Maureena’s Torah Reflections
Parashat Pinchas. Numbers 25:10-30:1
Last week’s parasha ended with the account of Phinehas killing an Israelite man and a Moabite woman because he felt their flagrant immorality profaned God’s name. This week’s parasha opens with these words:
And the LORD said to Moses, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy (Num. 25:11).
The Torah and some commentators seem to approve of Phinehas’s zealous act. Other post biblical commentators are horrified at his fanatism. In the text of the Torah scroll, which is read on a yearly basis each year in the synagogue, the letter yod in Phinehas’s name is written smaller than the other letters. That is to say, that the letter yod in us (standing for the name of GOD and for y’hudi, (Jew) is diminished in acts of violence and disrespect for others.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, a woman whose origin is lost to history, is a savior of abused girls and women (pp.116-123).
In the following verse, “Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace” (Num. 25:12), the word peace, shalom, has a broken vav in the Torah scroll, indicating that any agreement that is reached by violence and at the expense of peaceful means is inevitably not a whole and perfect peace.
Prepared by Prof. Sr. Maureena Fritz nds
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“Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies.”
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate, No. 4