Dear Friends,
Reform Jews should be run-in with a spear, claimed the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Yes - that is correct! A number of years ago, an Orthodox Chief Rabbi used a vignette in this week’s Torah portion to excoriate Reform Jews, comparing us to the victim of a stabbing execution in the Torah.
Here is the Torah story [Numbers 25:1-9]. At the end of this week’s parashah, we read that the Israelites committed harlotry with daughters of Moab, sacrificed to their gods and ate forbidden foods. Enraged, God set a plague upon the Israelites. Then, an Israelite named Zimri, and his foreign woman appeared. A zealous Israelite priest called Pinchas took his spear and slew the two in one thrust. Thereafter, the plague was abated, but not until thousands had died.
A fanciful tale? Yes. But, Pinchas has been elevated to heroic stature by our Tradition, and is the model of the righteous zealot, much like the Maccabees in their age, and other zealots, today.
Thus, a number of summers ago when the Chief Rabbi used this story to publicly vilify Reform Jews, it stirred his Orthodox followers, and troubled everyone else. He charged that Reform Jews were akin to Israelites who dallied with foreign women, committed idolatry and ate treif, and we deserved death on religious grounds, paralleling the Pinchas and Zimri story.
It is not only in Israel, or in Islamic states that religious zealotry finds fervor. Such is the vitriol and dangerous rhetoric of self-righteous zealotry in our own nation. We’ve seen this righteous zealotry escalating year after year in America – with gun violence, marching in streets in Charlottesville, hateful speech, and even the insurrection at the Capitol last year.
How tragically incongruent that Torah could be hijacked by a narrow theo-polemicist. Yet, such is the history of religious triumphalism over the millennia, and today. Instead of lionizing Pinchas, we should be condemning him and all those who follow his behavior. Even those who simplistically claim that God seemingly condoned Pinchas’ behavior, must be challenged on the greater grounds of rejecting gratuitous violence. After all, the sages taught, “Seek peace and pursue peace,” (Pirke Avot) the very text which we had commissioned earlier this year to honor our own Jim Blanton.
There is no place for zealotry in a civilized world.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn.
Reform Jews should be run-in with a spear, claimed the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Yes - that is correct! A number of years ago, an Orthodox Chief Rabbi used a vignette in this week’s Torah portion to excoriate Reform Jews, comparing us to the victim of a stabbing execution in the Torah.
Here is the Torah story [Numbers 25:1-9]. At the end of this week’s parashah, we read that the Israelites committed harlotry with daughters of Moab, sacrificed to their gods and ate forbidden foods. Enraged, God set a plague upon the Israelites. Then, an Israelite named Zimri, and his foreign woman appeared. A zealous Israelite priest called Pinchas took his spear and slew the two in one thrust. Thereafter, the plague was abated, but not until thousands had died.
A fanciful tale? Yes. But, Pinchas has been elevated to heroic stature by our Tradition, and is the model of the righteous zealot, much like the Maccabees in their age, and other zealots, today.
Thus, a number of summers ago when the Chief Rabbi used this story to publicly vilify Reform Jews, it stirred his Orthodox followers, and troubled everyone else. He charged that Reform Jews were akin to Israelites who dallied with foreign women, committed idolatry and ate treif, and we deserved death on religious grounds, paralleling the Pinchas and Zimri story.
It is not only in Israel, or in Islamic states that religious zealotry finds fervor. Such is the vitriol and dangerous rhetoric of self-righteous zealotry in our own nation. We’ve seen this righteous zealotry escalating year after year in America – with gun violence, marching in streets in Charlottesville, hateful speech, and even the insurrection at the Capitol last year.
How tragically incongruent that Torah could be hijacked by a narrow theo-polemicist. Yet, such is the history of religious triumphalism over the millennia, and today. Instead of lionizing Pinchas, we should be condemning him and all those who follow his behavior. Even those who simplistically claim that God seemingly condoned Pinchas’ behavior, must be challenged on the greater grounds of rejecting gratuitous violence. After all, the sages taught, “Seek peace and pursue peace,” (Pirke Avot) the very text which we had commissioned earlier this year to honor our own Jim Blanton.
There is no place for zealotry in a civilized world.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn.