Defiant Dignity (Pinchas)
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
I dedicate this learning to my brother-in-law, Arsen Ostrovsky.
A few months ago, thanks to the generosity of beloved friends, I was able to travel recently to Sydney, Australia, in the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack at Bondi Beach last December. My brother-in-law was shot in that attack. Thank God, he has physically recovered. My sister and nieces, who were also there, were not physically harmed, though they endured something no family should ever have to endure. Many people lost their lives.
Being in Sydney was both a blessing and an education. It revealed, painfully, the growing acceptability of antisemitism in too many places. And I want to be careful here. There is a difference between hateful rhetoric and violence. But they are connected. They exist on a continuum. The danger of violent rhetoric is that it does not stay limited to words.
Just yesterday, Arsen testified before Australia’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into antisemitism. He recounted not only the attack itself, but the thousands of threats and messages that followed, people turning his suffering into a conspiracy theory, claiming it was staged, that the blood on his face was makeup, that AI had somehow manufactured the evidence. All of it was a rejection of the right of a Jew to live in dignity.
He stood with eloquence and bravery. His voice quivered only when he spoke about our family, his children, his wife, my sister. It was a model of Jewish courage, Jewish pride, and moral steadiness. To stand in the face of antisemitism and call it out publicly, with dignity and clarity, is one of the responsibilities of this moment. He did so in a way that nobly modeled the mandate.
That brings us to Parashat Pinchas, one of the most difficult portions in the Torah.
The story begins at the end of last week’s portion. Israel is under assault, spiritually and communally. A plague breaks out. Pinchas, the son of Elazar, the son of Aaron the priest, sees a public desecration at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. He takes a spear and kills two people, and the plague stops.
This week’s portion opens with what sounds like divine praise. God says that Pinchas turned back divine wrath by displaying his passion, his “kina,” a word that means zeal, jealousy, fervor. And then God says, “Therefore, I grant him My covenant of shalom, My covenant of peace.”
That should trouble us. It must trouble us.
Yes, Pinchas acts in response to a threat against the community. Yes, Jewish leaders today must stand up against threats to Jewish dignity, including Antisemitism - and the Antizionism that so often serves as its fig leaf. We must speak, organize, testify, confront, and refuse to shrink.
But we must not do what Pinchas did. His act was violent. It was a spear thrust into human bodies. And even if the Torah presents the biblical context as a moment of existential threat, our ethical instinct must resist any easy sanctification of violence. We fight for Jewish safety, but we fight like mentches. We fight within the norms of a just society. We fight with strength, with strategy, with clarity, and with dignity.
And perhaps the Torah knows this too.
The word shalom in this verse is written in the Torah scroll with a broken vav. The letter itself is fractured. Anywhere else, a broken letter would make the scroll invalid. Here, the brokenness is required. The Torah is kosher only if this shalom is visibly wounded.
What kind of peace follows violence? A broken peace. A peace that may stop a plague, but cannot be whole. A peace that may interrupt destruction, but cannot be the fullness our people deserves.
Watching Arsen testify, and then watching him speak afterward with defiant dignity, I saw a different model. Fierce, but not cruel. Strong, but not violent. Unyielding, but deeply human. He channeled the best lesson we might draw from Pinchas without importing the worst of Pinchas.
That is our calling now.
We bless each other to be strong and fierce in defense of Jewish dignity, just as we are strong and fierce in defense of human dignity. We dare not shrink. Our children are watching. And if we want them to inherit a whole peace, not a broken one, we must teach them how to fight like mentches by modeling that commitment ourselves, fiercely and mindfully.