, and after his event here on Mount Carmel, not too far from where you and I are sitting right now, his act of extremism leads him to actually a deep depression. It's almost a symptom of manic behavior, and he literally crawls, making his way back to Mount Sinai for a reset kind of thing. And there he encounters God in one of the most famous, famous encounters. People don't know that it's Mount Sinai, but it's HaHorev, which is Mount Sinai, where Moshe, where we all received the Torah, and God kind of asks him to come out of the cave and look out, and he shows him like water, fire, thunder, and a storm, and says to him, Eliyahu, God is in a still, silent voice, not in the drama. You're such a drama queen. You're such a drama prophet, but I'm not in that drama. This is your drama, not my drama. And it's really clear from the text that Eliyahu doesn't get it, doesn't get it. When God says, okay, now let's try that again. So, Eliyahu, how are you doing? And he repeats the same things that you just said. You just quoted from Midrash, and God says to himself, okay, I understand, I see. Okay, it's time, Eliyahu, for you to leave. You're going to head back north. You're going to appoint the next prophet. You're going to appoint a few kings in the region, and you're moving on. We don't need zealotry in our midst. This raises a question, Elisha. If you read the prophets, if you read Yishayel, if you read all the prophets, they are prosecuting attorneys. They are calling out B'nai Yisrael for all the various sins that they are committing. Is there not some kind of contradiction here between what I just read, that the prophets should be defenders rather than prosecutors? Yeah, but they are prosecuting in front of the children of Israel, not before God. They're coming to people and saying, guys, you've got to shape up. Evil is rampant here, and your acts are horrific. You've got to repent, etc., etc., or else. What Eliyahu does is, Eliyahu is going to God and complaining to God about the children of Israel. But I really agree with you about the difficulty with Pinchas being, supposedly it seems as if Pinchas is being awarded a prize for his zealotry. But another way of reading it, I think, is that he's not awarded a prize. He's given Brit Shalom. God is saying to him, Pinchas, take your zeal, take your zealotry, and transform it in the service of peace. Become an agent of peace. And almost like I was likening it to a teacher who has a very difficult class. One of the things that a teacher can do, which is an art, it really is an art, is to take the most difficult kid and give him responsibility. You're now in charge of blah, blah, blah. Like take your ADHD and put it into good service. So maybe Pinchas is indeed awarding him with a compliment for your commitment to truth. I appreciate your commitment to truth. That's wonderful. That's great. However, peace is greater than truth. So please take that zeal and from now on you're going to dedicate it for the covenant of peace. And we hope that he does that. Yes, we do. I want to read a passage from Rabbi Sachs about zealotry and fanaticism because it's incredibly relevant. In fact, the Torah is amazingly relevant. We discover that. I discover it every week. There is something that relates directly to what's going on now in the world and in our country. Sachs says, in turbulent times, what times are not turbulent, especially now in Israel, in turbulent times there's an almost overwhelming temptation for religious leaders to be confrontational. Not only must truth be proclaimed, but falsehood must be denounced. Choices must be set out as stark divisions. Not to condemn is to condone. The rabbi who condemned the conversos, this is in the Rambam's time when Jews were forced to convert and there was a controversy, can you do this? I think Rambam may himself have actually, as if he converted. So they say. The rabbi who condemned the conversos had faith in his heart, logic on his side, and Eliyahu as his precedent. But the Midrash on Oimanadee set before us another model. A prophet hears not one imperative, but two. Guidance and compassion, a love of truth and abiding solidarity with those for whom that truth has become eclipsed. To preserve tradition and at the same time defend those others condemned is the difficult necessary task of religious leadership in an unreligious age. Compassion and guidance. I sometimes feel some of our rabbis maybe need a little bit more of that compassion. Yeah, yeah, yes. Just to make sure we're getting our history right. The conversos, the term is actually a little bit later in history. It's a few hundred years after Oimanadee, but during his period there was a mass conversion of Jews to Islam because of Islamic fanaticism and violence. And he indeed, as you said, he gave legitimacy to those who sought refuge through conversion and then returning back to Judaism. Yeah, yes, so important. It's amazing how important our religious leaders are. And I'm not so sure they're always aware of how crucial their voice is in people very often be more attentive to the calling of a religious leader than a political leader or any other kind of leader. And religious leaders have a huge responsibility and most of us, we fail. We fail, we fail with this responsibility. Well, I don't think you do. I don't think you fail at all. And this message that in traditional Judaism, traditional Judaism, does not favor the fanatic zealotry in the Torah of Eliyahu. I think this is a really important message. I feel that we are straying from this. That fanaticism, look what fanaticism did to us in history. Not good. And yet, going back to where we started, we all carry our sins. I mean, even Rabbi Sacks, whom I love dearly, and we're actually studying him this year. That's what we're doing in our Torah studies on Shabbat mornings. We're studying his Torah Shod, and it's really beautiful. He refused to, as the Chief Rabbi of England, he refused to collaborate with non-Orthodox streams. He wouldn't come and teach at Limud, where there were non-Orthodox rabbis present. It's true, but Elisha, in defense of him, he had fierce attacks from the ultra-Orthodox, and they were very strong in Britain at the time. They made him apologize for some of his more enlightened remarks. He was right between a rock and a hard place at the time. Absolutely, which reminds us again, it's about peace and not about truth. Elisha, I have a suggestion for our ending. In your Dresha, you quote a wonderful poem called Each of Us Has a Name by the poetess Zelda. It's related to the idea that each of us has our own sin. Just as we have a name, we have our own sin. Maybe we'll end, and you can read this wonderful poem by Zelda. Okay, it would be a great honor. So, here's the poem. I'm just going to put my glasses on. Each of us has a name. Each of us has a name given by God and given by our parents. Each of us has a name given by our stature and our smile and given by what we wear. Each of us has a name given by the mountains and given by our walls. Each of us has a name given by the stars and given by our neighbors. Each of us has a name given by our sins and given by our longing. Each of us has a name given by our enemies and given by our love. Each of us has a name given by our celebrations and given by our work. Each of us has a name given by the seasons and given by our blindness. Each of us has a name given by the sea and given by our death. Translated by Marcia Falk, a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful interpreter of Judaism. So, Shlomo, thank you so much. Thank you for this inspiration, and thank you all for listening. Your comments are always welcome. Pass on this podcast if you enjoyed it. We look forward to speaking with you next week. Shabbat shalom, Elisha. Shabbat shalom, Shlomo.