 | Last week we encountered the issue of zealotry – its captivating power, and its often very high cost to self and society. We asked whether the nature of zealotry requires that we, in turn, must become zealots to confront zealotry's harms. Our world today demands our best answer. |
A photo from my personal Torah scroll, the 'vav' of 'shalom' sliced in two. By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Parashat Pinhas 5785 (2025)
Last week's Torah portion introduced three zealots, culminating in Pinhas murdering in God's name. Even worse, Torah seemed to approve, valorize and even reward his murders. What?
Pinhas speared an Israelite and Midianite to death for the heresy of having sex on the altar, a Midianite fertility practice. Torah records that because Pinhas thereby acted zealously for God, God gave Pinhas בְּרִיתִי שָׁלוֹם / "My covenant of peace" (Numbers 25:12).
It was unthinkable to our Talmudic ancestors that Pinhas' zealotry should merit reward. What kind of true "peace" could slaughter achieve, when there were so many alternatives? What kind of leader would merit "peace" by barbarism? Yet that's just what Torah said. So our ancestors did the seeming unthinkable: they deemed Pinhas unworthy, then sliced Torah's word "peace" in two (Kiddushin 66b).
To this day, a Torah isn't kosher unless the "peace" Pinhas received is sliced in two, as if to break the spear that Pinhas used to spear his victims.
By this Torah episode and 2,000 years of response to it, Judaism forces us to confront the problem of zealotry, and the parallel issue of power seeming to validate and reward zealotry.
Like our ancestors who called out Torah's zealotry even by slashing a gash in Torah herself, we too must call out the zealotry in our world. A world in which ends justify means, in which might makes right, in which zealots decide and declare, is a world ultimately safe and just for nobody.
We are not allowed to quietly accept it. We must call it out, even at the price of slicing a gash in what is nearest and dearest to us.
Sometimes that means making sure history doesn't validate zealotry (Da'at Zekeinim, Num. 25:12). We must do our part to ensure that history condemns it.
And sometimes we must fight, even violently, when the alternative is unthinkable. Some zealots can be stopped only by violence. Should the world have rolled over for Hitler? How about Hamas? Even the One we call God, the "Lord of Hosts," is said to have legions.
The Catch-22 is that violence, even "justified war," risks turning defenders in the "right" into zealots in the "wrong." How should we decide when to fight, and how can we fight without becoming zealots?
Judaism's ethical wisdom on this subject developed complexity, reflecting thousands of years on the receiving side of hate, conquest and genocide. (Click here for a trove of references, reflecting how much Judaism struggles with this subject.)
In my understanding, it boils down to this: Pursue true peace, which Judaism understands as not an absence of threat or strife (we should be so fortunate) but rather as wholeness. If we must fight, fight because we truly must, because wholeness requires it. Fight for the kind of peace that can be whole – not for the sake of victory itself (though that may be a focus), and never for the sake of war. When the cause of wholeness no longer justifies battle, at that moment battle becomes indefensible. Continuing battle anyway becomes the very kind of zealotry whose spear we must break no less than Pinhas' broken shalom in every Torah scroll in the world.
Much the same values drive non-physical fights. Often we must stand up – confront, protest, advocate, donate – because true and sustainable wholeness is at stake and the alternative is unthinkable. Some zealots can be stopped only by sustained, risky and courageous visibility. We are not free to avert our eyes, or sit on the sidelines. Perhaps this is why the calling of tikkun olam (world repair) work leads so many of us into advocacy and the public sphere.
We say of Torah (Proverbs 3:17-18) that "She is a tree of life to all who grasp her: those who grasp her are happy" and "All her ways are shalom" – peace, wholeness. None of her ways are blindly zealous. None. No matter what.
Parashat Pinhas 5785 (2025)
Last week's Torah portion introduced three zealots, culminating in Pinhas murdering in God's name. Even worse, Torah seemed to approve, valorize and even reward his murders. What?
Pinhas speared an Israelite and Midianite to death for the heresy of having sex on the altar, a Midianite fertility practice. Torah records that because Pinhas thereby acted zealously for God, God gave Pinhas בְּרִיתִי שָׁלוֹם / "My covenant of peace" (Numbers 25:12).
It was unthinkable to our Talmudic ancestors that Pinhas' zealotry should merit reward. What kind of true "peace" could slaughter achieve, when there were so many alternatives? What kind of leader would merit "peace" by barbarism? Yet that's just what Torah said. So our ancestors did the seeming unthinkable: they deemed Pinhas unworthy, then sliced Torah's word "peace" in two (Kiddushin 66b).
To this day, a Torah isn't kosher unless the "peace" Pinhas received is sliced in two, as if to break the spear that Pinhas used to spear his victims.
By this Torah episode and 2,000 years of response to it, Judaism forces us to confront the problem of zealotry, and the parallel issue of power seeming to validate and reward zealotry.
Like our ancestors who called out Torah's zealotry even by slashing a gash in Torah herself, we too must call out the zealotry in our world. A world in which ends justify means, in which might makes right, in which zealots decide and declare, is a world ultimately safe and just for nobody.
We are not allowed to quietly accept it. We must call it out, even at the price of slicing a gash in what is nearest and dearest to us.
Sometimes that means making sure history doesn't validate zealotry (Da'at Zekeinim, Num. 25:12). We must do our part to ensure that history condemns it.
And sometimes we must fight, even violently, when the alternative is unthinkable. Some zealots can be stopped only by violence. Should the world have rolled over for Hitler? How about Hamas? Even the One we call God, the "Lord of Hosts," is said to have legions.
The Catch-22 is that violence, even "justified war," risks turning defenders in the "right" into zealots in the "wrong." How should we decide when to fight, and how can we fight without becoming zealots?
Judaism's ethical wisdom on this subject developed complexity, reflecting thousands of years on the receiving side of hate, conquest and genocide. (Click here for a trove of references, reflecting how much Judaism struggles with this subject.)
In my understanding, it boils down to this: Pursue true peace, which Judaism understands as not an absence of threat or strife (we should be so fortunate) but rather as wholeness. If we must fight, fight because we truly must, because wholeness requires it. Fight for the kind of peace that can be whole – not for the sake of victory itself (though that may be a focus), and never for the sake of war. When the cause of wholeness no longer justifies battle, at that moment battle becomes indefensible. Continuing battle anyway becomes the very kind of zealotry whose spear we must break no less than Pinhas' broken shalom in every Torah scroll in the world.
Much the same values drive non-physical fights. Often we must stand up – confront, protest, advocate, donate – because true and sustainable wholeness is at stake and the alternative is unthinkable. Some zealots can be stopped only by sustained, risky and courageous visibility. We are not free to avert our eyes, or sit on the sidelines. Perhaps this is why the calling of tikkun olam (world repair) work leads so many of us into advocacy and the public sphere.
We say of Torah (Proverbs 3:17-18) that "She is a tree of life to all who grasp her: those who grasp her are happy" and "All her ways are shalom" – peace, wholeness. None of her ways are blindly zealous. None. No matter what.
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