Parashat Pinchas 5777
Rabbi Nachman Kahana
Rewarding Murder
Our parasha begins:
וידבר ה’ אל משה לאמר: פינחס בן אלעזר בן אהרן הכהן השיב את חמתי מעל בני ישראל בקנאו את קנאתי בתוכם ולא כליתי את בני ישראל בקנאתי: לכן אמר הנני נתן לו את בריתי שלום: והיתה לו ולזרעו אחריו ברית כהנת עולם תחת אשר קנא לאלהיו ויכפר על בני ישראל:
HaShem said to Moshe, “Pinchas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the kohen, has turned my anger away from the Israelites. Since he was as zealous for my honor… Therefore, tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for Yisrael”.
The Jewish people are awaiting another “Pinchas” to arise and be zealous for the honor of HaShem, by destroying all the enemies of HaShem and Am Ysrael.
The time has long passed for all rational people to dismantle the UN brick by brick, lie by lie, distortion by distortion, for it is the modern-day version of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The World Heritage Committee of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization designated the Old City of Hebron and the Cave of Machpela (The tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of Judaism) as “A Palestinian Heritage Site, registered under the government of the Palestinian Authority.” In actuality, the only heritage that the Arabs have regarding Hebron is the bestial massacre of the Jewish community in 1929.
For many years, the small Jewish community in the ancient city of Hebron lived in peace with their Arab neighbors. For three days and nights in August 1929, Hebron turned into a city of terror and murder as the Arab residents led a rampaging massacre against the helpless Jewish community, while the British police stood by oblivious to the rivers of blood running under their feet. The savage Arabs neither had pity on the old, nor on the disabled. They cut open the stomachs of pregnant women and wrote the textbook for the Nazis to follow ten years later. By the time the massacre ended, 67 Jews lay dead – their homes and synagogues destroyed. The aftermath left Hebron barren of Jews for the first time in hundreds of years.
It is an Arab heritage, not only those of Hebron but of all Arabs descendant from Yishmael and Aisav, to murder and destroy. Given the chance, they would repeat it in every place in Eretz Yisrael where a Jew is found, as they do to their own brothers and sisters in Arab countries.
The Arab Hebron Heritage
The following scenario is hypothetical though it contains many ongoing elements in our lives.
Chazal (Jewish sages) quote a useful allegory. Farmer A had a mound of earth in the middle of his field that interfered with plowing, and his neighbor farmer B had a ditch in his field that interfered with his plowing. The local rabbi solved their problem by suggesting that they dig up the mound and pour the earth into the ditch, thereby allowing both farmers to plow freely.
It is obvious that, as long as the Koran maligns the Torah, any bilateral agreement is impossible. Notwithstanding this truth, President Trump prodded our Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into meeting once again with the chairman of the PA to work out an accord of sorts from the long-suffering political impasse.
Israel has an annoying “mound” composed of certain elements among Charedim who are fanatical and ignorant in Torah and in the ways of the world – these include ones in Meah Shearim, Bet Shemesh and Bnai Brak who call Israeli police ‘Nazis’, beat up soldiers of Tzahal, and hang up signs in their neighborhoods that read, “Arabs yes – Zionists no”.
They curse the day the Medina was established, and long for the time when they can live under the cruel hand of the gentile and wait for their Mashiach. They number hundreds in Israel and thousands in the US.
In contrast to our “mound”, the PA has a ditch in the form of a diminished stature in the world. Israel’s economy is booming. Super powers are competing for her hand by cutting deals, while the PA is dropping behind with only a few irrelevant committees in the UN that “shake up” the world with their historic resolutions.
Our Prime Minister and the PA chairman have put their heads together and figured out a way to fill the PA ditch with the Israeli mound.
Several weeks after the meeting, feverish building began in the north of Ramallah in the vicinity of four Arab villages. Arabs generally live in ground-level homes, but here the buildings were three stories high with many rooms in each apartment, and each with an uncovered porch. In the middle of every 100 apartments was a central building obviously not meant for living quarters. Next to every one of these central buildings was a one-story house with a receptacle on the roof for gathering rain water and a large pipe from the receptacle into the building.
The locals never saw these strange goings-on before, and the workmen did not know for whom they were constructing these villages. All together there were 1000 apartments with not a soul occupying them.
Then one day, a full-page colored ad appeared in all the Chareidi newspapers, whose caption read: “Kollel of Freedom and Peace”.
The ad itself read: “Those who are approved to join this advanced Torah kollel will receive a new spacious apartment in a new building, with a large bet midrash (study hall) and mikva (ritual immersion bath) on the premises. The stipend for learning will depend on the level of the student. For every child, the family will receive an additional $500 a month, including free health benefits.
