Balaq

The Epic Struggle of Pinhas and Zimri

Aryeh Bernstein, 5763

(based on a devar torah for Parashat VaYishlah)

The dramatic peak of this week's parashah comes at its end. There, we find Israelite men triggering a national crisis by indulging in an orgy with Moabite women, practicing both forbidden sex and idolatrous worship. Mosheh tries, apparently without much success, to get things under control, when suddenly, the story unfolds with a stunning flourish that makes our hearts pound no matter how many times we have read it before (Bemidbar 25:6-9):

On this shocking note the parashah ends. At the beginning of next week's parashah, though, God praises Pinhas and rewards him with an eternal covenant of exclusive priestly rule. The Torah then pauses for a biographical afterthought (25:14):

The way the Torah tells us the villain's name is strange. If Zimri's identity were incidental, we might have expected the story to have said, "Just then an Israelite, named Zimri, brought a Midianite woman..." Instead, keeping his identity anonymous during the telling of the story, the Torah keeps our focus away from any personal conflict, but only on the national revolt-a recurring theme in Sefer Bemidbar-and its zealous suppression. For the theme of national rebellions in Bemidbar, it didn't matter who this person was: everyone was rebelling; this person was just the most brazen. By deferring the villain's identity until the end of the story, the Torah in effect says, "Now that you know how the story played out, there's something else you should know about what was going on." Moreover, the Torah goes to lengths to detail Zimri's full genealogy and social status, as it had already done for Pinhas. This baggage assigned to our protagonist and antagonist suggests that the showdown in that tent was not just a one-on-one confrontation, but an epic battle between tribal standard-bearers: Pinhas, grandson of the High Priest, leader of the tribe of Levi, and Zimri, a Chieftain of the tribe of Shimon. In order to understand the significance of this battle, we must explore the background to this story: Who are the tribes of Shimon and Levi and what has their relationship been?

Any examination of Shimon and Levi must begin with their most prominent appearance in the Torah, in Parashat VaYishlah, where they conduct a rescue operation to save their sister Dinah from her rapist's captivity (Bereishit 34). The Torah presents this story equivocally. On one hand, their portrayal is positive, as they save their sister from her rapist, when their father seems unconcerned with her safety or reputation. Further, they get the last word in the argument with their father (verse 31): "וַיֹּאמְרוּ הַכְזוֹנָה יַעֲשֶׂה אֶת אֲחוֹתֵנוּ"/"And they said, ‘Should our sister be treated like a whore?!'" On the other hand, their actions in the city do seem particularly cruel and unwarranted. It is hard to imagine that it was necessary to kill every male in the entire city (verse 25) in order to rescue Dinah. In short, are they courageous heroes on a rescue mission or bloodthirsty thugs, looking for an excuse to ravage a city, spill some blood, and get rich in the process? Who are Shimon and Levi?

Lest we think that the fact that Shimon and Levi get the last word against their father resolves the issue in their favor, Ya‘aqov's deathbed "blessings" shower an equal measure of harshness against them (Bereishit 49:5-7).

The simplest way to understand "when angry they slew men" is that it refers to their plundering of the city of Shehem and Hamor, on their way to rescuing Dinah. Rashi supports such a reading. Ya‘aqov has not forgotten their action and has not been persuaded by their claim of saving their sister's honor. Ya‘aqov's description of their violence, though, is doubled, suggesting an additional referent to their violence. What is added by "when they pleased they uprooted an ox"? There is a strong tradition going back at least as far as Rashi that the "ox" refers to Yoseph. This tradition is rooted textually in Mosheh's final blessings of the tribes at the end of the Torah, in which he describes the tribe of Yoseph, "בְּכוֹר שׁוֹרוֹ הָדָר לוֹ" /"Like a firstling ox in his majesty" (Devarim 33:17).

Their "uprooting" of Yoseph refers to the brothers' selling of Yoseph into slavery in Bereishit 37, Parashat VaYeshev. The text there seems to paint a picture of the brothers acting as a corrupt, corporate unit planning Yoseph's downfall (Bereishit 37:19-20):

I translated the bolded phrase, "וַיֹּאמְרוּ אִישׁ אֶל אָחִיו", as "And the brothers said one to the next". This is the best idiomatic and contextual meaning of the phrase, conveying the sense of all of the brothers grumbling in one shared attitude of contempt. However, the words literally mean, "And they said, one man to his brother." The Midrashic imagination hones in on the singularity of this language and the specificity of the quotation. Who said it to whom? The midrashic, Aramaic translation Targum Yonatan adds an important interpretive clause: "וַאֲמָרוּ שִׁמְעוֹן וְלֵוִי דַהֲווֹ אָחִין בְּעֵיטָתָא גְבַר לְאָחוּי הָא מָרֵי חֶלְמַיָא דֵיכִי אָתֵי"-"And they-Shimon and Levi, who were brothers in council-said, one man to his brother, ‘Here comes the Dreamer-Man!'". Rashi continued this interpretive tradition in his comment on Ya‘aqov's curse to Shimon and Levi (Bereishit 49:5):

These passages portray Shimon and Levi as an inseparable and dangerous pair of rogues-brothers among brothers who are hateful and violent and whose father curses them to be separated from each other. This aspect of their personality seems to be supported, but their apparently unequivocal condemnation does not sit well, since the literary and moral cues from their rescue of Dinah still suggest some merit to them. Can we dig any further into the epic personae of these problematic characters?

