Sermon Archives

Prayers for Peace

It is wonderful to be back with you all in shul. My time in Israel was thought provoking and rewarding and I know I will be processing my reactions for many weeks to come. I am so grateful to the community for making it possible for me to spend the past three weeks studying at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and I am very grateful for the care and consideration you showed my family in my absence. I am also so very appreciative of everyone who stepped forward to share words of Torah with the community, and those who helped recruit minyanim and organize the behind-the-scenes details that enable the community to function. 

Last week we learned the shocking news that Moshe would not lead the Israelites into the promised land. This week’s Torah portion is an extended description of the priorities by which our next leader was selected. Who should lead us after Moshe? The obvious answer, according to the Kotzker Rebbe, was Pinhas.

Let’s recall the resume of Pinhas. As the Israelites and Midainites worshiped Baal Pe’or together, Moshe was silent and powerless to stop a punishing plague that quickly spread throughout the camp. Aharon is no longer alive to stand in between the living and the dead, as he had done during earlier episodes. Miriam has died and her protective presence is also absent. Pinhas boldly stepped into this breach, killed the two leaders of this interfaith idolatrous bacchanal and halted the plague. Our parasha opens with Pinhas’s reward, a new and unique Divine blessing:

פִּֽינְחָ֨ס בֶּן־אֶלְעָזָ֜ר בֶּן־אַהֲרֹ֣ן הַכֹּהֵ֗ן הֵשִׁ֤יב אֶת־חֲמָתִי֙ מֵעַ֣ל בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּקַנְא֥וֹ אֶת־קִנְאָתִ֖י בְּתוֹכָ֑ם וְלֹא־כִלִּ֥יתִי אֶת־בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל בְּקִנְאָתִֽי׃ לָכֵ֖ן אֱמֹ֑ר הִנְנִ֨י נֹתֵ֥ן ל֛וֹ אֶת־בְּרִיתִ֖י שָׁלֽוֹם׃ וְהָ֤יְתָה לּוֹ֙ וּלְזַרְע֣וֹ אַחֲרָ֔יו בְּרִ֖ית כְּהֻנַּ֣ת עוֹלָ֑ם תַּ֗חַת אֲשֶׁ֤ר קִנֵּא֙ לֵֽאלֹהָ֔יו וַיְכַפֵּ֖ר עַל־בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

“Phinehas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion. 

Say, therefore, ‘I grant him My covenant of peace.. 

It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.’”

Pinhas seems to be exactly the sort of leader that Moshe is no longer able to be. His decisiveness saved us from a plague. And his violent zealotry is reminiscent of a young Moshe, whose very first act of identification as a Hebrew was an impulsive act of violenc, killing the Egyptian taskmaster to save one of his Israelite brothers. 

Yehoshua, who is selected at the end of the parasha,  is not as obvious a choice. If everyone who sees you, over a period of years,  feels inspired to say, “hazak v’ametz” - be courageous and strong - that is a sign that you are not exactly inspiring others with confidence in your courage and strength. Yehoshua, the protege of Moshe, whom everyone keeps trying to encourage, is selected as the next leader which entails a lifetime of battle and conquest. Pinhas, who responded with decisive and violent zealotry is passed over for the role of Moshe’s successor even as he receives a blessing of peace. 

Why would an act of violent zealotry earn Pinhas a covenant of peace?

Rabbi Naftali Yehuda Berlin, known as Netziv, answers this question by noting that human beings are transformed in negative ways by acts of violence, even in cases where the violence can be justified. 

כי טבע המעשה שעשה פינחס להרוג נפש בידו. היה נותן להשאיר בלב הרגש עז גם אח״כ אבל באשר היה לש״ש מש״ה באה הברכה שיהא תמיד בנחת ובמדת השלום.

“The nature of the act he did — killing a person with his hands — leaves a strong impression of anger even afterwards. However, since he did it for the sake of Heaven he received the blessing that he would always be in peace and serenity.”

Netziv has been misunderstood as suggesting that any act of violence that is undertaken for the sake of heaven will not cause anger or violence to take root in the heart of the one who performs the violent act. This is the opposite of what Netziv is suggesting. Precisely because zealous and angry violence distorts the soul or personality of the one who engages in such actions, God intervened and rewarded Pinhas so that he would be immune from the natural consequences of his actions. 

I return to the opening question: why was Pinhas not chosen as Moshe’s successor? 

Rabbi Shlomo Dov Rosen, the rabbi of Yakar in Jerusalem, my *second* favorite shul in the world, has suggested that Moshe’s encounters with the daughters of Tzelofhad tips the scales in favor of Yehoshua as the next leader. Responding to their complaints with an open mind and the willingness to adjust the halakhah as new information comes to light highlights the need for a leader who had served as Moshe’s attendant and loyal student. Moshe had demanded that God appoint  a successor using the phrase “the God who is the source of all breaths or אֱ-לֹהֵ֥י הָרוּחֹ֖ת in Hebrew. Rashi points out that this unusual term for God, using the plural הָרוּחֹ֖ת is a reference to the diverse ways that human beings see the world. After the daughters of Tzelofhad come forward, Moshe understands that leadership entails balancing different perspectives and different priorities and different experiences of the world. Yehoshua was God’s answer to that demand. 

