Vigilant about Vigilantism

Well, Rabbi, welcome to another episode of Madlik. We’re in the three weeks, so we’re starting to think about the cause of the destruction of the Temple, the loss of our Commonwealth, and obviously we’re in a very critical moment in the history of the Third Commonwealth now. So, everything is old and new at the same time. There were so many things we could have talked about this week. We have a president, a sitting president, who did a Moses speech. I’ve been to the mountaintop. I think you’re going to talk about that in Shul, but we’re going to talk about Pinchas.

1:41 – AM:

Great. Pinchas is a great topic. We might as well start right at the beginning of the parsha.

1:45 – GS:

So it’s funny that you say we begin at the beginning of the parasha, because, I mean, who am I to criticize? But this parasha is called Pinchas, but you’ve got to go back into last week’s parasha to get the beginning of the story. I don’t know who was in charge of cutting up the parashayot. We have discussed that before. But our parasha only begins…

AM: They didn’t do such a good job…

GS:  Well, they just want us to keep on our toes. So, in Numbers 25.6 it said, Just then a certain Israelite man came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions in the sight of Moses and the whole Israelite community who were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting. When Pinchas, son of Eliezer, son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, and taking a spear in hand, he followed the Israelite man into the bedroom, stabbing both the Israelite man and the Midianite women “while they were fornicating” I added that. The Israelite man and the woman through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was checked. Those who died of the plague numbered 24,000. That is the end of last week’s parasha. This week’s parasha we begin. God spoke to Moses saying, Pinchas, son of Eliezer, son of Aaron the priest, has turned turn back my wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion (zeal) for me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in my passion (zealousness). Say, therefore, I grant him my pact of friendship. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned (zealous) actions for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.” So we have a situation where there is a public display in front of the congregation, in the front of Moses, of an Israelite sinning befarhessia, which means in the open, and they’re all standing there, they’re weeping, Moses’s mouth is agape, and all of a sudden this guy Pinchas, he gets up in in the middle of the congregation, and he takes a spear in his hand. And if you go to Rashi, Rashi following the traditional commentary says, he saw what was being done and he was thereby reminded of the law on this subject. He said to Moses, I have received a tradition from you He who has intercourse with an Aramean heathen woman, zealous people may attack him.

4:40 – GS:

He replied to him, (Moses replied to Pinchas), let him who reads the letter be the agent for executing it. He said you remember the law, you go ahead and carry it out.

5:12 – GS:

An article in thetorah.com quoted in the source sheet Pinchas’ Extrajudicial Execution of Zimri and Cozbi by Dr. David Bernat that a zealot can go ahead in the moment of the crime, in the moment of feeling he has to protect God’s name, that is a halacha l’moshe m’Sinai, and the only reason Pinchas carried it out rather than Moses was because Moses forgot and then granted his pupil the honors since he remembered.” Now, I’m not sure David Bernat reads that into the text that Moses forgot. It’s certainly kind of implied. And as an aside, this is another instance besides that famous Rabbi Akiva story where Moses does not recognize a halakha l’moshe m’sinai. (it’s almost as though the Rabbis had an inside and long standing joke that Moses was unaware of “Laws given to Moses at Sinai….)

5:52 – AM:

So what I would say here is, of course, that it’s not Moses forgot. But Moses is not in a position of leadership anymore after he hit the rock, and therefore it’s the next generation who comes.

6:08 – GS:

I think that’s a wonderful and very timely interpretation, given the week (where Prewsident Biden bowed out of the election campaign for a second term).. And you’re right, you’re going to talk about succession later, but maybe what you’re saying is, Even at this moment, Moses is stepping back and saying, hey, Kamala, you take over from here, so to speak. I love that.

6:28 – AM:

Now, I just want to say one thing we just noticed about Pinchas. Pinchas is not the second generation. Pinchas is the third generation. Pinchas ben El-Azhar, ben Aharon Ha-Kohei. He’s the grandson of Aaron the High Priest. So actually, it’s really striking, because sometimes it skips over to the third generation. You know, transition isn’t always simple. It’s like transition in a business, right? Sometimes it goes to the son, and sometimes the son’s not up to it, so it goes to the grandson. So you see it here, it’s going to the grandson, not the son.

