PInchas: inheritance and merit

Pinchas: inheritance and merit

The   theme of  inheritance , tradition  and the transition of office are of the essence in this parsha, Pinchas.  This is preparation for the nest phase, the end of wandering and entry into the Promised Land; passing the baton from the generation of the Exodus to the indefinite future, to people who have only heard of those miracles and will need to integrate their own, lesser, miracles. 

The gift of eternal priesthood given to the the title character, Pinchas is reminiscent of the royal gift of  peerage  to a military or diplomatic hero,  It is a recognition of an extraordinary act which is transmitted through all future generations.  The heritability is an exorbitant award for an extraordinary act.  But there is no guarantee that the future generations will share the qualities that merited this level of reward. 

Being the child of holocaust survivors has some relationship to this title by parentage.  It is a chosen identity and it certainly raises the question  of whether I, or my children, have the qualities of courage, faith, resourcefulness  that my parents had. 

The transmission of leadership, in this case from Moshe to Yehosua, is very different.  Moshe recognizes that a set of skills and qualities need to be replaced.  Moshe appeals to Gd of the spirits (ruchoth).  This could be taken to mean the Gd who recognizes moods.  Depression is called ruach ra, an evil spirit, and a great mood is called Nachath  ruach, a satisfaction of spirit.  Moshe recognized from his own experience, in the incident with the quail (slav)  that depression is an (almost) insurmountable block to leadership,

Gd chooses Yehoshua to be the next leader, not Moshe's son ( who has disappeared from the text long ago) nor his beloved nephew, Eliezer the son of Aaron, who  has a title by legacy and is a key advisor, as the transmitter of the message of Gd.  But the leadership role is not hereditary, it is meritocratic.

The challenge of the daughters of Zelophchad to the inheritance tradition of the time changed inheritance of property from custom to law. The courage of these sisters if reflected in the extra long  long nun, the feminine pleural ending, that emphasizes the femaleness of the request to Gd. Their courage and logic is rewarded with wealth and fame. They transmit their qualities to all the daughters of Israel.

Fortune favors the brave....and their children.