From the First Aliyah
The Lord spoke to Moses: "Pinchas son
of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned my anger away from the
Israe.lites, when he manifested such zeal for my sake among
them, so that I did not consume the Israelites in my zeal. Therefore, announce:
'I am going to give to him my covenant of peace. So it will be to him and his
descendants after him a covenant of a permanent priesthood, because he has been
zealous for his God, and has made atonement for the
Israelites.'" (
Numbers 25:10 - 13)
Why wasn't Pinchas anointed with Aaron and his descendents
long before his extraordinary zeal (
Harizut) in avenging God's
name? Why was it necessary for Pinchas to be rewarded with a "covenant of
eternal peace" [the priesthood] rather than having it as his right?
The mystical sources teach that the soul of Pinchas came from the same
soul-source as Cain. Cain killed his brother Able. The Zohar says that
any kohen who murders is disqualified from the priesthood forever, and thus
Pinchas, through Cain, "forfeited" his right for his offspring. Cain
lost the priesthood for Pinchas, and only Pinchas extraordinary zeal earned the
priesthood for himself and his descendents.
How did Pinchas actions heal the damage that Cain's killing created? The name
Cain comes from the same root as
kinyan, meaning "acquisition," as Eve,
Cain's mother, said "I have acquired a man with God." (Genesis 4:1)
In Jewish thought, 'acquisition' is synonymous with 'existence.' We talk of God
"acquiring Heaven and Earth." God's "acquisition" was the
action by which he brought Heaven and Earth into existence.
In Cain's eyes, he was the only acquisition in this world, its only existence.
This is the root of all evil. For there can be no room for the Other/other in a
world which is filled with the self. If the world is filled with the glory of the
self, how can there be another? The inability to see the Other/other is the
root of all idolatry. It is the root of all jealousy, and jealousy ultimately
leads to murder. For the self has no more effective means to remove jealousy
than to remove the source of jealousy the self.
However, the sense of self can have a positive side. For every single person is
obliged to say to himself "the world was created for me." (Sanhedrin
37) In some way, we are supposed to look at the world as though we were the
only
kinyan in it. In the Book of Chronicles it says that "The
heart of King Yehoshofat, (son of David) was raised up in the ways of
God." A heart can be high with ego and evil, or it can be raised up with a
zealousness to serve God.
When Pinchas took it upon himself to avenge the vengeance of God, even though
he was not obliged to do so, he tapped into the positive side of Cain's
unregenerate egocentricity.
For it is only when someone does something that they do not have to do can we
recognize the paradox of the heart that is raised up to serve.
Adapted from an
article by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair based on Shem
Mishmuel (
שם משמואל), a nine-volume collection of
inspirational essays on the Torah delivered by Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain, the
second Sochatchover Rebbe, between the years 1910-1926.
