Pinchas a man of War and
Peace, concepts not in conflict.
In the beginning of Parshat Pinchas, HaShem commands Am Israel to
"harass the Midianites and
smite them" (Bamidbar 25:17). It seems
somewhat odd that we would be commanded to harass them and then to
smite them. Why not just smite
them? What could be the reason for
this double mitzvah? Our sages teach that the first commandment is to
consider Midian an enemy and the
second commandment is to wipe them
out in retaliation for their crimes against us.
Rashi brings down that the word "tzaror" is in
the present tense,
meaning that we must continually harass them; something that we
should always do (like "shamor" or "zachor") and not
just a one time
commandment.
One of the great Jewish scholars of the 20th century says that the
reason for this mitzvah is to
teach us the proper orientation in
dealing with the enemies of Israel; to destroy them and not to "turn
the other cheek" as the
Christians, l'havdeel, teach. One of the
missions of Am Yisrael is to uproot evil from the world in order to
make more room for
Godliness. When the armies of Israel wipe out our
enemies, it is not cruelty but a great kindness and tikun for mankind. It rids the
world
of darkness, thus making it a brighter place. As today, it was
difficult then for Am Yisrael to rise up and irradiate our
enemies
because it is in our nature to be merciful. In order to fulfill
mitzvot of this kind, we often have to temporarily overcome our
own
nature. We learn here that this is the true path to peace. Pinchas
was awarded the Brit Shalom, the Covenant of Peace, not
for
surrendering to the enemy but by destroying him. This is reinforced
not only with the Brit Shalom, but with the mitzvah to
follow
Pinchas's lead and wipe out Midian. Not only were B'nei Yisrael told
that what Pinchas did was correct, but that they must now
follow in
his footsteps and take up arms against the Midianite foe.
The Or HaChaim HaKadosh says that the true purpose of
these
commandments is much deeper than simple revenge. Under Midianite
influence and leadership, a lust for immoral pleasure and
idol
worship arose in sections of our nation. Such desires are difficult
to subdue once they begin. The lust is in constant danger
of
re-emerging. The only way to deal with such a threat is to make the
people understand that what they might see as merely a
tempting
pleasure is in reality a danger to their very existence. They must
see the ideology and culture itself as an enemy. Israel had
to become
so convinced that they had absolutely nothing to learn or gain from
Midian. They had to understand that Midian was immoral and
must be
despised. This is why the Torah calls for a constant spirit of
enmity. Punishing the Midianites was also necessary but did
not
require a constant state of war. It was the ideology and value system
of Midian that we were commanded to constantly wage war
against.
When Adolph Eichman was caught and brought to trial here in Israel,
he wanted to bring the philosophy of Emanuel Kant to his
defense.
Kant's philosophy of "relative authority" claims that there are no
absolute morals and no absolute understandings of right or
wrong.
Eichman intended to show that he was simply a cog in the wheel of a
society that dictated the killing of Jews to be a moral
action. The
court refused the request and Kant's philosophy was not used in
Eichman's defense. Dr.Israel Eldad zt"l claimed that the
court was
mistaken in this ruling. He said that it was not enough to try one
man for the atrocities committed against our people, but
that we must
prosecute the philosophy of Kant as an ideological enemy to our
nation.
Today we argue among ourselves about how
to deal with an Arab threat
that is constantly claiming the lives of our people. It is difficult
to come to the proper conclusion while
limiting ourselves to what is
considered moral according to modern western values. In fact, it is
these foreign values that we must war
against in order to throw off
the yoke of the gentile culture and replace it with true Torah
morality. Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook
zt"l says in the second
section of Orot that Israel must destroy the hypocritical falsehoods
of Christian morality in order to replace it
with the Light of God's
truth. May it be soon in our days.
With love of Israel,
Yehuda HaKohen
