Rise Above the Mind; Realize Absolute Truth | Parshat Pinhas
Jewish Kabbalah Meditation ר Reish | Awaken Awe
Parshah Summary – P’shat
The parshah opens with Hashem rewards Aaron’s grandson, Pinhas, for a violent act of zealotry. In the midst of a plague caused by an idolatrous orgy between the Israelite men and Midianite women, a prince from the tribe of Shimon named Zimri, along with his partner, a Midianite princess named Cozbi, is killed by Pinhas at the end of the last parshah. Perhaps ironically, Pinhas’ reward is that he receives God’s Brit Shalom – “Covenant of Peace.”
In preparation for war with the Midianites, a census is then taken of men eligible for battle between the ages of twenty and sixty, numbering 601,730. Moses is then instructed on how the Land is to be divided by lottery among the tribes and families of Israel. The five daughters of Tzelofhad come forward and petition Moses that they be granted the portion of land belonging to their father, who died without sons; Hashem accepts their claim and incorporates it into the Torah’s laws of inheritance. Next, Moses is told to ascend a hill and view the Land, after which he will die, a consequence of his earlier act of striking a rock to draw forth water. Moses then empowers Joshua to succeed him by placing his hands upon him, which is the origin of s’miha, the ordination of rabbis and other Jewish spiritual leaders today. The parshah then concludes with a detailed list of the daily offerings, along with the additional (Musaf) offerings brought on Shabbat, Rosh Hodesh (first of the month), and the festivals of Pesakh, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Sh’mini Atzeret.
Torah of Awakening | Jewish Meditation Teaching
Rabbi Yitzhak of Vorki told this story: “Once, when I was on the road with my holy teacher Rabbi David of Lelov, and stopped over in a town far from our home, a woman suddenly fell upon him in the street and began to beat him. She thought he was her husband who had abandoned her many years ago. After a few moments she saw her error and burst into tears. ‘Do not cry,’ Rabbi David said to her, ‘You were not striking me, but your husband.’ And he added in a low tone, ‘How often we cannot see the truth of what is right in front of us!’” (Adapted from Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim)
Preconceptions are good- if an arrow is stuck in your body, you must assume that your wound is dangerous and attend to it right away. You should not waste time speculating about the intention of the person who shot the arrow. But later, when you do deal with the origin of the arrow, then it is better to let go of preconceptions so that you might discover the truth in an unbiased way. It is better to be open, to be in a state of asking rather than knowing, to know that you don’t know yet.
Questioning can be uncomfortable, because when we hold fast to certain beliefs, it often connects us with a certain tribe or group that hold the same opinions or beliefs. Questioning the beliefs of the group to which we belong can even be dangerous: וַתִּשְׁלַ֤ח אִיזֶ֙בֶל֙ מַלְאָ֔ךְ אֶל־אֵלִיָּ֖הוּ... Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah… - Melakhim Alef (1 Kings) 19:2, Sephardic Haftara for Parshat Pinhas In the haftara, Jezebel vowed to have Elijah killed for questioning the cult of Baal that the Israelites had adopted. Despondent, he left the world of people and went out into the wilderness to die. But then an angel came to him, gave him food and drink and commanded him: “Get up and eat!” He ate and drank a little, then lay back down again to die. The angel roused him again and gave him some more food: “You will need this for your journey ahead!” Elijah then seems to manifest super powers from the second meal; he gets up and walks for forty days and nights. Eventually he comes to a dark cave, and here he is shown a powerful vision of the natural world: great winds, earthquakes and fires. He looks for God in each of these phenomena, but he cannot find the Divine in any of these. Where does he find It?
ק֖וֹל דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה
kol d’mama dakah “a still, small voice”
In other words, he finds the Divine within the stillness – he finds the sacred in the open space within which the storms of thought and feeling arise – the space of consciousness itself. And this is the deeper reason to know we don’t know. When we think we know, we identify with our beliefs; we identify with the stormy drama. But in the knowing that we don’t know yet, we open not only to finding out the external truth; we open to the truth of our own Being: the ק֖וֹל דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה kol d’mama dakah, the stillness of consciousness that we are.
But how can we transcend our biases, when they seem so real? Paradoxically, you transcend our biases by admitting you have biases, because the admission objectifies it, which is the beginning of disidentification. Then, the bias is there, but you are no longer manipulated by it; you are above, beyond it, the one who sees it; the ק֖וֹל דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה kol d’mama dakah – the small but powerful voice of stillness, rather than the loud voice of outrage and drama. This is meditation. So, when there is an arrow stuck in your body, attend to it without question. But when the thoughts begin about who shot the arrow, be the openness – be the stillness, the perception of your own bias; this is the beginning of wisdom, the symbol for which is the letter ר reish.
Read past teachings on Pinhas HERE
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