Parshat Pinhas 5768: Boundaries and Generations

Among the many activities of this week’s portion, there is a census similar to the one that began the book of Numbers back at Sinai. The generation who will enter into the land is ready to do so, and throughout this portion we have examples of why this generation is ready. Pinhas is blessed by God for stopping the plague of Peor single handedly. During the census we learn one more interesting detail about the Korah rebellion “But the sons of Korah did not die.” [26:11] After the census, we have the first halakic debate, brought by the daughters of Zelophehad. To finish the portion we have again a list of all the holidays and the requirements for sacrifice for those days in the calendar cycle.

We read about Pinhas in the beginning of the portion

10. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 11. Pinhas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned my anger away from the people of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the people of Israel in my jealousy. 12. Therefore say, Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace; 13. And he shall have it, and his seed after him, the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the people of Israel. [25:10-13]

What Pinhas did was rather startling:

5. And Moses said to the judges of Israel, Slay you every one his men who were attached to Baal-Peor. 6. And, behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the people of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the Tent of Meeting. 7. And when Pinhas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand; 8. And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague ceased from the people of Israel. [25:5-8]

Moses was ready to kill all those attached to Baal Peor. This pagan worship is a form of resistance. After he was fired by Balak, Balaam suggested to the Midianites and Moabites to try seduction instead of cursing. In doing so he more effectively stopped the Israelites than any of his true attempts with cursing. Moses’ solution to this resistance was his usual solution: everyone who’s a problem dies. His mental models remain the same.

Pinhas conversely attacks two people who are doing the most scandalous things in the most scandalous place to do it. To Pinhas this is not rebellion but a hypnotic spell. Such spells are a lot like balloons: they form a barrier between us and the rest of the world clouding our judgment. Yet like balloons, one pointed shock to the balloon and it bursts. Pinhas realized this. It is written in 25:13 that he made atonement for the people Israel by this act. The shocking stab through both Cozbi and Zimri burst the spell, everyone suddenly realized they were doing wrong things and the people repented.

Pinhas did not use the all or nothing mental model of Moses. He made boundaries around what was the critical thing to deal with. Killing only two he probably saved thousands of lives. The rest of this portion deals with exactly that issue, boundaries.

14. Mark well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that you may tell it to the following generation,
15. That this is God, our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide till death. [Ps 48:14-15]

Sings the sons of Korah, who in this portion we learn did not die. Such psalms according to the Sages saved them from the fate of their father. A place was fenced in for them when everyone else around them fell into Sheol. [B. Megilah 14a] They made a boundary with their songs.

We are told they did not die not in the portion about their father Korah, but in the middle of the second census where it fits the pattern of others in their generation. This census has several purposes to it. First, it validates God’s conditions for entering into the land from the time of the spies:

64. But among these there was not a man of them whom Moses and Aaron the priest counted, when they counted the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai.65. For the Lord had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.[26:64-65]

Thus the people can enter the land. What should do once they get there? That is the other reason for the census:

53. To these the land shall be divided for an inheritance according to the number of names.54. To the more numerous you shall give a larger inheritance, and to the fewer you shall give a smaller inheritance; to every one shall his inheritance be given according to those who were counted by him. 55. However the land shall be divided by lot; according to the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit. 56. According to the lot its possession shall be divided between many and few. [26:53-56]

The population of each tribe decides the amount of land they will get in the Promised land. Where that land will be will be decided by random chance. Once this is set up the land will be transferred through inheritance of those counted, namely sons.

In the wilderness, we read that there was an order to how the people marched. That order to some extent is preserved in the inheritance plan. The tribes have their own distinct personalities. To keep them distinct they are kept separate. Boundaries are established to keep this order in place, to keep the attributes of each tribe pure.

From a modern political or social standpoint there is a lot of debate over homogeneity and heterogeneity, of equality versus identity. But in the allegory of the people as mental models within our soul, there is a different logic to this. While our internal tribe of Benjamin does interact with our internal tribe of Judah, the two are distinct because they perform different functions within us. To have them at full power, to allow us the greatest use of the attributes they represent, requires us to have them as pure attribute.

