Rabbi Janine's Messages

Dear Community, 

Last week we read in our Torah Parshat Balak and how the Israelites are punished by Gd with a plague because of foreign worship. As it says, 

Thus Israel attached itself to Baal-peor, and יהוה was incensed with Israel. (Numbers 25:3)

At the very end of Parshat Balak, Gd orders Moses to have the community leaders who committed idol worship killed. Immediately, Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron the Priest, sees a fellow Israelite man about to have sexual relations with a Midianite woman and he stabs the two people to death.

In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Pinchas, named after the “avenger” himself, the Torah explains that because of Pinchas act, Gd ends the plague against the Israelites. Pinchas act is considered righteous, and Pinchas is rewarded. 

Let's take a step back and talk about foreign worship. Who is Ba'al Peor and why is it bad? According to Torah, Baal Peor בַ֣עַל פְּע֑וֹר
was a god worshiped by the Midianites. As you may remember from the ten commandments, worshipping any Gd besides our Gd (יהוה ) is a tremendous sin.
According to Jastrow, an invaluable dictionary  of Aramaic and Hebrew words found in the Talmud and Midrash, the verb פִּעוּר
which means "uncovering one’s self most likely in obscene worship of the idol Peor,” comes from this deity’s name.

It is clear that Torah considers this form of worship abhorrent and licentious. But there is a problem here. What about the unnamed Midianite woman? Did she deserve to be killed? I think not. After all, she was only engaging in the worship of her own deity. She was not a part of the covenant with יהוה at Mt. Sinai and therefore she is not legally obligated to worship or behave like the Israelites. In addition, Gd commands Moses to have all the Israelites engaged in idol worship killed, not to kill the Midianites. Is Pinchas’ violent act still righteous if an innocent person was also killed? 

We know that the Midianite woman is considered by Torah as unimportant or disposable because her death is allowed and she remains unnamed. There are many unnamed women in our Torah, and the Midianite woman is just one in a sea of people who aren’t given a real identity. Even the Israelite transgressor, the man Pinchas kills, is named. His name, by the way, is Zimri, son of Salu. 

Unsurprisingly, few Torah commentaries even mention the murder of the Midianite woman, and in the rare moments when they do it's usually to paint the Midianite woman in a scandalous light. Our ancient Torah commentators have long blamed foreign women for why the Israelite men can’t stay true to the covenant. It’s easy to see how the Biblical treatment of even this unnamed Midianite woman is connected to the history of the Jewish community’s fear of intermarriage. (Thankfully in our Reconstructionist community we embrace relationships of all kinds and support families who wish to be involved in the Jewish community, regardless if both adults are Jewish.) 

It’s always tempting to blame “the other,” to paint their worship as vile because it is different from our own. It’s especially easy when our Torah and centuries of commentary also support this view. This xenophobia was culturally acceptable for our ancestors in Biblical times and for a long time afterwards. But today it feels important to speak up where the Torah appears to remain silent. When people are treated as disposable, as casualties of a “just” act of violence, we lose a piece of ourselves. No matter our disregard or mistrust for the other, each human being deserves to live and they deserve to have a name. 

Shabbat Shalom, 

Rabbi Janine Jankovitz