The Pain of Being Misunderstood - How Pinchas Responded

Okay friends, Paras Pinhas Pinas was the grandson of Aaron of Mosha's brother of the Coen. And Pinas was known as a zealot. A zealot is a person who's going to stand up for what is right even when it's not popular. A a zealot is the opposite of PC. He is like the epitome of not PC, of not politically correct, but literally stands for truth at the expense of social norms. This is what Pas did because the Jewish people almost dodged the bullet, almost dodged the Moabites. The Moabitete King Balak wanted to annihilate the Jews. He was afraid of the Jews. He was intimidated by them. He hires Balak to try to curse them. Balac ends up blessing them and Balak says, "Oh man, we failed. Plan B." Plan B is to get the Moabitete woman to try to seduce the Jewish people. And unfortunately, it started to work. Many people from the tribe of Shimon started to cohabitate inappropriately with the Moabitete women. So, one of the Moabitete tribe, the the tribe leader of not the Moabites, sorry, the tribe leader of the tribe of Shimon said, "I have a brilliant idea. I'll take one for the team to try to save them all." And he starts engaging with one of the Moabitete women. This is Zimry. Starts to engage with Cosby inappropriately in public. And everybody's just like, "What? You're not even like have you no shame. Moshe was so shocked that he didn't even know what to do. Like the the Talmud says he literally didn't know how to react. He literally had forgotten the the the protocol, the Jewish protocol in in in terms of Jewish law. What do we do? So the Torah says Pinas grabs a spear and while team Pinas I love that Pinas grabs a spear and while they're This is a little graphic. Filter this for the children but suffice me say he took that spear and stabbed them while they were cohabitating together. And in this week's para God rewards Pinas. He's a Cohen. God turns him into a Cohen. the first and last time in history that somebody had become a Cohen. Even though he's a grandson, a paternal grandson of Aaron who's a Cohen, he was born after the tribe of Cohen was already made. So, it didn't it it didn't take until this point. God refers to Pinas as a canoi, a zealot person who has calmed me down from my anger. What Pinas did was considered to be a noble act. And by the way, in in Jewish law, my monities in his code of Jewish law talks about how there's certain situations in Jewish law where you need to do something that is not politically correct because there's a there's a desecration of God. There's a desecration of truth, a perversion of truth. And you have to act. And if you ask, the answer is no. And you'll get in trouble. And if you don't ask, the answer is good job, man. And the example is Pinas. Pinas grabbed that spear. He did what he did. He didn't think about it too much. Were he to have overthought about it like Moshe was or like others were, he would have the answer would have been no. Were he to ask what is the ruling in this in this situation? I don't know. Hard to say. We'll have to have justice here because he didn't ask. he was able to do what he did. And this is a rare case where you're allowed to do what needs to be done because you specifically did not ask. The Torah had identified pinas. You know, we have a lot of characters in the Torah, and occasionally a character in the Torah is identified by their name and their father's name, but maybe once like to to introduce them. Pinas had been introduced toward the end of last week's para when he had done his noble act as Pinas Ben Allazar bin Aaron. Pinas, the son of Allar, the son of Aron. Yet again at the opening of this week's para when we introduce Pinas he again is identified as Pinas the son of Alazar the son of Aaron again identified by his father and grandfather we already know who he is we already know his lineage why identify him again every word in the Torah is important every word in the Torah is carefully calculated There must be some sort of meaning here. And Rashi tells us and Rashi cites this from the Talmud, but Rashi believes this to be the literal interpretation of why these extra titles were necessary. Rashi tells us that the other tribes were disgracing Pinas. They were accusing him of being cruel. And you know what they said? You know why you're cruel? Because your grandfather, maternal grandfather, his paternal grandfather was Aaron. His maternal grandfather was Yro. Mosha's father-in-law. I guess maternal great-grandfather was Yro. Was Mosha's f was Mosha's father-in-law. Yro was an idoltor before he had done touva and before he had joined the Jewish people. So they're saying there must have been some sort of remnants of Israel's idolatry and negativity that somehow genetically got passed down biologically, spiritually, something got passed down in you and that's why you did that cruel act. That's what the other tribes were accusing him of. Therefore, the Torah, this is what Rashi tells us, the Torah goes out of its way to identify him specifically as bin Elazar bin Aaron because he is a descendant of Aaron, not just Israel. And what he did was not cruel. It was an act of kindness. Aaron is the epitome of kindness. This is what Rashi tells us. And this begs the question, what was really bothering the other tribes about what Pinas did? Why are they accusing him of being cruel because of his lineage? If he injustly had killed Zimry and Cosby because they were inappropriately cohabitating in public, if they were cohabitating in private, that would also be problematic, but they were doing it in public. He was he was putting his stamp of approval on the Moabitete seduction and Pinas felt that we need to put an end to that. God rewarded him. If for whatever reason they felt that that was a cruel act on Pinaz's account, then they should accuse him of being a murderer, not of being of cruel lineage. Don't blame his grandmother, his grandfather or great-grandfather. Blame the act that he had done. This is what the commentaries ask on Rashi. And if what he did was acceptable, which it was, and he wasn't a