Let me compare this to two artists: a child and a professional. If you’ve ever watched a young child paint or use a box of crayons, the work almost always turns out the same. Every color in the box of crayons is used and every color in the watercolor set is slopped on. I remember when I was younger and this would happen to me. The end result was all too often a gray- brown blob, and my watercolor sets would be thrown away after one use. They were now nothing but one color since everything mixed with one another in the box. As an adult artist, I keep boundaries between colors. I control the colors, how much and how little to use of each. I do what is necessary to keep my yellows staying yellow and my blues staying blue. What I put on the paper is what I wanted. Dull grays of my youth disappear, replaced with bright color.

We segregate things from paints to parts of our soul for a reason. We want the pure attribute so we have control of mixing it. Those attributes in our soul are segregated so when we need it we can use it with control, and use as much or as little as necessary. Pure colors allow us to do shades. We are out of the black and white zone and into shades of crimson and violet. Young children don’t understand the idea of shading, they plop things on, leading to the results they get.

Moses in this view was like a child. He knew only two states: followers or rebels. Rebels were removed from the congregation, followers remained. It’s not so easy in the Promised Land. It requires a different thinking, of using all the crayons in the box, but using them when appropriate and in appropriate measure. It means segregating some colors from others and, if a speck of blue gets into a yellow, removing the blue not removing the yellow and the blue. Blending happens on the paper or in your mixing box, not the palette. This new generation, about to enter the Promised Land understands this.

The new generation also understands there are shades of gray, that nothing is absolute. This inheritance plan in the land provides some problems that are immediately addressed in the text. The five daughters of a man named Zelophehad of the tribe of Manasseh bring an objection

3. Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of those who gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons.4. Why should the name of our father be taken away from among his family, because he had no sons? Give to us therefore a possession among the brothers of our father. [27:3-4]

Moses just telling the rules no longer applies. In many ways, it is the daughters of Zelophehad who bring us the Oral Law. What do we do when there is a conflict between laws, or a case that was never thought of? I do not think that it is coincidental that Moses is told it’s time to die right after the daughters of Zelophehad episode. He had a very hard time dealing with what it implied: that there is such a thing as objecting legitimately. This is not rebellion. Indeed the daughter’s objection will get an objection in turn in Numbers 36, the last commandment in the book of Numbers. The ruling that if there are no sons daughters can inherit creates the situation where the boundaries leak. If Tirzah from Manasseh marries a Benjaminite, and they have a son, would not Tirzah’s inheritance then go to Benjamin? We have one color running into the other. We lose control of the palette. The well-known story of Moses being transported to Rabbi Akiba’s classroom and being totally lost. Moses may not have been lost about the subject but the style. Debate between students and teachers for Moses may have a totally alien concept, which is why he was so comforted by Akiba’s response “it is a halakah of Moses from Sinai.”

Getting to the Promised Land was one thing and needed a very direct and absolute approach to get to there. But getting there and living there are very different things. The new generation, never living in Egypt, has different mental models than the previous generation. They can see in degrees and understand the need for blending at times and separating at times. They can see that measured responses are even more effective that all or nothing thinking. Setting boundaries are meant to do that effectively.

Next week we’ll look at the nature of such boundaries.

Parshat Balak 5767: The Peor Outbreak

Numbers 22:2-25:9

In this portion, King Balak of Moab watches all of his neighbors go down to defeat militarily at the hands of the Israelites. He sends envoys to the greatest magician in the area, Balaam, to curse the advancing Israelites. After a series of adventures, Balaam meets up with Balak, and sets up the curse. Three times in a row, the curse ends up as a blessing, the most famous now known as the prayer “ma tovu” and Balak is furious. But Balaam comes up with a plan for biological warfare. At the very end of this section, we read:

Israel stayed in Shittim, and the people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab. They called the people to the sacrifices of their gods; so the people ate, and bowed down to their gods. Then Israel attached himself to Baal-Peor; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. [Numbers 25:1-3]

A plague ensues, killing 24,000 people, more than any other plague. The plague ends in a bizarre manner:

And, behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the people of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the Tent of Meeting. When Pinhas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand;

He went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague ceased from the people of Israel. [Numbers 25-6:8]

I’m obsessed about this plague. Actually I’m intrigued by what the rabbis did with it. There are two clues in the text that explain how they come to their conclusions. The first is the name of the pagan god, Baal Peor. Baal in Hebrew means master or lord, and the common beginning of a number of such pagan god-names. So in Hebrew for example Zebuv means flies. Thus the Baal Zebuv (Beelzebub in Greek) of II Kings 1 can be translated the lord of the flies. Breaking the word Peor into syllables we have Peh meaning opening and Ohr meaning skin. Thus Baal Peor is lord of the skin orifices.

