Pinchas and God's Tshuvah

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

PINCHAS AND GOD'S TSHUVAH
In a drusha that I wrote on the story of Pinchas, I discussed an idea that I developed from this parsha that God ended the Divine jealous rage that had brought a plague upon the Israelites when confronted with Pinchas's jealous rage, and that's how and why God ended the plague and made a Brit Shalom with Pinchas.
My drusha suggests that God sometimes needs to do tshuvah. I believe that the mass genocide of the Moabites (kill every male, including babies, and ever female except virgins, who become booty), as well as the plague that shattered Israelite society, are examples.

What do we mean when we say "God" brought on the plague or ordered genocide?
I -- this is just me, me only, just I -- do not mean that a Voice from Nowhere speaks to Moshe or shakes the earth or invigorates bacteria into a plague.
What I mean is that the processes of the universe -- the Very Breath of Life Itself, which our tradition heard as YHWH, a Breathing sound, and as Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, a spiral growing process -- act in subterranean ways to bring on such results, and also to call forth human intervention to prevent or soften or heal such results.
I image this breath also as a double spiral or helix of I-It and I-Thou, both Divine attributes that arise in the very process of the arousal of the universe, one devoted to more and more self-reflectiveness in order to become more efficient and one devoted to more and more self-reflectiveness in order to become more loving.
One I-It, one I-Thou. Both, aspects of God. To me, more satisfying and more accurate than the classic (Kabbalists) sense of male and female aspects of God.
I believe that when either "takes over" it is necessary for the universe to "do tshuvah" -- make a crucial turn on the spiral of sacred history.
"Necessary" in the sense that the desire of the universe to become more and more fully self-reflective so as to Mirror the Infinite God (Eyn Sof) requires each continuing turn on the spiral.
God in the universe wants to keep spinning upward, or onward, or deeperward.

We might read the Torah story this way:
In some underground Process, the leap forward in communicative ability that brought the people of Israel into sexual contact with a people they had not intimately known before brought about a plague. As when measles decimated the Native Americans and syphilis the Europeans. Not because their intimate connection was IN ITSELF a "sin," but because the rush of new connection outran the care necessary to make the connection holy. When the ghetto walls fall, make sure that you tie sacred tzitzis -- conscious fuzzy fringes to mark the newly fuzzy boundaries between you.
Then you will not find yourself driven into genocide to protect your sense of self, nor subjected to a plague because your sense of self collapsed.
I-It alone leads to violent destruction, greed, oppression, violated boundaries.
I-Thou alone leads to stagnation, self-satisfaction, sloth.
Either violates the universe's urge toward deeper and deeper self-reflection, deeper mirroring of God.
So I would say the midrash is not just a twirl of Torah but about the deepest questions of What / Who God is.
When we read a terrifying passage of Torah in which God indeed seems unjust, genocidal, what do we do?
* Affirm it? -- : "That's Torah. Still applies. Ugly, but necessary. Off Rabin." ---
* Limit it? -- "That WAS Torah, but no longer; the Rabbis decided the Moabites etc were scattered to the winds and not by us, so this doesn't apply to anyone any more."
*Reject it? -- "That never was really Torah. Just some angry human writer expressing his own national chauvinism.
But in the 3rd case, where did it come from? Does it help any to say human beings wrote it? How come? Are we "in the Image of God" or not? What does that mean?
For me, the heartbreaking 4th perspective IS MUCH TRUER: -- This really is a manifestation of God, BUT GOD DOES TSHUVAH. GOD GROWS. The God Who becomes manifest thru all life is growing in fits and starts toward DEEPER CONSCIOUSNESS. PART OF THAT growth IS (TERRIBLE BUT TRUE) THE ABILITY TO MURDER, DESTROY.
So for me the midrash is really a truth.
Since occasionally the world does erupt in genocidal rage, shall we not teach that God indeed sometimes experiences the nightmare of genocidal rage? Is God only the "nice stuff" in the world, and everything else is just us disgusting humans? Is Isaiah's "the One Who makes peace and creates evil" wrong?
(Might be. It's not true just because Isaiah said so. But I raise the question.)
I know that much of modern thought moves in exactly this direction. Looking at the world, I do not find this accurate. I find more accurate the picture of a world in which there are upheavals of treating humans and the earth as mere things, objects, tools -- and that this (as Buber taught about I-It) has its benign side. But if this Doing aspect of Divinity is not contained by Love, I-Thou, Be-ing, then it becomes extremely destructive.
In my view, the best we can do with such moments is to draw from them our own/God's Own shock, horror, and tshuvah.

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Director, The Shalom Center.