murderer, which he wasn't, then again, who cares about his lineage? He did the right thing. Let's look at his actions. Why are we so focused on where he had come from? In other words, what we're really trying to get at is what really bothered the other tribes that they were degrading him for his lineage, which is not fair on so many accounts, by the way. Number one, you don't control where you come from. Number two, being from Yro, from Yro from Mos's father-in-law is pretty good. Yro had had literally given up everything. But whatever, they believed that maybe there's a little bit of negativity there that had remained. What was really bothering them? What was really bothering these tribes about what Pinas did? Why were they so uncomfortable by what God considers to be a noble act? Imagine you do something noble. You do something that is outstanding, not politically correct, but God says it's the right thing. Moshe says it's the right thing. It's in the books. This is what you do. And somehow people are giving push back. Why? What bothered them? >> It could be jealousy, right? There's something to that. There's something to that because why did Pin stand up and nobody else did? In other words, you had 11 other tribe leaders. There's 12 tribes, but let's take out Zim because he was the one that was killed, right? And he's from the tribe of Shimon. You have 11 other tribe leaders plus Moshe that didn't do anything that literally sat by and did nothing. And what they're thinking was Pinas decided to do something when Moshe didn't. Pinhas decided to do something when any of the other 11 tribal leaders didn't. Maybe Pinas should not have done it. And maybe what compelled Pinhas to do this, this is again, this is just going through their, we're psychoanalyzing over here. Going through their pro thought process. Maybe what really compelled Pinhas to do this was because he was a little too excited. He was a little too trigger-happy. Maybe it wasn't nobility. Maybe it was cruelty. Maybe he has that somewhere in his personality and it would make sense because of the lineage he had come from. This is how the Lava psychoanalyzes this rashi what the tribes were really what was going on in their mind. Why were they so offended by's noble act? somebody did an act of nobility and you're offended. Why? Because there is an element of of almost like jealousy like nobody else did anything. So in order to justify that jealousy to justify those that feelings of deficiency that feeling of I should have done something in order to justify and cover that up they start accusing Pinas of being cruel and maybe Even if what he did was right according to the books, but was his motivation right or was his motivation that of cruelty? Was he just trigger happy or was he actually trying to stop something good? This was their challenge to Pinas. And the Torah makes it clear that that challenge to pin was was very inappropriate because when somebody does something right, why would we assume that their intention was off? like they did the right thing, the action, the deed was done and according to the books it was kosher. Why assume the the intention was wrong? Well, because of his lineage. Well, he also has the lineage of Aaron. In this talk from the where he kind of psychoanalyzes the the story over here from this angle, he deres four important lessons from here. Number one, when somebody does the right thing for the right for the wrong reason, even if it was for the wrong reason, we're not even saying that Pinas did it for the wrong reason. But if even if he did do it for the wrong reason, is that like so bad? The Torah, the Talmud says, I'll say it in Hebrew and I'll translate, a person should always engage in the performance of Torah mitzvah, even if it's for the wrong reasons. Even if it's for the wrong reasons, eventually they'll come to do it for the right reasons. So why discourage somebody's good behavior that has selfish motives? Eventually it will be for the right reasons and perhaps even more than that deep down inside there is a p there is a part of the person who is doing it for the right reason. Number two let's take it a step further. If somebody's doing the right thing but for the wrong reason and again we're not saying But if somebody did the right thing for the wrong reason, why emphasize what they did wrong when you could emphasize what they did right? What they did wrong, their intention. What they did right, the action. They're both there. They're both present. Why am I even noticing their intention? Why am I not noticing their action? Why is the negativity shining brighter than the positivity when they're both present? Um, especially, by the way, we don't really we don't really know what's in people's hearts. I once heard from a psychologist, I thought this was brilliant because it's it's difficult, but it's brilliant. He said 100% of the time you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving people the benefit of the doubt. And in this case they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by assuming Pinaz did what he had done his noble act for noble reasons not for selfish reasons that he cared and he wasn't trigger happy because what he did was in line with with protocol with protocol. So if that's the case, what what do you think may have been clouding the judgment of the other tribes in their disgra in their denigration of Pinas. The balm taught that you know in in psychology there's a concept called transference. You know what transference means? When the psychologist starts pushing his agenda or a therapist start I'm using I'm picking on therapist but it's it's true with anybody. When we start pushing our agenda on people because of our biased lenses and if if a if somebody's going through a difficult relationship personally, they might think that somebody else's depression is a relationship issue when it may have nothing to do. Maybe the relationship is a issue is a depression issue. How do you know? Right? But we have our biases. I'm giving that as an example. But we have our biases and the negativity we see