Parshat Pinchas

Parshat Pinchas
July 18, 2008/ 15 Tammuz 5768

"And God said to Moses and to Eleazar son of Aaron the priest: 'Take a census of the whole Israelite community, from the ages of twenty years up, by their ancestral houses..." (Numbers 26:1-2)

Parshat Pinchas marks a significant turning point in the Torah. In Chapter 27, God instructs Moses to appoint a new leader for the Israelites—Joshua the son of Nun. Joshua, not Moses, will lead the People into the Promised Land and guide the next phase of their development as a free nation.

Rashi, the great medieval French commentator, sees this drama beginning a little earlier. In Chapter 26, Moses takes a census of the whole Israelite people, ostensibly to determine how many of them are fit for the forthcoming battle with Midian. Rashi, however, finds a hidden pathos underlying this simple action:

"A parable: It is like a shepherd and his flock…when the People left Egypt they were entrusted to Moses' care by number. Now, with his death and the time for returning them drawing near, he hands them back by number."

In Rashi's eyes, the census is a symbol for the end of Moses' leadership. Moses is effectively setting the nation's affairs in order, before he must relinquish control and turn them over to someone new.

In many ways, Moses is a tragic figure. He orchestrates the mass exodus of his entire people from Egyptian slavery, he watches over them through forty perilous years of wandering, he instructs them, bullies them, loves them, and guides them. And yet, at the end of the story, Moses is destined to die before seeing all his dreams for them fulfilled. Someone else will shepherd his flock into the Promised Land.

I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for Moses to step back from leadership. I imagine his silent raging at the unfairness of it all—his raging at God whom he knew face-to-face. I imagine his heartfelt pleading: "I am their leader, how dare You take them away from me?! How will they survive without me? What in the world am I going to do without them?"

And yet, in Moses' pain, I hear the simple human reality of any parent or teacher. A parent brings a child into the world and devotes herself wholeheartedly to nurturing and protecting that new life through a million decisions and hurdles. A teacher invests himself deeply in the lives of his students, coaxing and pushing them, delighting in their progress, worrying about their missteps. And then a child leaves for college, and then the final bell rings in June…And parents and teachers are left with the same questions as Moses: What will they do without me? What will I do without them?

Rabbi Milton Steinberg addresses this challenge in a wonderful essay entitled: "To Embrace With Open Arms." He teaches that one of the basic paradoxes of human life is the desire to hold onto those we care about and the recognition that the intersections of our lives are ultimately temporary. This tension can feel like a tragedy, but it need not be so. We know that holding on forever is untenable—it is simply not the way of the world. And yet, we can discover that this hard reality need not diminish the power of our embrace. We can truly learn to hold with open arms.

Moses was a guide, a teacher, a shepherd, and a parent to the People Israel for a long, long time. Ultimately, not even Moses could hold onto them forever. And so, beginning in Parshat Pinchas, he begins to take the steps to let them go-- to hand them back over to the One whose embrace goes on forever.