This week we are forced to confront what is oneof the most difficult and important stories of the wilderness narrative. Thatʼs afancy term for the years spent in the desert, wandering.

 Last week, the Israelite men had taken up withthe Midianite women, worshipping their idol, and having all sorts of crazy carnalrelations. This does not please HaShem and he sets a plague upon the people that kills tensof thousands. Moses is instructed by God and passes on the order to the leaders of thetribes to execute publicly those leading Israel to this abomination.

Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron and the son ofEleazar the high priest is present when the prince of one of the tribes walks through thecamp with a Midianite girl and they go into his tent together for obvious purposes.

Pinchas is enraged and, filled with zeal, takesup a spear and drives them both through killing them both. And immediately, the plague islifted.

This weeks reading begins with God seeming toreward Pinchas out of gratitude for his faithful service. He and his decendants will bepriests in Israelforever.

If there is a more dangerous precedent to befound in scripture, I do not know it. If there is a more troubling message, a clearer invitationto mayhem and bloody fanaticism, I can not think of it. If there is a morecomforting turn of events, I also am hard-pressed to come up with it.

 Here is the problem with this message. Terroristsuse their devotion as pretext for their butchery. Zealotry like that of Pinchas fueledthe Sicarii, the ancient cult of Jewish assassins, and helped fuel the bloody anddisastrous war against Rome.In our day, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by afellow Jew, a would-be Pinchas.

The fundamentalist mind is drawn to Pinchas andwhether they are Muslim, Jew or Christian, they are capable of great evil. Abiblical endorsement of the kind Pinchas receives is something that makes sense in contextof the Bible but taken from that context is bad news. The ancient rabbis werelargely disturbed by this for the same reasons, and they too, wrestled with thelegacy of Pinchas.

 Pinchas’ action put an end to the plague and bykilling one of his peers, a fellow leaderof the Israelites, he was sending a very strongmessage. He saved Israelfrom Godʼs wrath. 24,000 people had just died and chaos wasenveloping the camp. This is undeniable.

 The rabbis seem to give Pinchas a pass because hedid not think, or seek instruction. He saw this as a ‘ticking bomb’situation. Or theysay he was taken over by divine rage and was not acting for his sake, but literallywas an arm of God at that moment, proving how good he would be as a priest.

 But Pinchas is also a very special person--unlessyou find yourself the son of the acting High Priest, Nephew of Moses, surrounded by aplague stricken, fornicating, idol worshipping riot, you are best off taking a time out andletting the appropriate authorities handle things. Zealots, however, rarely embracerestraint, reflection, or due process. They are, above all, results-oriented people. Toa fault.

 They see us publicly desecrating the Sabbath.They see MTV. They know about Lady GaGa and they are outraged! With apologies to ourformer President, They may not hate us for our freedom, but they certainly hateus for how we use our freedom.

In 1996, when I was a student in Jerusalem, the then -chief Sephardi rabbigave a sermon on parashat Pinchas where he comparedreform Jews to the idolatrous, fornicating Zimri, the man Pinchas killed.

 That’s right. Twoyears after Rabin was assassinated, Eliyahu Bakshi Doron calledZimri the "firstReform Jew" and compared the murder to a doctor operating on a sick patient. The murderwas not "a matter of revenge, but this is about the salvation of thepeople of Israel, as when a doctoroperates and cuts out tumors” he suggested. It’s not the firsttime an orthodox rabbi has said something outrageous, and it wasn’t the last and it won’t be.Frankly there’s no love lost between our respective movements. It remains, we arefaced with is the seemingly incontravertable endorsement of extremist behavior bythe Torah. And to our day, the fundamentalist finds inspiration and in turn inspiresextremism.

 How should someone who believes in God, whohonors Torah respond to such public displays of disrespect? If this is the unerring,absolute word of God, how can we not act swiftly and fiercely?

 How can we tolerate seeing such flagrantviolation of God’s law?

 We would do well to respond as did Rav, one ofour greatest sages did. He explained that when Pinchas complained to Moses about whatwas happening, Moses responded “Since God pronounced the sentence, let Godexecute the sentence”.

If you believe so strongly that Godʼs feelingsare hurt by what we do, than first, you have a way overdeveloped sense of self-importance andsecond, God can handle His own business. Remember the Flood? The Tower of Babel? The Plagues? Yeah, God’s got it under control, thanks.

 It is not our role to fight God’s battles forHim. God is more than capable of defending His own honor. Our role is to bring honor to Godthrough our actions as best we can, and police our own behavior. 

Then, there is this: “Heshiv et Hamati”--he hasreturned my violence--. Hamat, a Hebrew word that you might recognize in the nameHamas. Itʼs the same word.

In his violent action, Pinchas turns Godʼs angeraround, forcing not only us but God Himself to confront the consequences of zealotry.Godʼs blessing of “serenity” to Pinchas might be interpreted as a sign that, likeus, God was made a little uncomfortable with the actions Pinchas took. Itwould be best if people didnʼt take the law into their own hands, after all, seems to bethe message.

The early rabbis did a great job of fleshing outthe Torah and explaining to us how seemingly black-and-white pronouncements can infact be given nuance and deeper meaning. That is why we say we have two Torahs:the written one, here, and the Oral Torah, the teachings passed down from generationto generation and that are collected in the Talmud, among other religious works. Werely on both sources to come to decisions about the best way to handle things “Jewishly”.

It’s still comforting to know that sometimes whenwe act out of passion that there are occasions when drastic immediate action must betaken. Pinchas is rewarded,rewarded with a blessing of ʻserenityʼ,of calmness, so that his passion should be tempered, if you’ll pardon the pun.

 Perhaps the secret lies in further exploring Godʼsreward to Pinchas. As a priest, he was somewhat removed from the people, taken outof the world where the profane is allowed to exist, where control is limited, whereone is exposed to reality. Pinchas, in other words, is not a good law enforcement agent,but as an analyst or administrator, heʼs tops. Heʼs just a little too reckless.

 Is Zealotry always wrong? No. But it isexceedingly dangerous. So the best prayer I can offer on the subject is that God should keepall situations far from us that wouldnecessitate such zealotry, and that our innerPinchas might slay only our inner Zimris, and that we have the courage and patience to letGod sort out his own business with our fellow human beings.