Matos: 5786 - The weekly insight for the Shabbos table | Parshas Pinchas

00:01 The weekly parsha: “Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aharon the Kohen, turned My wrath away from the Children of Israel by being zealous for Me among them, so that I did not destroy the Children of Israel in My zeal.” Rashi says here that there is an apparent question: At the end of the previous parsha, the Torah already gives Pinchas’s lineage. Why does the Torah repeat it now—“Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aharon the Kohen”? Rashi explains that the tribes were disparaging him: “Have you seen this grandson of Puti, whose maternal grandfather fattened calves for idol worship, and who killed a leader of a tribe of Israel?” The Rebbe asks several questions about this. First of all, was what Pinchas did right or wrong? What difference does it make what his grandfather did? If Pinchas was right, why disparage him? And if he wasn’t, then he was a murderer, which is far more serious. What is this all about? To understand it, what is zeal, anyway? “By being zealous for Me.” Zeal is a response deep within the soul. When a person sees or encounters something that touches him deeply, zeal comes to the fore. The matter touches the very essence of his soul. That is genuine zeal. And the Torah testifies that what Pinchas did came from genuine zeal. The tribes did not dispute the act itself. They knew that the act itself was in accordance with the law: the halachah is that zealots may strike him down. But they claimed that Pinchas was not a genuine zealot. This did not come from genuine zeal, but from some negative trait he had inherited from his grandfather, and that was why he did it. So the Torah testifies that Pinchas was “son of Elazar, son of Aharon the Kohen”: in his character, he was the grandson of Aharon the Kohen, who loved his fellow Jews and loved all people. What he did, this act of zeal, truly

02:18 was genuine zeal, born of the fact that the matter touched the very essence of his soul. That is genuine zeal. There is a saying from my grandfather, the rabbi of Jerusalem, that is very true. He once said, “There is no such thing as a philosophy of zealotry.” Zeal is not a philosophy; it is a response to a particular situation. But there is no such thing as a person whose philosophy, whose whole approach, is to be a zealot. When something touches the very essence of the soul, a person responds with zeal. But there is no philosophy of zealotry. In any case, it is also written, “For a tzaddik to punish is not good.” When a tzaddik punishes someone, that too is not a good or proper thing. The Frierdiker Rebbe explained that before Parshas Pinchas come Parshas Chukas and Balak, which are sometimes read separately and sometimes together. After Parshas Pinchas come Matos and Masei, which are also sometimes read separately and sometimes together. Pinchas is never joined with another parsha. So before it are two parshiyos that can be joined, and after it are two parshiyos that can be joined. Why isn’t Pinchas joined with any other parsha? The Frierdiker Rebbe said: Because he stabs; he’s a prickly person. Pinchas is a “shtechel,” as they say in Yiddish. Because he pricks, it’s hard to join him with anyone. That is a very pointed remark. Someone once asked the Rebbe whether the Rebbe was upset with him over something he had done. I don’t know exactly what it was about, but he wrote to ask the Rebbe if the Rebbe was upset with him. The Rebbe answered that he had never been upset with anyone, with any person. He had never been upset, so certainly, G-d forbid, he was not upset with him. Once, during Sukkos, the Rebbe would make his esrog and four species available so that people could make the blessing over them. There was a very chassidisher, elderly Jew who wanted to make the blessing over the four species

04:30 belonging to the Rebbe. When they handed him the esrog, it fell from his hands and became invalid. A long line of hundreds of people was waiting to make the blessing over the Rebbe’s four species, but the esrog was invalid. There was no choice. Reb Meir Harlig was in charge of distributing the four species, so he went to the Rebbe’s secretary, Reb Leibel Groner, and asked him to request another esrog from the Rebbe. People were waiting and wanted to make the blessing. Reb Leibel Groner told him, “You’re responsible for this. You go in to the Rebbe and ask.” In short, he went in, knocked—the Rebbe was in his sukkah—and told the Rebbe that the esrog had become invalid and they needed another one. The Rebbe immediately told him, “Don’t tell me who was holding it when it became invalid, or who did it.” The Rebbe did not want to know who had dropped it or why it had happened. When the Frierdiker Rebbe, Rebbe Rayatz, assumed the leadership, his request was that everything be conducted with kindness and mercy. Yes. How much we need to learn from this sicha! We have to be careful, to beware of zealotry, because we don’t know where it comes from. Is it genuine zeal arising from the essence of the soul, or is it zeal driven by other, secondary motives? That is why we have to be so careful about it. And that great zealot who was the rabbi of Jerusalem once explained a verse in Parshas Haazinu. The verse says: “Hashem saw and spurned, because of the anger caused by His sons and daughters. And He said: I will hide My face from them, for they are a generation of reversals.” The simple meaning is that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu sees that the Children of Israel are not following the right path, it arouses anger, and the hiding of His face is the cause of exile and all the troubles the Children of Israel have endured. “And He said: I will hide My face

06:52 from them”—he explained this a little differently. He said: “Hashem saw and spurned, because of the anger caused by His sons and daughters”—they are not following the path of the Torah. “And He said”—Hakadosh Boruch Hu says—“I will hide My face from them.” I’ll pretend, as we say in Yiddish, that I don’t see; “I will hide My face from them.” Why? “For they are a generation of reversals”: their children and grandchildren will come along afterward and do exactly the opposite of their parents. They will be much more careful about Torah and mitzvos. So right now they are straying from the path of the Torah, but I will pretend not to see. That was the great zealot—and it also reinforces the point that zealotry is not a philosophy. And to conclude, I heard something just recently that is very true. Rabbi Shaul Alter, the head of the Ger yeshiva, spoke out against demonstrations and blocking roads. He said, drawing on the weekly parsha, “By being zealous for Me among them.” What does “among them” mean? Direct your zeal toward yourself, not toward other people. Blocking roads and bothering other people is not zeal. That is what he learned from “by being zealous for Me among them.” If you are zealous, be zealous about your own conduct, not other people’s. Especially now, as we stand in Bein Hametzarim, we need to be so careful about zealotry. Instead, everything should be done with Ahavas Yisroel, and through Ahavas Yisroel, with Hashem’s help, we will merit the true and complete Geulah.