DIN Pinchos Musings

 

There is a Targum Yonasan (Shemos 4:13) that states that Moshe wanted Pinchos to be the leader and thought all along that Pinchos would succeed him but changed his mind after witnessing Pinchos' act of zealotry, against Zimri.

 His hunch turned-out to be to be correct! 

A "kanai" may be a good thing; it saved the lives of thousands of Jews but he cannot be a leader, a "kanai" acts on impulse and even though it can be a plus, the "minus" factors are of a greater concern. 

A lesson one should keep in mind when appointing or following a religious leader, if he is a "kinai" stay away from him... far far away, even though he may be doing things altruistically!

Another point.

In this weeks parsha Hashem instructs Moshe to count the Jewish people after the plaque that killed 24,000 Jews.

Rashi asks why now? 

Rashi has two answers:

The first one is very interesting but problematic. 

Rashi compares this to a shepherd who counts his flock after it has been ravaged by wolves, so too Hashem wanted to count His children who had survived the plague.

The obvious question is, what kind of comparison is this? 

In the case of the shepherd, he really doesn't know how many were killed, so he needs the count, but in our case, we have the exact count of those who perished, as the Torah tells us in the last verse of last week's Parshas Balak, that the count was 24,000?

It could be that Rashi was also bothered by this comparison, hence his second answer, that when the Jews left Egypt, Moshe became the leader, and was given the exact count of how many Jews there were, and now that he was about to hand over the leadership to Joshua he wanted to give the new leader an exact count. 

The question now is, if Rashi had a problem with his first answer  the one with parable of the shepherd and the wolf, why didn't he just give us his second answer straightaway?

Could it be that Rashi wants to give us a message with the parable?

I'm sure my intelligent talmedei chachamim readers will come up with different ideas.

I believe that Rashi's message is very poignant in our days!

There are frummies who keep harping on the past. Oy, the Zionists built the State to uproot the Torah, to uproot Jewish values. 

Oy the "yaldei Tieman!" etc etc.

But notice, Rashi's "wolf/shepherd" parable should have been on the words

שאו את ראש כל עדת בני ישראל 

"Take a count of the entire assembly of the Children of Israel"

isn't  the parable about the count? Yet Rashi addresses the words two verses back

ויהי אחרי המגפה

"It was after the plague?"

 Rashi is telling us that the time has arrived to stop harping on the past and move forward.

It's after "the plague"... Hellllow! It's AFTER the plague! let's move forward, let's get  every Jew to feel special that he is being counted no matter the past and just like the shepherd, though he suffered a devastating loss will inexorably move forward as his flock multiplies and recovers, stronger than ever, so too will we the over 7 million Jews living in Eretz Yisrael move forward stronger than ever, despite, the frummies harping on the not-so-great beginnings.