Pinchas 5786: Know Thy Self

GOOD MORNING! Last week, while attending the wedding of a friend’s son, I was approached by a devoted reader of this column who told me that he has been faithfully reading it for many years and that he really appreciates what I write. He then lowered his voice and said, “You don’t actually write them, do you?”

I answered that I most assuredly do, but that he is in good company. Over the past seven years, since I took over the writing responsibilities from my beloved friend Rabbi Packouz of blessed memory, I have been repeatedly asked who writes the weekly column. On at least four separate occasions I have been asked for the contact information of my ghost writer.

I then told him that I believed their thought process went something along the lines of, “I know that moron; there’s no way he can put a cogent thought together much less string a series of sentences into a weekly column.” He replied with a smile, “That’s exactly what I was thinking!”

It reminded me of the time, many years ago, when I was asked by a very close friend if I played “negative tapes” in my mind. I had no idea what he was talking about so he explained that many people have a voice in their head that continually repeats in the background: “You’re not smart enough. You’re not good-looking enough. You’re not ambitious enough.”

I told him that, aside from it not being a very logical or effective way to live one’s life, my overinflated ego was such that I never actually believed any of those things.

But what I failed to consider at the time was that the reason for my healthy emotional state was most likely due to the fact that I had been raised by extraordinary parents who focused on developing my strengths and constantly conveyed that they believed in me. This instilled me with a certain level of self-confidence and self-esteem (qualities that my wife would likely tell you are wholly unwarranted).

This reminds me of a teaching that I heard many years ago from my brilliant father. There is a Torah obligation to give constructive criticism (Leviticus 19:17) and he was giving a class on criticism and the proper way to go about dispensing it. He explained that it was crucial to learn how to give constructive criticism because the harm of saying something negative to someone is not momentary – it can last a lifetime.

Unfortunately, most people view themselves through the eyes of others – meaning their perception of what others think of them is how they actually see themselves (which is a terrible way to live). My father explained that when a person hears a negative comment about himself it may cause him to repeat it to himself over and over for years or even decades to come. Thus, one negative comment can reverberate thousands of times in a person’s mind, which can be torturous. I understood that this is what my friend was referring to when he asked me if I played negative tapes in my head.

Navigating these turbulent waters can be very tricky. A young lawyer friend recounted the following incident that happened to him a few months ago.

“I accidentally hit ‘reply all’ on a firm-wide email. It wasn’t even scandalous; I just sent ‘Sounds good, thanks!’ to eighty-five people who absolutely did not need to know that it sounded good to me. The moment I realized what I’d done, my heart dropped into my shoes. I didn’t just close the laptop; I physically backed away from it like it was a live grenade. I spent the rest of the afternoon drafting an elaborate apology email in my head, and then I wasted an hour weighing the pros and cons of calling attention to my faux pas. I absentmindedly started wondering if the witness protection program accepts people whose only crime is digital incompetence. When I checked my inbox six hours later – expecting a pitchfork mob – there were zero replies. Nobody cared. Which, somehow, managed to hurt my feelings in a completely different way.”

In this week’s Torah reading we find a very relevant lesson regarding self-worth and the importance of knowing who we truly are in order to have self-esteem.

“God said to Moses and Elazar the son of Aaron the priest; take a census of the entire congregation of Israel from twenty years and up according to their fathers’ house […] The sons of Reuven: Chanoch, the family of the Chanochi to Pallu the Pallui family […]” (Numbers 26:1-5).

In this week's Torah portion, we find the Jewish people nearing the end of their forty years of wandering in the desert and on the cusp of entering the Land of Israel. The Almighty commands Moses and his nephew Elazar (who ascended to the position of High Priest after his father Aaron’s death) to conduct a new census of the Jewish people. This census came on the heels of the terrible plague that wiped out tens of thousands of Israelites.

