Photo courtesy of Chabad.org
A WEEKLY TORAH THOUGHT FROM RABBI MORDY
Okay, I may be repeating myself from a previous Parshas Pinchas (this week’s Parsha) but I hope you’ll bear with as it’s a good one worth repeating. Pinchas is a relatively unknown figure who sees one of the leaders of the tribes flaunting an inappropriate relationship with a woman. Moses freezes. He’s unsure of how to proceed and Pinchas then reminds him of what needs to be done and goes ahead and does it himself. (Let’s redact what he actually does to keep it PG-13 and for the sake of brevity.) This story is a wild one and one of the last real stories in the Torah as we are beginning to prepare for Moses’s death and for his successor Joshua. Perhaps these two incidents – Pinchas and Moses’s passing – are lessons for each other. You see, the Jewish people became a nation literally overnight when they left Egypt. They still were a nation of nomads but a nation nonetheless. They received the Torah, their charter, and were proceeding to their land with their fearless leader. But this leader realized that he wasn’t going to live forever. Sure, his successor was important to continue the mandate but what lesson must he leave? The lesson that every person, regardless of their status, is a leader.