7:06 – GS:

That is fascinating as well. (see also Jacob blessing his grandsons Menashe & Ephraim) So the bottom line is that in the text of the Torah itself, it uses this word vikbikano etkinati.  בְּקַנְא֥וֹ אֶת־קִנְאָתִ֖י

וְהָ֤יְתָה לּוֹ֙ וּלְזַרְע֣וֹ אַחֲרָ֔יו בְּרִ֖ית כְּהֻנַּ֣ת עוֹלָ֑ם תַּ֗חַת אֲשֶׁ֤ר קִנֵּא֙ לֵֽאלֹקָ֔יו

 You have this zealotry for my zealousness, so to speak. The rabbinic dictum is He who is zealous can attack the criminal. קַנָּאִין פּוֹגְעִין בּוֹ

 And literally, as I said in the introduction, the simple meaning of how this text has been taken is this is a space within our legal tradition for extrajudicial activities, for vigilantism, so to speak. And it could have just gathered dust in the drawer, but we see already in the book of Maccabees that when Matthias saw that a fellow Jew, by the way, was giving a sacrifice, a forbidden sacrifice. He gave vent to righteous anger. He ran and he killed him on the altar. At the same time, he killed the king’s officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and he tore down the altar. In Maccabees 1.2.26, thus he burned with zeal for the law just as Pinchas did against Zimri son of Salo. So already in the book of Maccabees that this Pinchas model was taken as an example of when you can take the law into your own hand in a positive way. Very fascinating for a tradition that is so legalistic and values process so much. This is a kind of a very dangerous space.

9:04 – AM:

Very dangerous space. I mean, that’s why this is so striking. So basically, the Torah only addresses situations between Jews and other Jews. Like the Ve’ahavtah l’reyacha k’mocha , you should love your neighbor as yourself. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t like non-Jews, but the Torah addresses other Jews. And here too, the Torah doesn’t talk about fornicating with non-Jews. That’s not addressed by the Torah. So therefore, that’s why there’s room here for Pinchas to do something which isn’t explicitly mentioned.

9:42 – GS:

I mean, I think that’s a fascinating insight. It struck me as interesting that in the case of Matisyahu in the Maccabees, he killed both a (Hellenist) Jew and an official of the Antiochus government. It seems to me, and I think we’re going to see this a little bit in the texts, that actually the ruling had it gone to a court might be different than the ruling of the moment. And that’s why I say this is kind of like you’ll see in our commentaries and our exploration that it’s very important that whoever does this, this zealot, this kinayiee, is truly a kinayee. He has to be in the moment at that time. So, if you go, for instance, to Sanhedrin 82, Rav Chista says, concerning one who comes to consult with the court when he sees a Jewish man engaging in intercourse with a Gentile, the court does not instruct him that he is permitted to kill the transgressor. It was also stated that Rabbi Baruch Hanas said that Rabbi Yochanan says the court does not instruct him that it is permitted to kill. So, what’s fascinating is in a sense, you might be right because what the court is saying is you don’t have the right to do anything at all. But certainly, this is what we call extrajudicial. And it’s fascinating what the Talmud, how it recounts. It always fills in the void of the narrative.

11:42 – GS:

Brother of the father of my father, so there you go, three generations. As Moses was the brother of his grandfather Aaron, did you not teach me this during your descent from Mount Sinai? One who engages in this type of a crime, and Moses said to him, let the one who reads the letter be the agent. Fulfill it. And Shmuel says Pinchas considered the meaning of the verse and he went on and he said, anywhere that there is desecration of the Lord’s name, one does not show respect to the teacher. So now the rabbis are already starting to needle it out and coax out a backstory. That here he is, how dare he come up with a law in front of Moses. In those situations, one need not consult his teacher but must immediately proceed to right the wrong.

12:43 – GS:

Therefore, he took the spear and took immediate action. Rabbi Yitzhak says that, Rabbi Eliezer says, he saw that an angel came down. So it goes on to say that he basically stopped the plague, and that’s in a sense why he’s considered a hero here. The interesting thing is that I found a commentary called Ben Yehoyada, who comes up with a fascinating diyuk, a fascinating kind of (textual analysis) look at the minutiae of the text here, and even though we say it’s a halacha l’moshe m’sinai, And what Ben Yehoyada says is, notice that it says, you taught me. He doesn’t say you taught us. And so what he’s saying is, remember Moses, when you came down from Sinai, you called me Pinchas aside, and you say Pinchas, in a situation like this, this is what you are. You have to do, or maybe what you’re destined to do. But we’re starting to see a sense here that the rabbis are not only saying, if you went to court, you wouldn’t be doing this. Now they’re saying that Moses forgot about it, or as you say, Moses wasn’t willing to adjudicate. They’re saying that it was a law passed down by Moses but maybe only to this Pinchas and maybe you could make the case only for Pinchas or only for this moment. It’s clear and we’re going to see it clearer as we progress that the rabbis were troubled with this and the rabbis were trying to limit it, minimize it, minimize how it could potentially become a template for future action. Before I ask you to comment, let’s just go to the Jerusalem Talmud’s version of this. And it says, again, what did he see? He understood and happened to practice. It was stated not with the agreement of the sages. So the Jerusalem Talmud adds two phrases. It says, שלא כרצון חכמים שֶׁלֹּא כִרְצוֹן חֲכָמִים. וּפִינְחָס שֶׁלֹּא כִרְצוֹן חֲכָמִים

