Shnayim Yomi - Pinchas - Rishon - #1 - Rabbi Elisha Freedman - Serving With Pure Intentions

Good morning. Welcome everyone to Stein Yomi. It's a pleasure to be here and to go through the parsha together this week. Today's aliya is the first aliya and we talk about how Pinchas for his reward in killing Zimri and Cozbi was given a bris shalom. It's hard to understand. For killing doing a maaseh hariga you get shalom. Then it's if gives us an astounding insight into this. He explains that sometimes a person could do the right thing and something that had to be done. But it could contain within it something of a negative connotation that if not guarded properly could implant and ingrain in somebody chos v'shalom bad midos. He had to kill. We know a kohen who kills is not allowed to touch. It's something that comes into the soul of somebody who killed. Since he was completely l'shem shamayim as it says "Tachas asher kini l'eilei kov." Hashem knew he was completely pure for Hashem's honor, nothing to do with him. He therefore granted him a bris shalom that the maaseh that he did, even though of course was not a b'din, he had to do it, should not have any negative effect on him. We find this also not only by actions but even things that we see. Someone could see something and it could be something that's something that's something right and it could still possibly have a negative effect if not totally zoned in on the ehrliche Yid. Of course, if you see somebody acting with without the proper respect, especially for a shul or for Shabbos, it could have an effect on us. But even if they're in the right, they could still have an effect on us. Tell you a powerful story. I'm wish a Bamberger said over a story in a hesped for Rav Aron Schechter at the time. He was walking down Coney Island Avenue in Flatbush one Shabbos afternoon and there was an older man but he There a long big group with him. They saw a solemn member start for his a solemn ambulance get in, turn the siren, speed away. Everybody started gawking as is common with something like that happens. But our baron looked at it very differently. He got very serious and he called everybody around him, the crowd. And he said in a quiet, passionate tone, "Shabbos Shabbos on one side, Shabbos kodesh. That solemn member had to go into his ambulance, but he didn't want it to have an effect on the people watching to make Shabbos any less holy. So, he reminded them Shabbos kodesh. We should be zocheh that everything we do should be completely al taharas hakodesh, should be completely l'shem shamayim, and even if something that could possibly have a shemetz of something that could have a negative effect, which I hope should guard us from all negative effects, which we should be zocheh to serve him properly.