Pinhas: Can we rely on intuition?

Pinhas

Our parsha opens with the second half of a pretty shocking episode which began last week. When Balak was unsuccessful at getting Balak to curse the Jews, he resorted to the subtle tactic of sending in the women. Thousands of Jews were seduced by the idolatrous Midianite women. One person in particular, Zimri, committed his sin in public with Cosbi. While almost everyone is standing around weeping, not knowing what to do, Pinhas acts decisively, killing them both with a spear. For this, he and his descendants are given the priesthood, described as brit shalom, a covenant of peace.
The episode is rather shocking. Are we supposed to be such extremists that we would kill someone as a religious act? We are all too familiar with religious extremism, the cruisades, in which marauding groups of Christians periodically slaughtered m,ass numbers of Jews repeatedly; muslim extremism such as the Taliban, and before them the Almohades who drove the Jews out of Spain in the medieval era. Fortunately, such extremism has been rare in the Jewish community; Baruch Goldstein’s purim rampage is the only example I can think of of a murderous rampage. None of these are positive examples.
The Mishnah actually codifies Pinhas’ actions as halacha:
Sanh 81b:
IF ONE STEALS THE KISWAH,23 [a temple vessel] OR CURSES BY ENCHANTMENT, OR COHABITS WITH A SYRIAN [i.er. idolatrous] WOMAN, zealots may strike him (hakenaim pogim bo) IF A PRIEST PERFORMED THE TEMPLE SERVICE WHILST UNCLEAN, HIS BROTHER PRIESTS DO NOT CHARGE HIM THEREWITH AT BETH DIN, BUT THE YOUNG PRIESTS TAKE HIM OUT OF THE TEMPLE COURT AND SPLIT HIS SKULL WITH CLUBS. A LAYMAN WHO PERFORMED THE SERVICE IN THE TEMPLE, R. AKIBA SAID: HE IS STRANGLED; THE SAGES SAY: [HIS DEATH IS] AT THE HANDS OF HEAVEN.
Note that this law that “zealots may strike him” only apply to these three situations. The Talmud says that this law is not based on any verse in the Torah, but rather was a tradition handed to Moses at Sinai. According to the Talmud, Moses had taught this halacha, but when the Jews saw Zimri do what he did, they were all so shocked that they forgot the halacha, and just stood there and cried. Pinhas was the only one who remembered the halacha, which was why he was the one who took action.
According to the Talmud, the zealot is not executing a court judgment—he is not an agent of God. the punishment for public intercourse with an idolatress is caret, death at the hands of hyeaven. If the couple was tried in a court, there is no punishment. The zealot is someone who is carrying out the divine decree. They are even risking their lives doing it: if Zimri had defended himself and killed Pinhas, he would have been innocent of murder. It is someone so inflamed that they risk their own lives to defend God’s honor. He is a direct agent of God.
So this is an even more problematic thought, that a human can be an agent of God’s wrath. In the extremely violent film Pulp Fiction, before violently murdering his victims, one of the main characters quotes the following passage from Ezekiel:
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.
Here’s what he says about it:
I never gave much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was some cold-blooded *** to say to a **** before I popped a cap in his ***.
In the course of the movie he does come to question himself, but the point is that it is very dangerous for any human to claim to be the agent of God’s wrath on earth.
Fortunately for us, the Talmud and codes raise a number of limitations. First of all, this law only applies to the specific sins listed in the Mishnah. The intercourse with the idolatress must be committed in public, making it a public desecration of God’s name. The big issue with Zimri and Cosbi was not just their individual act, but the way it flagrantly disregarded the divine instructions. This situation –public relations with an idolatress- doesn’t happen all that often. Secondly, the zealot’s action must be completely intuitive. If the zealot asks a court whether they can do it, the court cannot tell them to do it. Third, the zealot must warn the couple verbally. Fourth, the zealot must kill them during the act.
