Parashat Pinhas and weekend services

We hope you had a great week and will join us to end it on a high note of community and prayer this weekend at Beth El.  We have Friday night services, tonight 7/11 at 7pm!  Tomorrow  morning, 7/12 we will have our Shabbat morning services, which start at 9am, with the Torah service at 9:45am. 

This week we would like to wholeheartedly thank Phil and Keren Harvey for sponsoring the kidush lunch in honor of their recent conversion to Judaism.

We would also like to wish a huge Mazal Tov to our Sunday school teacher Michelle and Adam Kaman and sister Leorah on the birth of baby Shira Yael.

Please note that Sunday July 13 has two special events.  At 1pm, the sisterhood will be meeting for a fun afternoon of Mahjong and healthy noshes. Please e-mail us for more information.  We would love to see you!

Sunday at 3:30 at Beth El, Intro to Judaism resumes with Cantor Ben-Moshe.  Again, this class is free and open to the community and we welcome one and all.

Shabbat shalom and please keep Israel in your thoughts and prayers as she goes through this extremely difficult time.

Much of this week’s parshah, Pinhas, is familiar to those who attend services on Shabbat and holidays.  The latter part of the parshah is concerned with the special sacrifices which were offered in the mishkan and later in the Temple for Shabbat, Rosh Hodesh (the New Month), and the various festivals.  Each day had its own specific offering.  While we no longer offer sacrifices of animals, bread and wine as we did in ancient times, we continue to recite the Musaph service on those special days.  We no longer sacrifice material things to God, but now we sacrifice what is perhaps more precious to us in our world of packed schedules-we sacrifice our time.  We take time from our busy lives to praise God and to thank him for the many blessings in our lives.  In these difficult times we also pray for peace for our fellow Jews in Israel, and indeed for all the people of our Land.  May God quickly grant peace in our Land and eternal joy to all its inhabitants, and may love conquer causeless hatred.  Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

This week’s Parashah is called “Pinchas” (Phinehas in English translation).  You will find it in the Book of Numbers 25:10-29:35.  The section carries the name of one of the high priests who in the previous section discovers an Israelite man having sex with a Midianite woman. Pinchus is so incensed that he takes a spear through them.  The reward for this act of zealousness is the lifting of a plague that had been decimating the children of Israel.  The text forces us to ask when is it proper to be zealous and when can over zealousness lead to tragedy.

The parashah, however, deals with a myriad of topics.  For example, in this section we read about the history of early feminists.  It is here that the daughters of Zelophekhad win for the first time in history the legal right for a woman to inherit property.  It is in this section then that women go from simply being full human beings to entering onto the path toward legal equality.

The parashah also deals with the needs for all of us to know when to say “good-bye”.  It teaches us that perhaps the hardest task in life is knowing when to exit the stage of history, and when to turn the reins of power over to the next generation.  Moses now understands that he will not enter the land of Israel.  Instead of protesting, we read Moses’ moving words asking for G’d’s blessing over those who will follow him: “…v’asher yotziem v’asher yiviam v’lo tihyeh edat Adoshem ca’tzon asher ayn lahem roeh: who takes them out and will bring them in so that the Lord’s community may not be like sheep that have no shepherd.”

Had Moses learned the important lesson that part of successful living is the knowledge that life is a series of exits, and we can determined much of life’s sucesses by how well we navigate these exits?  Is he teaching us, as at a later date Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) would teach us, that there is a time to enter the stage of history and a time to exit from it?   Moses could have protested. G’d’s punishment of death for having struck a rock may have seemed to be too severe, but perhaps Moses had come to understand that the punishment was not against him but rather it was a blessing for Israel.  After the incident of the rock we have to ask ourselves if Moses had lost his touch?

Was his exit a way to teach Israel that no leader lasts forever, that new leadership is part of the natural phenomenon of growth and change.  Understanding this necessary principal of life,  Moses began the transferring of leadership to Joshua by investing him with his authority.  The parashah, however teaches us that the mantel of authority is only part of leadership.   Joshua would have to demonstrate that he had earned the nation’s respect and the right to be its leader. Joshua was tasked with demonstration that he had a willingness to lead, a commitment to the nation and its people, and a sense of humility combined with wisdom and caring.
Moses understood that his job was to develop a smooth transition of power. He realized that he could be no more than a link in the chain of history. How much better the world might be if all of us could live our lives to the fullest, prepare the next generation for the future and know that we have not left our loved ones “like sheep that have no shepherd.”  Do you agree?