Pinchas: Patience

In this week’s parashah, we see a new census of the people, with some interesting interjections. For one, Datan and Aviram are mentioned by name, although they are not counted in the census, as they and their families are all dead. Korach is also mentioned, and we are explicitly told that his descendants do not die. This lends further credence to our statements for parshat Korach—that Korach’s argument is idealistic and has a significant positive component; it just comes prematurely.

Korach’s argument[1]—that all of Israel is holy, that all are equal, and that hierarchical structures within the people are inappropriate—is an appropriate argument for Messianic times, and compelling long before then. Shmuel—said by the midrash to be a descendant of Korach—argues many generations later against the Jewish people having a king, again prematurely.

The parashah starts in the middle of the story of Pinchas, who makes a snap decision about an issue by looking to his heart rather than to the Torah; he does not wait to get an order, and there is nothing in the plain text suggesting that he consulted first on whether such an act would be halachically permissible. He simply does it. And the Torah may imply that it is precisely a person who cares about Torah but also is able to follow his heart who is complete—שלם—and therefore eligible for a ברית שלום.

The parashah also includes the episode of the daughters of Tzelafchad, who, having already learnt the rules of the division of the land, say, effectively, This is not fair. These rules cause our father’s name to disappear.” This again implies not a blind following of the Torah, but looking to one’s heart to see if what is under discussion feels fair, and, if it does not, saying, in effect, this cannot be the correct conclusion.” And in doing so, they join our tradition: Avraham argues when God says He would destroy Sodom, and Moshe argues when God says He will destroy the people and make a new people from him.

We feel that this discussion should, in fact, bring back the question: what is so wrong with Korach? If his words were purely inflammatory, he should have faced the same fate as Datan and Aviram, and our parashah reminds us that he does not. He too exhibits idealism and speaks of what feels right to him. Why is he treated so differently from Pinchas and the daughters of Tzelafchad?

In fact, also in our parashah, the first steps are taken toward Korach’s ideal. God tells Moshe that he will need to go look at the land and then die. And Moshe responds as a man of his generation, calling the people of Israel sheep, and asking God to appoint a new leader. The new leader who is appointed seems very natural to us because we have grown up knowing who it will be; but had we seen only what had just happened with Aharon, it would have been much more natural to expect one of Moshe’s children to be appointed. Instead, the appointment is not even from the tribe of Levi. This split away of political power to Ephraim, while religious leadership remains with Levi, is the beginning of the realization of Korach’s vision, and to this day this division of power manifests in various ways within our people.

To this day, we have leaders of various sorts. As we have mentioned on various occasions before, the situation is changing more and more rapidly. No leader could command the kind of respect today that Moshe or King David once commanded; the people are different today, and so are the leaders. Within the last century, attitudes have moved sharply away from the veneration of centralized leadership, and while we see various incredibly complicated fluctuations over the years—just look at the Israeli supreme court—the general trend on a historically large scale is inexorably toward less leadership and more equality.

Pinchas deals quickly with an emergency in a way that nobody recommends seeking to repeat. The daughters of Tzelafchad request a clarification to an established rule, and the nation is ready for that clarification at the time when it is requested. Korach’s vision, on the other hand, is a sweeping change in the organization of the Jewish people; his ideas are in fact Messianic, and 3,333 years later, we are still not ready to implement them in the way that he articulates.

After the uprising of Korach, the Torah continues to contrast him with Datan and Aviram to show that his drive is positive. But even with positive drives, we must pay attention to the times; and while it is good to articulate ideas that are ahead of their time, expecting their immediate implementation, and staging uprisings to achieve such immediate implementation, we risk being swallowed by the ground.

When discussing parshat Vayikra, we mentioned the possibility that the world will become vegetarian with time. We talked about this specifically with regard to artificial meat being developed; what we never, ever advocated or condoned was forcing people to become vegetarian now, in order to speed things up and achieve justice.” Similarly, and just like it would be counterproductive to try to force a secular Jew to live a frum lifestyle, it is with great patience that we must work toward Israel turning into a Torah government; move too quickly and too forcefully, and the backlash would be deeply ugly. In America, the prospect of gutting the administrative state overnight may sound attractive, but in reality, it would take a very long time to allow it to wither away with the appropriate public opprobrium. And of course, per Korach, the same applies to the picture of Jews without a leader, each one familiar with Torah, making his own decisions. (A similar vision is expressed in Yirmiyahu, 11:33.) It is a beautiful vision; but forcing its implementation immediately, not to mention in Korach’s time, would achieve nothing good.

In the second paragraph of the Shema, God does not just say that He will bring us rain, but He says that He will bring it בעיתו—at its right time. Rain at the right time is a great blessing; rain at the wrong time is a great curse. When we say those words, let us remember that our ideas can be much like rain in that sense.

[1] Many commentaries claim that Korach’s argument is disingenuous—that it is cynical demagoguery by a Levite who wants more power for himself—but we judge his argument on its merits.