A few more conditions: According to the Mei Shiloach, a Chassidic rebbe, the zealot must himself be completely clean of this sin himself. Too often, zealousness arises out of defensiveness—I feel bad about my own faults, or don’t want to think about my own weaknesses, so I jump on other peoples’ faults. Or people feel ashamed of their origins, or just want to feel like they are superior, so they become holier than thou. So the Mei shiloah says that I can’t trust my intuition toward zealousness unless I know that I am not only innocent of this sin, but have cleaned my soul of any inclination toward this sin. This is a pretty high bar which makes this halacha something pretty much impossible.
Zelig Pliskin, in “Love your neighbor,” also adds the condition that one must be truly an ohev yisrael, someone who loves their fellow Jew. Pinhas knew he was acting purely for God’s honor, and not out of any destructive or violent or hateful inclination. He murdered someone he otherwise loved. The Torah reassures us, with Pinhas, that his intentions were in fact pure. In 25:12, God says that Pinhas “kino et kinati”—he was zealous for my zealousness. He channeled God’s zealousness, without any mixture of his own personal agenda.
Rabbi Hayyim of Brisk taught that “both the owner of the hosue and the cat want to destroy mice; the real difference lies in their motives. The owner wants to be rid of them, but the cat wants to attack them. One must sincerely not want the misdeeds. One should not use the misdeed as an opportunity to engage in protesting.” Extremists who murder aren’t truly passionate about serving God; they are finding an excuse for entertaining their own violent yetzer. A terrific example of this is in the movie “the kite runner,” depicting a taliban leader who was a murderer and rapist. Extremism can be a way for people to make their evil inclinations appear kosher.
Many people in the Jewish community take a less extreme attitude, certainly not killing, but protesting other peoples’ lack of observance or personal weaknesses. These rules about zealousness teach us that we need to be very careful about our motives. It is too easy to use religion as a tool for self-aggrandizement, to be like the cat who loves to attack the mice, to feel good about criticizing others. Criticising other jewish groups is a terrific jewish past-time. It is a very easy way to feel good about oneself. This is saying that if you’re going to criticize, you must first love all your fellow Jews, and make sure you are just trying to get rid of their misdeeds, and not using the opportunity to build yourself up by attacking others.
If you look at the siddur, in the amida on page 85, the prayer for knowledge speaks of several types of knowledge: “havinenu me-itcha deah, binah, vehaskel. The Ari and some Sephardic texts emend this to follow the order of Ex 35:31, hochmah, binah, u’deah—reversing the order, and switching haskel for hohma. Hohmah (haskel in our siddur) is intuition, a single unified thought, not developed in any detail, a flash of insight. Binah is breaking an idea down, analyzing, thinking through implications. The Divine thought process which initiated the world started out as a Hohma intuition, and this intuitive energy was broken down, analyzed, developed as Binah. The impulsive energy of Hohmah was united with the cautious, analytic style of Binah to become Da’at. Da’at is the capacity to wed cautiousness and thoughtful reasoning with intuition.
Pinhas acted entirely out of Hohmah, impulsively, not analyzing his actions. He was completely lost in serving God, and never considered the possibility that Zimri could kill him. He completely trusted his intuition, his Hochmah.
He could do so, however, only because he was entirely pure, he embodied the love of his fellow Jew. In Pirke Avot, we read to “aseh ritzono ritzonha”—make His will your own. Pinhas emptied himself of any personal motivation; His zealousness was a channel for of God’s zealousness, with no mixture of his own will.
Such a person can trust his intuition. The rest of us, for sure, should value our intuition. The Baal shem tov says that when we get an intuitive thought to serve god in a particular way, it is prophecy, and we need to follow it. However, we need to balance our intuition, our hohmah, with thoughtfulness, with binah, taking the time to consider our motives, and to consider whether we are really helping God’s honor.
May we all merit hearing this prophetic voice emerging from our soul, this intuitive thought leading us to passionately serve God, to live our lives passionately. But may we also exercise great caution, balancing intuition with thoughtfulness, questioning our motives, and making sure that our impulse to holiness stems from a love of our fellow jew and human being.