After the sin of Baal-Pe’or, when our ancestors began to worship an idol, God responded by unleashing a terrible plague. Sinners and innocent alike were stricken, and the plague was only stopped through the intercession of Pinhas. As remembered by the psalmist: “Then Pinhas stood up and vay-falel and so the plague was stayed, and that was counted to him for righteousness to all generations forevermore.”
What is it that Pinhas did to stop the plague? What is the meaning of vay-fel? Interestingly, there are two quite different words that emerge from this common root: one meaning is “to execute judgment,” which is how this psalm is generally translated. But the shoresh or root of this verb, F-L-L, also means “to pray,” as in the Hebrew word tefillah. The Radomsker Rebbe seizes upon this meaning to offer a different understanding of the verse: Pinhas intervened by praying, and it was his prayer that stopped the plague. Because of that intervention, God gave Pinhas his covenant of peace, which benefited all future generations as well.
It would seem that intervention on behalf of God’s people results in receiving a special blessing from God. The lesson we might draw from the reward of Pinhas is that whenever our people are threatened, we must rush to their defense. Just as Pinhas intervened to stop their suffering (even though it was recompense from the hand of God!), so we must not fail to intervene to prevent or to terminate Jewish suffering.
But, the Radomsker notes, such intervention doesn’t always result in blessing. Note, for instance, the fact that Aaron the Kohen also intervened on behalf of God’s people. After the sin of the Golden Calf, a plague also broke out among the people. Without hesitation, Aaron took the incense burner and ran out among the people, swinging the incense to block the epidemic. Aaron’s intervention also worked—the plague stopped wherever he stood. But God remains silent. There is no eternal blessing or special covenant to reward Aaron for his diligence or his concern. Why not?
According to the Radomsker Rebbe, the difference between the two was that Aaron relied on incense, which was only available while the Temple stood, whereas Pinhas relied on prayer, which is always within our reach. So why didn’t God grant a new covenant to Aaron? Perhaps because God wanted us to know that we need nothing more than prayer, turning our hearts to God in the full simplicity of our love, to be able to commune with our Creator. Or, perhaps God was concerned that we might attribute the miracle of the healing to the incense itself, turning God’s sovereign grace into an object of magical coercion. Maybe God though that Aaron even thought that God could be forced to respond in a specific fashion if he used the incense. So God needed to discourage using props when direct action sufficed.
In any case, the implication of both stories together is pretty clear: God doesn’t need fancy incense, lofty title, or great drama. God needs nothing more than our need. As the Talmud puts it: “Ha-Kadosh-Barukh-Hu liba ba’i, God wants the heart.” If we give God our hearts, even just a little, then God will enter that space we offer, filling us and providing us with purpose, strength, and peace.
The key is that God cannot take the first step. Like a well-mannered friend, God waits for an invitation. We are, indeed, the captains of our souls, and God waits for an invitation to step in. Only after we call upon God in purity and in wholeness, only after we have turned ourselves toward God, only then does the Holy One reach out to us.
Perhaps, then, the silence we sometimes hear, the absence we sometimes feel, isn’t so much God’s absence but our own. We keep expecting God to barge in, despite our defenses, our cynicism, our evasions, and God keeps waiting for us to clear a path.
God wants the heart. That little offering is, actually, the hardest gift to give. Our hearts yearn for so many things: much of what we desire is harmful to us, much of what we seek is petty or inconsequential. Underneath that distracting clamor lies our yearning is for matters of true significance: love, truth, beauty, goodness, holiness. We bury those deepest desires under the more gaudy and pushy calls of the superficial and the dangerous. And in acceding to this perverse hierarchy, we banish God from our hearts.
We need, as Jeremiah recognized, to circumcise our hearts anew: to be able to feel the fullness of our feelings, to transcend our wounds and our disappointments, to allow hope and faith to flourish as though we were babes. Our tradition teaches that we have only to reach out to God, and God will be there for us.
The first step is ours. Care to take it?
Shabbat Shalom!