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July 28 • 2016 41 S everal years ago, while par- ticipating in a weekly parshah learning group, I was stunned to hear the instructor cite and defend a controversial present-day interpretation that presented the actions of Pinchas, the title character of this week's Torah portion, as a model for present- day Jewish behavior. Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron and the eventual heir to the high priesthood, violently impaled an Israelite heretic and his Midianite mistress who were engaged in illicit activ- ity in front of Moses and the Mishkan. Before I could take issue with this defense of such extreme behavior, the other members of the class leapt in to object: Even if the behavior of Pinchas is justifiable in a biblical con- text, surely it is not an archetype for any current situation. Faced with unanimous dissent and outrage, the instructor backpedaled and retracted. One might say that this exchange reflects an age-old ambivalence about the actions of Pinchas, an ambivalence that is detectible even in the text of the Torah itself. Pinchas, after all, was not censured for his homicidal behavior, neither by God nor by Moses. On the contrary, he is rewarded with brit shalom, a covenant of peace — an odd choice of words in light of the vio- lent nature of his actions — and a reaf- firmation of his family's eternal priestly dynasty. Indeed, the contrast between his violent act and the reward of peace has reverberated across centuries of biblical interpretation. A central thread running through these commentaries is an insis- tence that Pinchas was not rewarded for his violent action per se, but rather in spite of it. Various commentators adduced other reasons for this eternal reward, reasons that jibe with the notion of a covenant of peace, including: Pinchas is ennobled and granted peace for having the cour- age to fight (Rabbi Obadiah Sforno, Italy, 16th century); or since he acted in the name of peace to assuage God's wrath, he was blessed with a peaceful demean- or (Ha'omek Davar, 19th century). The upshot is that, by moving the vio- lence to the back- ground, Pinchas is rehabilitated and brought back in sync with his grandfather Aaron, the great "lover of peace and pursuer of peace who respect- ed all creatures and brought them closer to the Torah." In a larger sense, the reha- bilitation of Pinchas exempli- fies two broader pillars of the rabbinic worldview. First and foremost, our sages had deep reservations about violence and shared the notion that violence is acceptable only as a last resort. (They more or less agreed in this respect with Isaac Asimov, who described violence as "the last refuge of the incompetent.") Onkelos, a second-century commen- tator, referred to Pinchas as "Pinchas Kanai" or Pinchas the Zealot, a stinging indictment in light of the belief that the blind hatred of the Zealots was a central element in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. To be sure, there was and is no deny- ing that the Bible is replete with violent acts of holy war; Pinchas' act is followed almost immediately by a Divine call for holy war against the Midianites. Yet Milhemet Mitzvah (the rabbinic term for holy war) was steadily confined to a few specific cases — defense of the Land of Israel and war on the seven Canaanite nations and Amalek; and even the latter was gradually re-under- stood more metaphorically as a struggle against evil than an actual instruction to hunt down and kill descendants of this tribe. Second, the rabbis saw Pinchas' behavior as epitomizing extremism, which the rabbis repeatedly discouraged in favor of moderation. Sforno expressed this idea succinctly: God detests extrem- ism and prefers moderation. The upshot is that, while Pinchas' violent act was not condemned in the specific context of biblical narrative, it may neither be celebrated nor defended as a guide for subsequent behavior, least of all today. * Dr. Howard N. Lupovitch is an associate professor of history at Wayne State University and director of WSU's Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies. Can Violence Be Justified? Parshat Pinchas: Numbers 25:10- 30:1; I Kings 18:46-19:21. » t o r a h p o r t i o n Professor Howard N. Lupovitch E. Commerce Rd. Benstein Halsted Decker Wixom 14 Mile Rd. Pontiac Trail Grand River Ave. Pontiac Trail 12 Mile Rd. Glengarry Rd. Burns Rd. Commerce Rd. Maple Maple Richardson Sleeth Rd. Commerce HURON VALLEY-SINAI HOSPITAL 2104800