The second is a phrase in the text the people ate, and bowed down to their gods [Numbers 25:3] The Rabbis believed that there was significance to this sequence, best explained in the following story:

Rab Judah said in Rab's name: A gentile woman once fell sick. She vowed, “If I recover, I will go and serve every idol in the world.” She recovered, and proceeded to serve all idols. On reaching Peor, she asked its priests, “How is this worshipped?” They replied, “People eat beets, drink strong drink, and then uncover themselves before it. She replied, I would rather fall sick again than serve an idol in such a manner.” [Sanh. 64a]

As an Environmental Health professional I see this as an outbreak from fecal sources. When one eats and sacrifices in a room full of sewage bad things are going to happen.

Last week I began a speech at my professional association’s conference with the Peor incident. In Hebrew there is no word for enforcement, the modern word actually is a word for oppression. The point of my speech was good EH people modify the behavior of others instead of enforcing behavior. Health inspectors need to be more story tellers and less cops.

While attending sessions at the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) Education Conference and talking to many people between sessions, I kept getting a sinking feeling. Environmental Health Professionals, what some people call health inspectors or sanitarians get a bum rap. We either get ignored or blamed for not doing the right thing. Yet we are rarely given the resources to do our job properly in the first place. From government regulators to industry auditors, the story was the same. Environmental heath is the under funded orphan of public health.

We are often confused with environmental protection. Environmental protection might be described as protecting the planet from environmental contaminants. On the other hand environmental heath is protecting people from biological and chemical contaminants in the environment.

Environmental Health is a prevention, investigation and education activity, and thus its benefit is difficult to see. If done well, nothing happens. It thus becomes the last thing to be funded either in industry or in government.

Yet this is not the frame of mind in Biblical thinking. Prevention, from the fence on the roof to the fence around Torah is deeply rooted in biblical tradition. One example given not long after the Baal Peor incident is this one:

You shall have a place also outside the camp, where you shall go out to it; You shall have a spade among your weapons; and it shall be when you will ease yourself outside, you shall dig with it, and shall turn back and cover your excrement;[Deut 23:13-14]

It is a matter of environmental heath to keep fecal matter away from public areas and to dispose of it properly. It’s a commandment to dispose of sewage properly.

The lead character in the biblical environmental health story is the Priest, which throughout both Leviticus and Numbers we hear of the number of health related issues the priest was responsible for. Yet the priest who was responsible was not the High Priest, but the vice priest. The High Priest, in order to do his sacrificial duties, could not be involved with public health. Too many situations required quarantine and decontamination procedures which would make him unfit for performing sacrifice. Instead it was the second in command who did these things.

The man who stops the plague of Baal Peor is none other than the vice priest, Pinhas. He stops it by killing just one Israelite having sex with a Midianite in the Mishkan. In doing so he changes the minds of everyone who was seduced into Baal Peor worship. The seduction had reached the point of addiction according to the rabbis. By changing people attitudes he saves everyone. In my mind Pinhas is the first Environmental Health official, the first good Sanitarian.

While I don’t condone throwing javelins through health regulation offenders, Pinhas begins a model which we find throughout the tradition. Balaam in this section is involved with magic and in many places in the Torah we find prohibitions against magic. Yet, there is one kind that the Talmud condones: Magic that keeps people healthy. Such practices can be curative, but even more important is preventative magic. Pinchas in killing one person broke Balaam’s spell of seduction. Exposure to the pathogens hovering around Baal Peor’s temple stopped, and contamination waned. It was miraculous, but it also was good science through prevention and behavioral science. Following the ideal of building a fence around Torah, the Rabbis did the same thing for human beings, noting preventative practices. Describing many of the microorganisms of today as demons they instituted many policies that still stand the test of time. For example, they advised against spending time in swamps or sewers, advocated washing hands before eating, and prohibited eating food which has sat out too long or under a bed.

When I wonder about environmental health I go back to the ancient sources, and see that it has always been there. It may have been demons instead of microorganisms back then, but the world still had EH in some form or another. We in EH have been protecting the population since the Exodus from Egypt, and I truly hope we will do so till the end of time.