The kollel is under the auspices of the PA. Security is guaranteed by the United States.
There is no military draft. No police who might give one the reason to call him “Nazi”. There will be free movement between the PA areas and Israel. The PA will provide for Talmud Torahs (religious schools) for all the children with no requirement to study secular matters.
Modesty in the public areas will be upheld in the best of Jewish and Moslem traditions.
One may speak any language – Hebrew, Arabic or Yiddish. There will be local shechita (ritual slaughter of animals for food) according to any desired kashrut.
This project will serve as a flag to the world that the Arabs seek true peace with the Jews, but not with the Zionist Jews. The Arabs can live in peace with the Jewish religion and culture”.
At first the ad was regarded as a joke, but it appeared again.
The next ad announced a bus tour of the area in order to prove that the offers are legitimate.
It was the buzz in yeshiva circles in Meah Shearim, Bet Shemesh, Bnai Brak and other Chassidic and Lithuanian Torah centers – even as distant as Williamsburg and Kiryat Yoel in New York. No draft, no demonstrations, big money for children, health insurance, new home, no religious Zionists with their little kippot (religious skull cap); all this and still remain in Eretz Yisrael.
The first tour included four buses with 200 people mostly from Meah Shearim. The little villages were a pleasure for the eyes. Lunch was served by the PA with all the well-known hechshers (kosher supervision) – Rubin, Badatz, Bet Yosef. The shul (synagogue) buildings were outstanding as were the mikvaot.
The local Arabs from the nearby villages greeted the tourists with open hands and hearts.
A rabbinic delegation met with the US Ambassador who verified that security would be guaranteed by the US army.
It was Pesach time when the next ad appeared in the papers. It called for young families to register for the Elul zman (a period of religious learning that begins on the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul). Whoever wishes can own a car and have free access to and from Israel all hours of the day and night, with no road blocks on the Arab side.
Among the first to come were some well-known names in Meah Shearim – Rivlin, Blau, Hirsh, Wisefish and Katzenelenbogen – along with some ultra-chareidi families from Bet Shemesh and Bnai Brak.
The PA made more political propaganda than money could buy. They showed pictures of the kollel learning and the spacious homes and institutions, with smiling wives and children sitting on the well-kempt lawns under the beautiful sunshine.
Then the volume picked up. The Lithuanians joined in. However, knitted kippot were totally absent.
The Palestinians become the darlings of the western liberal world. The feeling was that the Israelis were truly the occupiers. Basic justice demanded that the Israelis retreat to the pre-1967 borders, because it was obvious that the Palestinians were the “good guys” and the Israelis the “bad guys”.
Then it happened. The true Arab heritage was revealed. It was 3 a.m., when the kollel families were sound asleep in preparation for another uplifting spiritual day of Torah study in their beautiful surroundings, free of the impositions of the Nazi-like police and without the disturbing shmata (rag) on a stick the Zionists call a flag, and free of the Zionist soldiers who enter with chutzpa the Meah Shearim zone.
Hundreds of Arabs from the neighboring villages had sharpened their machetes, knives, and swords and were gathered near the central mosque for the order to pounce upon the Jews in their midst.
At noon of the following day, reporters from all over the world descended on the small Jewish enclave to capture on film the massacre of men, women, and children. The scenes were too horrendous to describe.
American army officers came to inspect the area that they had guaranteed to safeguard. No one blamed them, since everyone knew that it would take them at least 72 hours to come from Frankfurt, Germany.
There was utter disbelief in Meah Shearim, Bet Shemesh, and Bnai Brak; not a soul remained alive.
This, dear reader, is the real Palestinian Hebron Heritage, where Arabs pounce on their innocent Jewish neighbors and give vent to the hate in their souls.
The leaders of the massacre were arrested and held for what passed for a trial.
It took three days for the PA prosecutor to read out the names of the murdered Jews. At the end of the prosecutor’s accusations, the judges turned to each murderer’s lawyer asking for his defense.
One of the lawyers quoted from a Jewish legend:
A Jew found a half-dead snake. He brought it home and nursed it back to full health. At that very moment, the snake bit the man and he died.
The man appeared to King Solomon in a dream asking to put the snake on trial for what he did.
The trial began and the King asked the snake for an explanation of his ungrateful behavior. The snake replied simply in his own defense: “Your Majesty, I am a snake”. The King found him not guilty.
After a few minutes of deliberation, the PA judges declared the villages ‘not guilty’ because ‘they are Arabs’.
This is the essential and real Arab Hebron Heritage, waiting for an opportunity to find expression.
Shabbat Shalom,
Nachman Kahana
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