It was stated: not with the agreement of the Sages. [Since in most cases the zealot’s intervention would be first degree murder.] Would Phineas act against the Sages? Rebbi Jehudah bar Pazi said, they wanted to excommunicate him had not the Holy Spirit jumped on him and declared that an eternal covenant of priesthood shall be for him and his descendants after him, etc.

was not with the Blessing was not in accordance what the rabbis would have wanted kind of amazing if you think about it and Pinchas was not the rabbi’s guy. They did not put him on a pedestal. This is radical. Is it not rabbi?

15:17 – AM:

I mean the whole thing is radical Pinchas kills people even though he’s not following a law in the Torah. If that happened today, there would be protests everywhere. Can you imagine? Right? There’s a law and he didn’t follow the law. The Torah doesn’t say anything about fornicating between a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman. And Pinchas took the law into his own hands. We wouldn’t allow that today. So, you understand the fact that the rabbis are troubled by this. It makes total sense to me.

15:52 – GS:

So the Jerusalem Talmud goes even further. If you remember in the pasuk it says, that Pinchas got up from the assembly. The rabbis in the Jerusalem Talmud says,

עָמַד פִּינְחָס מִתּוֹךְ סַנְהֶדְרִין שֶׁלּוֹ

he immediately rose from his court (lit “Sanhedrin”)

so now, instead of having this kind of impulse act of Pinchas, they are drawing out the narrative of what happened as Moses and Pinchas are looking and having this discussion. So initially we considered maybe they were just standing two isolated individuals discussing this. Moses doesn’t remember the law that he brought down. Down, Pinchas does, now all of a sudden, we have a convocation of the Sanhedrin. They’re discussing it in the Sanhedrin and this Pinchas gets up and say, enough with this deliberation and a legal proceeding. I’m going to go out and do what needs to be done. It almost reminds you a little bit of Nachshon and Moses’ kind of praying. These are two impulsive characters, but the ramifications between the two are totally different,

AM: Obviously, going into the Red Sea and killing someone are very different!

17:11 – GS:

The Jerusalem Talmud says that the rabbis were not with him. I mean, that is kind of profound. The theTorah.com article that I quote also has the Talgum Yonatan, who also just translates the verse as saying here, among his Sanhedrin. So if you can imagine, we all of a sudden have this dichotomy. On the one hand, the rabbis say, if you come to a court or Bet Din, which is a modern-day Sanhedrin, we were told you don’t do this.

If you look into Mishneh Torah written by Maimonides and he talks about this law, he says the zealous person can strike the sinners only at the moment of the sin, as is the case with Zimri. If, however, the sinner withdraws even a moment after the sin was committed, he should not be slain. Indeed, if the zealot slays him, he (meaning the zealot) may be executed as a murderer. If the zealous person comes to ask permission from the court to slay him, they (the court) do not instruct him, even if this takes place at the time of the relations. So now he’s getting back to that sense of where the Sanhedrin is meeting. Not only that, writes Maimonides, if the zealous person comes to kill the transgressor and he (the transgressor) withdraws and kills the zealous person, so now we have a similar law coming into effect. If I get attacked, if there’s a Rodeph (pursuer) coming after me, I’m allowed to kill on the spot the person who’s coming to kill me. So, what happens if this zealot, this Pinchas character, attacks the sinner five seconds after the sin has already been committed, it’s not in the moment, or he tries to kill him, and the sinner turns around and kills the zealot? The sinner who kills the zealot is protected under the law of the Rodeph. They are really minimizing this moment, this window of opportunity to carry this law. It almost, Rabbi, smacks of the ben sorer and morer, the rebellious son that the rabbis say it’s so constrained that it’s almost a kind of a paradigm or a pedagogic point than actually happening in real life.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 71a) goes into great detail about this mitzvah but then notes that such a case never happened:

There has never been a stubborn and rebellious son and there will never be one in the future, as it is impossible to fulfill all the requirements that must be met in order to apply this halakha. And why, then, was the passage relating to a stubborn and rebellious son written in the Torah? So that you may expound upon new understandings of the Torah and receive reward for your learning, this being an aspect of the Torah that has only theoretical value.