Later in the Yoseph trilogy, in Parashat Miqqetz, we read of the confrontations between Yoseph, now Viceroy of Egypt, and his hungry and unknowing brothers. Yoseph hits them at their weak spot, demanding that they leave Binyamin in custody while they go down to get their father. The Torah describes the brothers' panic (Bereishit 42:21):

The language of "וַיֹּאמְרוּ אִישׁ אֶל אָחִיו" /"And the brothers said, one to the next" echoes the plot to kill Yoseph, for which this verse repents. As in the plot to kill Yoseph, this verse is technically singular, so midrashically, we will want one brother to say it to another. If you were staging this as a play, which brother would you script to say that line? We get a further clue three verses later, when Yoseph allows them to take Binyamin back home with them and leave someone else in his stead (42:24): "וַיִּקַּח מֵאִתָּם אֶת שִׁמְעוֹן וַיֶּאֱסֹר אֹתוֹ לְעֵינֵיהֶם"-"And [Yoseph] took from them Shimon and imprisoned him before their eyes." One could read this as random: he had to pick one of the brothers; why not Shimon? However, the precision of Yoseph's vengeful taunting of his brothers throughout the story resists such randomness. Maybe Shimon was really the ringleader behind his attempted murder and Yoseph is paying him back. Recall that above, the singular language of "one man said to his brother" inspired midrashim to pin the plot to kill Yoseph on Shimon and Levi, but still did not address which of them uttered the plot and which one listened and went along. The scene here, of Shimon's imprisonment after a guilt-ridden "one man said to his brother", suggests that Shimon was the ringleader and Levi his partner-in-crime. Indeed, Rashi (Bereishit 42:24) here brings a midrash that goes a bit further then the one he quoted back on the murder plot story.

You may ask, How would Yoseph had known who plotted his murder, since he was off in the distance when the plot was suggested? We must imagine that this scene, occurring when Yoseph was 17, was not the first thing that had happened since he was born. The Torah chooses particular stories to highlight the important themes, from which we can use our imagination to extrapolate other stories, which is a function of midrash. If Shimon was the ruthless brute who plotted Yoseph's death, presumably he found plenty of other, less extreme ways to display his hatred to Yoseph throughout childhood.

As for Levi, the crucial scene for us is the crisis of the golden calf (Shemot 32:26-29):

The language of "each man his sword"-"אִישׁ חַרְבּוֹ"-echoes back to the story of the rescue of Dinah and to the crux of our problem (34:25):

The portrait that emerges is as follows: Shimon is an uncontrollable brute always out for blood, wherever it can be found. Levi is a reckless risk-taker, with perpetually high adrenaline, who is drawn to the gruesome, dark side of life and death. Shimon lacks any trace of morality, while Levi has instincts of morality that can propel his energy into acts of derring-do for the common good. However, he gets riled up very easily and loses control of his moral compass. Maybe it is Levi who, seeing his sister trapped in the home of her rapist and outraged that his father is complying with the marriage proposal, unleashes the risky rescue mission, in which Shimon-always happy to bust some heads-all too eagerly participates. Certainly, they would have to shed blood en route to saving Dinah. Once there, Shimon goes berserk, killing every man in sight and looting property wantonly. In the passion of the moment, Levi gets caught up in Shimon's excesses. Maybe, following the midrash, it is Shimon who sees the hated, daddy's-pet, pretty boy Yoseph coming and proposes the murder. Once the idea is thrown out there, Levi succumbs to Shimon's bad influence and his own passions-he was no fan of Yoseph, either; no one was-and gets caught up in the excitement and bad judgment. Shimon is a villain who must be stifled and contained. Levi is a misguided stick of dynamite, who must be carefully directed and guarded in order to use his zealotry for the good. Most of all, he must be kept far away from Shimon, so Ya‘aqov charges them from his deathbed to be separated.

In the long run, Shimon virtually disappears from Israelite history. His didn't even receive a blessing from Mosheh at the end of the Torah (Devarim 33) and his tribe receives a weak allotment of territory in Eretz Yisrael, buried within the southwestern corner of the largest and most powerful tribe, Yehudah, as if guarded under Yehudah's arm, apart from everyone else. Levi become the ritual leaders of the Jewish people, engaging in tasks that form our national, spiritual core, but that would make most of our stomachs turn. They spend their days slaughtering animals and splattering blood on the altars in order to keep the nation pure of sin and to worship its Maker. They are the most honored of the nation, but they live spread throughout the land, with no land of their own. These are not people you want having political power. Apart from the corrosive influence of Shimon, Levi can perform these spiritual tasks and can be counted on to do impulsive and gruesome dirty work when national survival is at stake. Killing 3,000 fellow Israelites or, in our parashah, running a kamikaze murder raid on Zimri (who would have been his partner instead of his nemesis in less mature days) is not pretty, but these acts prevented far worse disaster from occurring.

A strength and its corresponding weakness are usually embedded within each other. Zealotry and brutality, for example, are two sides of the same coin and the boundary between them can be razor-thin. Our parashah and the epic of which it is a part soberly sound an alarm to us to be aware of who we are, of what we are capable of accomplishing, and in what ways we are dangerous. It warns us to place ourselves in contexts that will suppress our vulnerabilities for doing damage and will enable our contributions to flourish. It also warns us not to dupe ourselves into thinking that if we are doing positive actions, any fallout along the way is justified. We all have Shimons and Levis within us, as individuals and as societies. The story of Pinhas and Zimri warns us to separate our Levis from our Shimons and, when necessary, to let our Levis destroy our Shimons. We have to be on our guard against our own dangerous sides and in a violent, warring world, when we send our leaders to use force, we must not allow the Shimon in them to corrupt the Levi in them.