The biblical commentator Rashi quotes a beautiful analogy from a teaching found in the Midrash Tanchuma on this week’s Torah reading. “Says the Midrash; ‘This can be compared to a shepherd who comes to discover that wolves have attacked his flock of sheep, so he carefully counts them to know the number of survivors.’ Likewise, the Almighty commands Moses to count the Jewish people – those who survived the plague.”

The people were counted by their families (“according to their fathers’ house”). The Midrash Rabbah (Shir HaShirim 4:12) explains that to all the family names, the Hebrew letter “ה – hay” was added as a prefix and the Hebrew letter “י – yud” was appended as a suffix. Thus, the family of Chanoch was referred to as “HaChanochi.”

The Midrash goes on to explain the reason for this. The Hebrew letters yud and hay comprise one of God’s names. What was the reason for the sudden attachment of God’s name to each and every family in the Jewish nation?

The reason for this change to their names, says the Midrash, is that the nations of the world mocked the purity of the Jewish lineage. They pointed out that the Egyptians, who had complete control of the Jewish men (whom they enslaved), must have surely violated the Jewish women. They therefore argued that many so-called Israelites were actually descendants of their Egyptian overlords.

Because of this the Almighty attached His name to the names of each and every one of the Jewish families in order to attest to the purity of their Jewish ancestry. However, this teaching requires further clarification.

It is difficult to understand how adding two letters to the names of the Jewish families deflects the defamatory accusations of the other nations. After all, the Torah is part of the heritage of the Jewish people; it is hard to believe that other nations would take it as concrete proof that God Himself was affirming the purity of the Jewish lineage.

The only possible answer is that the Almighty didn’t really do it to deflect the claims of the nations of the world. Rather, this was done to assuage the insecurities of Israelites themselves.

At that time, the Jewish people were recovering from a plague that decimated a significant portion of the nation. This plague had come as a punishment for their involvement in licentious behavior and acts of depravity while consorting with the daughters of Midian (see Numbers 25:1-9). These transgressions seemed to indicate a presence of immoral character – the sort of character traits distinctly attributed to Egyptian nature and culture.

(In fact, the sages point out that the reason our forefather Abraham, who was traveling to Egypt due to a famine in the Land of Israel, wanted to hide his beautiful wife Sara from the Egyptians was because they were well-known for being depraved and would think nothing of snatching her away from him.)

Consequently, given that these immoral transgressions were committed by a large number of Israelites, it might have lent some credence to the notion that the allegations of the nations of the world were indeed true (i.e. that many Israelites were of Egyptian parentage). For this reason, the Almighty lent His holy name to the Jewish families to reassure them that they were of pure lineage.

But there is a much deeper lesson here.

One of the terrible outcomes of having poor self-esteem is that we mistakenly try to combat it and its debilitating effects by deflecting responsibility for mistakes we make. Consequently, we often ascribe our failings to issues that are beyond our control (such as parentage), when in truth we must own our mistakes and work to improve ourselves.

Perhaps the real lesson that we can learn from here is that God is lending His name to our lineage to tell us that our past is in His hands, but the present and future are in our own. At the end of the day, isn’t that the most empowering message of all?

Pinchas, Numbers 25:10 - 30:1

In last week's Torah portion, Pinchas acted to stop a public display of immorality. He thus stemmed the plague of retribution that was killing the multitudes. He is rewarded by being made a Cohen by Divine decree.

The Almighty commands Moses to attack the Midianites in retribution for the licentious plot the Midianites perpetrated upon the Israelites. A new census is taken of the Jewish people revealing that there are 601,730 men available for army duty. God directs the division of the Land of Israel amongst the tribes. The Levites are tallied. The daughters of Tzelafchad come forward to petition Moses regarding their right of inheritance. Moses inquires of the Almighty, Who answers in their favor.

Moses asks the Almighty to appoint a successor and the Almighty directs Moses to designate Joshua (Yehoshua). The Torah portion concludes with the various offerings – daily, Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh (new month), and holidays.