In a complex world, moral clarity is a necessary but not sufficient leadership capacity. Moral clarity that doesn’t make room for complexity can become zealotry - and it is too dangerous to be led by a zealot, even when he has been blessed by God.

Some of you may remember that we showed the Israeli film “Legends of Destruction” here at Ohev on Tisha b’Av last year. The film is having its official North American debut this year on Tisha b’Av at dozens of locations, so you are all encouraged to attend a screening if you were not able to see the film last year. I had the chance to meet last week with Gidi Dar, the movie’s director and learned about the years of study that he undertook prior to making the film. He read the ancient writer Josephus under the guidance of a leading historian of the Jewish revolt against Rome. And then he immersed himself in the words of the rabbis as they explained the destruction of Jerusalem in an entirely different way - as the inevitable outcome of Jewish moral failure and social divisions. In the words of the Netziv, summarizing this period of history, everyone with a different opinion was considered to be a mortal enemy.

The Jewish army defending Jerusalem had more soldiers than the Roman army that was besieging the city. There was enough food stored in the city to withstand a siege of ten years. Instead of attacking the city, the Romans waited. Within two years, the Jewish defenders of the city had turned against one another, burned their supply of food, and left the city defenseless. As Gidi’s film neared completion in 2021 he found himself seeing more and more similarities between ancient Jerusalem and contemporary Israel. Gidi Dar told me and a group of colleagues last week that had Israel not been attacked this past October, had our enemies waited another six months, perhaps just another six weeks, the internal divisions within Israel could have led to civil war and made it impossible to recover from an external attack.

There are rare moments when the decisive actions of a zealot are needed. Pinhas’s reward for acting at precisely one such moment was a Divine blessing. But that blessing was essentially a retirement present from God to Pinhas. Yehoshua was a different person altogether. 

Pinhas needed a blessing of peace in the immediate aftermath of an act of justified violence. We need to remember our dream of peace, even in the midst of month after month of war.

Massechet Shabbat records a dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and the sages about whether or not wearing a sword as part of a dress uniform can be considered akin to a piece of jewelry, and therefore something that can be worn in public on Shabbat, or whether it cannot be considered any kind of adornment and therefore walking in public with a sword is no different than walking with any other tool and therefore would be forbidden on Shabbat (without an eruv). 

Rabbi Eliezer thinks that a sword is part of a fancy and dignified military uniform and therefore wearing a sword is not a forbidden form of carrying on Shabbat. The sages disagree with Rabbi Eliezer and say that swords, and all other weapons are not adornments, not any kind of jewelry at all but rather something disgraceful. How do they know? What arguments do they bring? The Sages argue that since we know from Isaiah that in yemot haMashiach, we will beat our swords into plowshares, then even today, swords are disgraceful. The messianic vision of the prophets are meant to give us a set of orienting values that can guide our behavior today.

Isaiah tells us that we will do away with swords in yemot haMasiach, therefore, a sword can never be considered jewelry. No matter how fancy or rakish it makes someone look, the need to carry a sword is a sign that we live in an unredeemed world and that is nothing to be proud of. 

Isaiah also tells us that lions and lambs will lie down together in yemot haMashiach which sounds like an utterly transformed and unfamiliar world. This poses a philosophical problem for Maimonides who, you may recall, believes that a perfect God made the world correctly the first time and has no need for miraculous interventions. The world will continue according to its normal and natural course of events, even in yemot haMashiach, Rambam writes. How can carnivorous lions lie down with lambs without thinking of their next meal? Rambam teaches that it is a metaphor. Lions and lambs dwelling together is a symbol for the Jewish people and our enemies living together in peace and tranquility. As hard as it is to imagine, such a thing is not miraculous, but is rather quite possible within the normal course of events in the world that God has made. 

One of the most dramatic differences that I felt while I was in Israel this summer was the refreshing way that advocacy for the hostages, honoring the memory of fallen soldiers, and expressing patriotic love for Israel were all so political. Some supporters of some hostage families gather each Motzei Shabbat outside the prime minister’s home to call upon him to sign the deal that is right now on the table, bring home the hostages, and end the war. Some supporters of some families of fallen soldiers have plastered Israel with bumper stickers featuring the images of their fallen sons with calls to honor their memory by pressing forward until total victory. Some patriotic Israelis have been gathering by the thousands to demand elections and a new government with a  feeling of shock and outrage that the Knesset is, right now, just days away from going on vacation for the next three months. 

I found the “realness” of advocacy there to be so powerful and meaningful. In Israel, our brothers and sisters can connect their passions to policies that can have real impact. But, there is also so much more possibility there for saying the wrong thing, calling for an unwise course of action, or offending others as partisanship turns family into enemies. 

Here I am blessed with powerlessness. Because most of us are not the decision makers we can all carry on, united in our love and grief and concern without having to choose between option A and option B. We can keep praying for peace in a time of war. Peace, the Talmud tell us, is the concluding blessing of every Amidah because it contains all that we could wish for and is the necessary context for all that we need to thrive. ‘Same bed, different dreams” is a Chinese expression that denotes a drifting apart due to a lack of a common vision. “Same tefilot, different kavanah” is a way for a diverse and intelligent community to place its trust in God as it creates a common religious life. Even in Israel, where hard and divisive decisions need to be made,  prayers for peace can allow people of goodwill, who have very different political orientations and who are working, sometimes at cross purposes from one another, to stand beside one another in common prayer. 

Shabbat Shalom