Dear Friends,
Pinchas is this week’s hero of the Parasha. It is he who stood alone, among a confused people, when even Moshe Rabbeinu wasn’t quite sure what to do, and in an act of zealotry stopped the shameful behavior of the Jewish People.
Like anyone who does anything in this world, Pinchas paid a price. People don’t usually forgive, and, mainly, they don’t allow anyone the pleasure of honor. It seems that the Jewish People in the desert were no different from us in this matter. They claimed that he was just putting on a show as if he was being zealous for the sake of Hashem and Moshe, His servant, but no, he really had a cruel disposition, like his maternal grandfather, Yitro, who was cruel to calves for the sake of his religion. Chazal (our Sages) bring us only a few quotes of the discussion. I don’t want to think of what went on on the WhatsApp groups and what video clips were sent all over. He didn’t have it easy.
But then Hashem came and raised him up high – very high. First, by relating him to his paternal grandfather, Aharon HaCohen, who loved piece and sought peace. Hashem then continued with making him a Cohen, even though he was born before his father, Elazar, was anointed to be a Cohen. And then comes the verse we all know from a Brit Milah, with which the newborn is received a moment before his Brit – “Therefore I am granting him My covenant of peace.”
This motif, that only after difficulty and pain does one merit greatness and growth, reappears many times in the history of our people. The expression, “Yeridah L’tzorech Aliyah” – descending in order to ascend – is known by every child. And the truth is that in our lives as well, every one of us, if he or she looks carefully, will see that the rise begins right after the fall.
And the question is, why? Why does one need the fall in order to rise? Why do we need to go through pain and difficulties in order to grow?
The Rebbe’s attitude to everything connected with destruction and difficulties is to view them like the plowing of a field. If a child who was raised in the city would see a farmer breaking up the earth of his field using heavy machinery, he would wonder, even cry out: “Why are you hurting the field? Why turn over everything that was so smooth and nice-looking?” The farmer will just smile at him, as someone who has seen a thing or two in life, and say, “My child, I am not hurting the field – I am plowing it! I am not destroying; I am building. I am not upsetting things; I’m putting them in order. There is only one way to make the land activate its power to make things grow, and that is the plowing that I am doing right now. You see overturned clumps of earth, and I can already see the grain growing in this field.”
Friends, often we encounter troubles and pain, and of course, destruction (may it not come to us). We approach these things with the attitude of a city boy who comes to visit a farm. But what the correct attitude is to view the descent, the fall and difficulty through the eyes of the plowing farmer, who knows that the disturbance is plowing and the hurt is the way to release the potential.
May we be successful!
Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski