At the end of Parshat Balak, Pinchas, in a fit of zealotry, thrusts a spear through an Israelite man making love to a Midianite woman. At the beginning of Parshat Pinchas, G!d seems to praise him and bestows upon him a covenant of shalom – of peace.
But – here’s the thing. As I learned from my wise friend Joey Eisman, the vav in shalom (the vav is a long mostly straight letter in Hebrew) is broken in the middle. It is not whole. The word shalom comes from the root for whole/complete – shleimut, a related word, is the Hebrew word for wholeness. So the brit shalom is not really shalom – not whole – it is broken. Some covenant to be given!
The two most central parts of the Jewish liturgy are the Shema and the Amidah. The Shema proclaims that Hashem is our G!d and that Hashem is One. The blessing before the Shema proclaims G!d’s ahavah, love, for Israel – and the first paragraph of the Shema, after the first line, commands us to love G!d. The gematria for ahavah is 13 – and so is the gematria for echad, the word “one.” A broken peace – a peace that is pieces – cannot, therefore, be a peace that is from G!d. It lacks unity – it lacks love – and it is a false peace.
The Amidah, the central prayer, always ends with the
blessing for peace. Our prayer must, to be kosher, end in a prayer for peace –
for wholeness – for oneness. Again, the brit shalom is not this but the opposite.
In effect, three times a day – four on Shabbat and chagim – five on Yom Kippur –
we pray, ultimately, to NOT be like Pinchas. But perhaps we can pray that he
found his way to teshuvah – that the vav was, at some point, completed as he
repented of destroying the image of G!d in the two people he murdered.
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