within other people is our clouded judgment. Is our dirty lenses. The BMP have taught that the negativity we see in other people is a message from God to help understand what's going on within our own selves. What we see within other people is a mirror reflection of our own selves. Consequently, how do you know if somebody's a sadic, a perfect sadic? Do they notice problems in other people or do they see the soul of other people? And the reason why they'd see the soul of other people is because that's what they're living with. That's what's alive to them. That's what's true and real to them. So the BMT said when we see something negative within other people, it's a reflection of negativity within our own selves that we have to somehow deal with. When the tribes accused Pinas of being trigger happy, of being cruel because nobody else did anything, you're doing something must have been for the wrong reasons. And it must have been because of your lineage. What they had just done at that moment was identified cruelty within their own selves. and applied that to Pinas, they just become a victim of what psychology calls transference and counter transference. It's their own issue. In other words, let me put it this way. If we were to sit down and get to know Pinas well, what we would see is somebody who is passionate about truth. Somebody who is intolerant of being tolerant for the intolerable. Say that six times fast. That's pinas. He cannot tolerate accepting something that is going to desecrate God. Even if it means doing the uncomfortable to stop it. And it might mean not even asking for permission, but asking for forgiveness afterwards. That's pinas. If we didn't know pinas well and we had our own biases, we might be skeptical and say, "Hey, that guy is trigger happy. What if we never had the opportunity to get to know Pinas?" Well, and now we have two choices. Do I assume the worst of Pinas? Do I assume the best of Pinas? Now, sometimes we don't even see the choice because we don't even see the best because we're so distracted by the worst. And this, my friends, okay, this isn't going to be popular to many of our listeners. Uh will be it will resonate with a lot of our listeners though. I'm going to say it though. This is the danger of assessments of assessing people because an assessment okay obviously there's context here. If you're teaching you have to kind of read the room, right? If you're going to say a joke, read the room. And if people laugh, don't say any more jokes. You were successful, don't ruin it. No, I'm kidding. But but generally assessing people is dangerous because what tools are we using? How well are we going to get to know them to make an honest assessment? So what we end up doing is just judging them and justifying that judgment because we call it an assessment. This is what the tribes had done. And this is what the Torah is trying to circumvent, trying to tell us not to do. The Torah is trying to tell us not to put our limitations on other people. I've shared this story with you in the past, but I'm going to share it again because to me it was so powerful. resonated deeply about three year two two three years ago when I was running summer camp. I was training our counselors and I had reminded them um I I I train one thing I train our counselors to look for talk about assessments is to you know they have to keep an eye on the kids all the time. That's that's literally like their most number one job. And when you're strolling by a bathroom, poke your head in for a second. Make sure no kid no kids are getting bullied. No kids are fighting. Make sure nobody's vandalizing. There's going to be that kid who likes to take the toilet paper and throw it all over the floor and then get it wet and then stick it to to the seal. Okay. Couple weeks in, a counselor calls me over and says that there is a kid who is vandalizing the bathroom. So, my sirens go off. It's a four-year-old kid. And there are paper towels all over the floor. And I'm about to crack down and give my citation out after the sirens have been I'm kidding. But I'm about to, you know, and I decided, and I'm glad I did, to approach the situation with a little bit more curiosity. I decided to put aside my assessment of what I thought was my assessment of the problem. My original assessment of the problem was, this kid is vandalizing. this kid is making a mess. This kid is being careless. This kid is not realizing that somebody else is going to have to clean this up or that. And I threw away that assessment. I don't know why, but I did. And I said, "What's going on? Why are you putting those paper towels on the floor?" This is a four-year-old. So, think about his visual perspective. I mean, literal perspective. I don't just mean conceptual perspective. He says, "I'm trying to get them all on the floor so that the other kids can reach them. Not everybody can reach the paper towels." This kid was had good intentions. And by the way, you can argue the same as the tribes did that he didn't have good intentions. He's lying. And maybe that's a benefit. Other kids are going to be able to reach them. But he's just trying to protect himself. To which I say, "Great. Kid's using his brain. Save yourself, kid. I love it. But but my point is my assessment would have been negative. My assessment would have been a judgment. My assessment would have been trying to find what's wrong. My curiosity led me to find what was right. And the Torah makes it a point to reintroduce Aaron. And Rashi points us out to reintroduce Sar Pinas by his lineage by Aharon to tell us he is the lineage of Aaron who is the the epitome of kindness because that's what Aharon represented. He was a man of peace and love. Everybody mourned for him the most even when he had died even more than than Moshe. It it boils down to not putting our assessments, not putting our limitations, our tunnel vision, the way we see things on other people and believing that there's so much more in people than meet that that meets the eye as there was in Pinas. Okay, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.