Hear Our Voice

In the final verses of last week’s Torah portion, Balak, the Torah retells the story of Pinchas, a biblical figure who takes up arms and acts as a vigilante on behalf of Moses and God. Some of the Israelite men had been, according to the text, "whoring” with Moabite women, in a cultic worship of the Canaanite god, Baal-peor.  God instructs Moses to instruct the tribal chiefs to gather those men and slay them as punishment.  Just at this moment, an Israelite man takes a Moabite woman into his tent, and Pinchas impales them both with his spear. At that moment, a plague that had been raging amongst the Israelites, abates.  Parashat Balak concludes there, and just as this week’s portion, Parashat Pinchas, opens, we read this:

“Pinchas, son of Eleazar son of Aharon the priest, has turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion. Say, therefore, ‘I grant him My pact of friendship (B’rit Shalom).” 

Now sit with that for a moment. It feels awful. That firstly God would command the slaying of men for “harlotry,”: even if it, or even more so because, God felt threatened by their expressed affinity for another god? And secondly, that God would reward a vigilante act, granting him and his descendants, a special berit shalom, a covenant of peace?  

Yes, it doesn’t feel like the God we seek to worship, or connect to, or learn from.  And yes, it is possible to decontextualize our higher notions of godliness, and perhaps explain it away.  But the text remains and for centuries, Jews have read this text, often times squirming in their seats.  I recently learned that there have been quite a few examples of Jewish leaders and laity simply ignoring this parshah, altogether.  Not showing up to hear the text, and even, some leaving the sanctuary while this section is chanted from the Torah!

And this discomfort has roots that go way back.  As early as the third century, the Talmud makes clear that the vav in this instance should be written in the style of k’tiyah, meaning “puny,” to at least indicate that nobody feels good about this “determination of holiness,” even if it is from God. But a puny vav looks very much like the letter yud, leading some to render the word to mean, “whole, complete,” (not that helpful!). However, in and around the 15th century, one Rabbi made the startling suggestion, or perhaps, insistence that at least in this case, k’tiyah doesn’t mean “puny,” it means, “broken.” And thus in most Torahs written since at least the middle ages, the vav in the word shalom is written as in the image below. Not puny but broken.

Now, to be clear, there are very longstanding rules about what makes a Torah kosher (fit) and pasul (unkosher), and one of the most glaring examples of what makes it unkosher is if it contains letters that are “broken, incomplete, or missing a part.” But in this case, for sure, the exception proves the rule.

We live in a broken world. There are many among us whose lifestyles don’t appear to be worthy of reward, despite appearances to the contrary. And there are of course so very many whose lives are symbolic of the other way round. Brokenness though is, as Leonard Cohen taught, “how the light gets in.” So, we as Jews recognize that our tradition isn’t perfect. The text is not unalterable, and its traditional meanings, are all the more so, not fixed.  If a Torah with a broken letter in the word, Shalom, can with a kosher stamp, still dwell in our midst, be celebrated, and inspire, then we too with all of our blemishes, scars, “baggage,” and “mileage,” certainly can too. And we must!