Pinchas: Heritage

The tradition says that Pinchas was elevated to the Priesthood by his zealotry.  Born to Elazar prior to the invention  of the Cohain, PInchas would have been a Levite, but for his elevation -  based upon his merit. He acquires the most prestigious hereditary title in Israel for himself and his progeny. 

My mother told me, many times: be your own Yichus. 

This is how it happens on the Torah.  Inheritance passes to merit over birth order.  Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Judah, Peretz, David, Shlomo  The junior son surpasses his brothers and get the birth rite (contrary to the stated law).  

The real revolution is the granting of some rights of inheritance to women.  What a story!  The daughters of Zelophchad protest the injustice of their exclusion.  The case is brought before Gd,  Gd decides they are right and the inheritance falls to these courageous women. Gd upholds the rights of women in the workplace! This is a great usurpation and the first victory in a struggle that extends to the present.  Now the sister can join the upstart brother...and be her own yichus. 

The parsha ends with the numerical outline for the Musaf offerings .  Every holiday musaf ends the same: the sin offering goat and (don't forget) the daily sacrifice and its libations.  Don't forget the ordinary, the constant, the daily

These sacrifices: daily and holiday, are ultimately all that is left of the heritage.  The land is gone, even the sacrifices are gone.  All that is left is the description, the text, the memory - and the associated membership in the people who remember the rite. 

All that is left is the merit. 

Balak: How the world works

Balak: How the world works

This is a disturbing story.  It takes place behind the scenes.  The king of Moab is afraid of the Hebrews, who are on the march. The Hebrews are conquering their promised land. Although outside the territory of  the promise, the Moabites were worried about these conquistadors. They called for Bilam, prophet  and imprecator for hire.

Now, it is clear that Bilam's powers are granted by the One Gd.  This is  a challenge to the simplistic understanding that Gd can  never be  suborned, that the enemies of Israel  flourish only when Gd is hidden.  But Bilam's route is obstructed.  He requires two requests, the Obstructing Angel ( Satan) stands in his way, Bilam is blind to what the donkey can see ( and talk about).  A great reputation requires perseverance and selective vision.

Then he sets down to business.  He engages the formula: seven bulls and seven rams on seven altars.  That brings forth the message.  But the message is not what he wants.  It is not a lucrative curse, it is a dangerous blessing.  It is a statement of praise ( for  Israel's isolation) or homage to tits strength.  The declamations are terrifying to Bilam's employers, they break the spirit of the fighters, they abet the enemy.

What was the intention of the curse? Probably,  to be part of the war effort, the propaganda machine.  The enemy was to be dehumanized, degraded to  the status of an annoying insect and parasite.  Something to be liquidated.  Those effective curses were to come much later.  Do I hear their echoes now?

Chukath: the Hidden World

Chukath: the Hidden World

 I chose that title because the synonyms are too charged: the Occult, The Mysterious.  But there are elements of these charged ideas in this weeks parsha.  

The parsha opens with the Red Hefer, the production of the purifying substance, the chemiical that  removes the stigma of death from those who have been in contact, or under the same roof, with death. The  parsha details a process of preparation and administration of this wondrous lotion, but we are never too lost in the details to recognize the underlying problem: our opposition to the Divine capital punishment that awaits us all, and all whom we love.  It is the mystery of transience, the ultimate question of justice, the question of meaning and existence  and the soul. 

The parsha starts out by purifying us from these questions.  There is a way to handle the problem: ritual, concentration on the formalism.

In the middle of the parsha we have the epidemic of fatal serpent bites and the cure: viewing the copper snake on the staff, the Caduceus.  This does not look like our modern medicine.  Is it  become magic?  This is another challenge to our understanding of the world. It was a challenge even  in the reign of Hezekiah.  He destroyed the object  and, later,  the Rabbis approved.  

The incomprehensible has many meanings. For the vast majority of people, Einstein's theory of general relativity is out of reach...but there are groups of people who, given enough training and teaching, would come to understand.  Relativity is a non intuitive perspective  on reality: light, gravity, time. There are many  conflicts between a deeper reality and what our senses tell us so strongly. Decisions based upon Big Data  involve denial of understanding how a process works...and those blind decisions are most often true.

Our tradition challenges our world view.  That is the only way to keep our view strong and honest.  If we know that the truth is blocked, we know to look around the obstacle

Korach: Gd's protection

This insurrection of  Korach and his minions:  I see it in the light of the politics of the day.  The problem with populism, the people may like evil leaders, manipulative leaders,  incompetent leaders. The people, the majority, can be guided to accept, like, vote-for absurdities.   Stalin, Mussolini,H.. all popular leaders.  Boris Johnson: the Brexit winner.  Trump: even the absurd can automatically gather 45% of the vote. 

Korach is about the people that Gd loves, those who are called to Gd's special service/  A reward of aristocracy to the courageous.

When I was in Poland, a few weeks ago, I was aristocracy.  I was the son of survivors.  My father was one of the 50 to survive Treblinka ( odds: 1 in 17,5000;  0.000057 ). Does  this not constitute the favored of Gd?  My mother hid in a hole for 2 years and survived to be liberated, while her entire family was murdered. Is that not Divine protection? The Stys famuly, the family that helped my parents, is aristocracy.  I felt the translator's humiliation as I spoke, through that Pole, to these heroes. 

The haftorah presents Samuel. Shmuel is the son of Chana, whose prayers are mistaken for intoxication.  Chana is blessed by Eli, the high priest, in apology for his mistake.  Gd grants Shmuel the gift and burden of prophecy, he is preferred over Eli, the high priest But the people do not want the prophet to be king. and this time, the popular will prevails.  Samuel is a descendant of Korach. ,  

Gd uniquely favors every living person. 

May Gd protect us from the popular.

Shelach: Impossible

Shelach: Impossible

Gd punishes the  Israelites because they don't believe that they will be able to conquer the Promised Land.  They are outnumbered and the  enemy is stronger, and all that may be true, but they should have believed that they would prevail, because otherwise, Gd's promise would not be kept. 

I just returned from Poland.  There I met the children who participated in the rescue of my parents from the vicious Nazis (and their collaborators),  It was impossible for my parents to survive.  Therr enemy was too strong, too organized, too mechanized, too powerful, too cruel,  To survive, they had to live like rodents, in a hole in the ground ( I was in the remnant of the hole).  To survive, people had to risk their lives to help them.   To survive they had to turn to Gd, the master of the impossible, the idea that makes anything , even outrageous wishes, possible

Sometimes, belief is all you've got.  In those circumstances, it is best to believe.  Giving in to your perception of an impossible reality is death... and I am never born. Thinking an event impossible is hubris, it is excessive belief in a model of reality, it is a lack of vision

The haftorah talks about Rachav of Jericho hiding the pair of spies sent by Joshua in the flax.  My parents hid in the haystack on the Stych farm. 

Rachav hid the Israelite spies because she knew that the Israelites would be victorious.  She wanted to be on the winning side.  When the Nazis were systematically exterminating the Jews of Poland, they knew that they had lost the war against the USSR.  They were retreating.  But The Poles did not know how the war would end.  All they knew was that their land would be  subjugated to one side or the other. 

Given enough time, even the most improbable events will always happen ( Black Swan). It can be a grievous error to believe  in the overwhelming  probabilities.  

Fortune favors the brave,  Gd favors the desperate.  And vice versa.