What’s your thinking about this?

20:08 – AM:

I think you’re right. I think they’re trying to narrow it, but let me say something else. You have a problem here because you have a law that isn’t anyone, right? He takes the law into his own hands. The rabbis don’t like that. So you know what they do? They create a whole set of laws around what Pinchas does. Because that’s the way they deal with situations, is they turn it into law. So, all of a sudden, Pinchas wasn’t just doing something that was outside of a legal system. It was part of the legal system. And what Pinchas did

GS: But the legal system doesn’t allow for it So by limiting it says the legal system allowed this but only this and that’s what that’s what you quoted the venue Oh, yada is saying that Moses taught this Specifically because this is not a rule for everything And the rabbis clearly understood the ramifications and how this could be misused.

21:14 – GS:

The Torah Temima says as following, he says it is impossible to give permission to just any person who has the right to harm such a person because who knows maybe he is doing it with some ulterior motive

אולי הוא עושה זה באיזו פניה צדדית

and saying that he is doing it in the spirit of God’s jealousy, and in the meantime, he is killing a soul that is not obligated to die by the law himself. The ability to misuse this law and to come into court and say, yeah, I just killed this guy because the passion, the zealotry of God came over me. This smacks of covering up a mob hit or covering up a political vendetta. Clearly, it’s a fascinating instance where, and the Yerushalmi said it, they didn’t like Pinchas. They didn’t like this rule. I mean, here you have the rabbis against something that is literally written in the Torah that in the Jerusalem Talmud, they actually say what’s behind their thinking. They just didn’t like it. But everywhere else, they are diminishing it, constraining it, contracting it. Just absolutely fascinating because it shows you … It shows you the power of the rabbis, in a good way. It shows you that they were truly committed to the rule of law, that they were truly committed to applying the law universally, that everybody gets judged the same, and this really cut against their project.

22:46 – AM:

I think that’s absolutely right. This is fascinating. I mean, it’s fascinating to study the Talmud and the Yerushalayim and to see the way they’re struggling and that’s what they’re struggling with. If you have a legal system, for someone to work outside of the legal system is literally a crisis.

23:03 – GS:

It’s also kind of fascinating how they were imagining it, because after you read all of the rabbis, you start to imagine it differently. And you know, I just got back from Europe, and we’re used to seeing paintings of biblical scenes that look like they were painted in Europe (maybe even in Italy with the Pyrenees Mountains in the background), you know? They just assumed. So, you have the Talmud in Sanhedrin 82a …  everybody is focused on how Pinchas got up and he took a sword and he left. It says he had to get up and leave the Beit Midrash because you’re not allowed to have a k’lee neshech, you’re not allowed to have a sword at the Beit Midrash.

ר’ יצחק אמר ר”א ראה שבא מלאך והשחית בעם ויקם מתוך העדה ויקח רומח בידו מיכן שאין נכנסין בכלי זיין לבית המדרש

It is written with regard to Pinehas: “He arose from amidst the assembly and he took a spear in his hand” (Numbers 25:7). From here, where it is written that he took the spear only after he arose from the assembly, it is derived that one does not enter the study hall with a weapon. The assembly in this context is referring to the seat of the Sanhedrin.

So these rabbis are looking at this scene in the desert and they’re assuming that you got the Mir Yeshiva, you got the Slabotka Yeshiva, he gets up from the Beit medrash, and in Midrash Tanchuma, it says, This is, they’re looking at this discussion between Moses and Pinchas. It’s simply that while they were involved in the give and take on the matter

אֶלָּא שֶׁהָיוּ נוֹשְׂאִין וְנוֹתְנִין בַּדָּבָר אִם הוּא חַיָּב מִיתָה אוֹ לָאו.

of whether or not the culprit was liable for death. They recast it in their own terms, in their own eyes, and they were not willing to let it go from the Beit Midrash. They were not willing to let it go from the rule of law in the Sanhedrin. Just so, so fascinating.

24:30 – AM:

Absolutely fascinating. This is great material. Absolutely great material. You know, the phrase that they use is kanayim pogim bo, which is zealots take revenge in this kind of case. It’s a very strong language, but it’s also a very non-legal language, right? That’s not the way you talk about war. If you think about the American legal system, imagine someone telling you, that’s the law. Zealots take control of the situation. You talk about political violence. There was an assassination attempt against Trump. You say, zealots take things into their own hands. That’s crazy. We don’t operate that way. We can’t have a system working that way.

25:14 – GS:

You know, I started by saying we’re in the Three Weeks, and the famous episode that kind of one focuses on when one looks at the birth of Rabbinic Judaism is that moment where they smuggle Yohanan ben Zakkai out of the sieged Jerusalem. And who are they smuggling him out against? They’re smuggling him out against zealots who want us all to either stand together or die together. And what’s coming out of this discussion of Pinchas is not only is it a conflict between extrajudicial and judicial. It’s a conflict between learning, study, intellectual approaches to our laws and our religion, and the zealots are coming out as not only impulsive but anti-intellectual.

26:35 – GS:

Really by interjecting the Sanhedrin, the give-and-take of Talmudic discussion of the Beit Midrash into this discussion is they’re counter-disposing Pinchas on the one hand, the zealot who is not following his mind, He’s not following tradition. He’s not following authority, religious or legal authority. That’s how they’re putting this in contradistinction to each other, and you can even say they did the same treatment for the Maccabees, where they hardly celebrated the military victory, they certainly didn’t celebrate what we read about where Mattisyahu actually killed (Hellenistic) Jews who were not being filial to the tradition. They talked about a vial of oil. You really see something very strong about what the rabbis were doing here and that makes it all the more fascinating.

27:36 – AM:

Absolutely. That’s absolutely right. I mean, you learned from all of these source’s kind of the rabbinic agenda, how important the legal system was, and how afraid they were of doing something outside of that.

27:53 – GS:

So, I want to bring it up to the present. This week, Ben-Gavir went to the Har Habayit. This is a typical way of instigating trouble, of creating friction. It comes right out of the playbook of the zealots. There were certain rabbis, and we’ve discussed this in past episodes, who say you’re not allowed to be there, but it’s this idea of pushing the needle forward. And I came across an article, it’s actually a scholarly rendering, and it’s all about a Yitzchak Feivish Ginsburgh, and he is a Chabad or ex-Chabad rabbi who literally is surrounded by the hill youth, by many Jews who are new to Judaism, Ba’alei Teshuvot, and what he argues in Price Tag is one of the things that he encourages. He has scholarly works that does not regret the fact that many of his followers are Yeshiva drop-outs or newly religiou Jews. Or see it as a glitch, rather it’s an essential part of the program and if you look at the notes, it writes about what he’s saying. He’s trying to almost picture himself as the Hasidic masters like the Baal Shem Tov who attracted the simple Jews and gave them joy and gave them honor. Here he’s taking these disaffected youth. And he’s saying, you don’t need learning. You don’t need to go to the Beit Midrash. That will only cloud your mind. You need to be zealots. You need to go ahead and take revenge when revenge needs to be taken. It is a very scary model, and it’s a model that we have to look at during these weeks carefully than I don’t know, but certainly he is providing it almost as a strategy and a marching order for the masses, not for the individuals. It’s fascinating reading. I encourage you all to look at it.

30:24 – AM:

I would just say that that is fascinating and you see how anti-Rabbinic it is. The rabbis worked so hard to put Pinchas in a Rabbinic legal context. And what Rabbi Ginsburg does is he’s proud of the fact that Pinchas is outside the legal context, and therefore he says that that’s a model for working outside the legal context.

30:53 – GS

Absolutely, absolutely. So it’s a wonderful parasha. Think about it in terms of secession also, and that comes later in the parasha. But in terms of Pinchas, as we enter the three weeks and we look at the current situation in Israel, I think it is very important that that we understand that we Jews have a propensity to have factions, to have zealots, to have those who want to take the Torah and mold it into their vision, and we have to be vigilant. We at Madlik definitely have to be vigilant. The last thing that I’ll end with on a very positive note is that Pinchas, at the end of the day, came from the same tribe as Levi who avenged his sister Dinah’s rape by massacring a whole city). They had this vigilante gene inside of them, and the blessing that they gave in And I think that in a sense, the antidote for what Pinchas did or what he felt compelled to do at that moment was the rabbis go ahead and he gave to Pinchas as the world is conducted only through peace and the Torah in its entirety is in peace if a person comes from the road one greets him with peace likewise in the morning one greets him with peace and at night likewise one greets with peace Shema Yisrael concludes with the blessing spread over us a canopy of peace. It has this most beautiful homage to peace that it gives to Pinchas at the end of the day. And I think that is ultimately what we need to be inspired by and to ensure that the Third Commonwealth stays strong.

AM: That’s beautiful. Thank you so much, Geoffrey. Shabbat shalom to everybody, and we look forward to seeing you next time.

GS: Shabbat shalom.