The System and the Shtuss
Last week we read about Bilam and Balak’s plans to destroy us. Hashem protects us from their curses and their prophecies of doom, but it’s three chapters of glory that lead up to ten verses of disaster. The parsha ends when Bilam figures out our weakness for beautiful women and avodah zarah. We settle in Shittim, in the area whose name is connected to shtuss, foolishness (Sanhedrin 105b – 106a). And the result is that twenty-four thousand of us were killed in a plague of our own making.
It was Pinchas, of course who saved the day. Where Moshe was paralyzed, Pinchas was able to step into the gap and to act. Rav Schorr explains that this was part of the transition from the generation of the desert, which was the generation that received and lived the Written Torah, to the generation that entered Israel, which received and lived the Oral Torah.
Pinchas acts as an individual. He reacts to his specific circumstances. “Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aaron the Kohen saw (Bamidbar 25:7).” The meraglim looked at Eretz Yisrael, the land of good that Hashem gave us, and saw only a circumstance they could not work with. Pinchas looked at a situation of chaos and despair and found the opportunity to act. He was in tune with his own soul, his own feelings. He was a zealot, and he understood where the place was within halacha, and within his unique circumstances, for his own personal contribution.
Rav Schorr points out that Pinchas the man is the perfect introduction to the census that takes up most of parshat Pinchas. This is the second census in Sefer Bamidbar, and it was a census specifically for the generation that was going into Eretz Yisrael. At the beginning of Parshat Bamidbar, Rav Schorr explains that a census is not just a counting, it is a spiritual accounting. It is called “pikud” by the chachamim, which is connected to the idea of being appointed over something. We are lifted up and reconnected to our source. We are told to recognize the unique space we are given in the world, and to be accountable for it.
This census, and everything that came before it, happened in Shittim. We sinned in Shittim, we were saved from that sin in Shittim, and we were counted in Shittim. It is an interestingly named place because it shares its name with the wood that was used to build the mishkan. Of course, this is not a coincidence. The two shittim are connected, but it is a connection of opposites. We see this often in the Hebrew language. For example, shoresh is a root and leshareish means to uproot. So while Shittim is connected to shtuss, which is foolishness and straying from the right path, it is also connected to the word shitah, which is a system or a path for thought, specifically the path we are supposed to be on.
The Midrash Tanchuma (Teruma 9) tells us that we had the wood of the shittim tree with us in the desert because of Yaacov. Faced with the long exile of Egypt, Yaacov responded by planting the trees of our geulah. He was in Egypt just to “stay awhile” (Bereisheit 47:4), as the Haggadah tells us, not to stay permanently. He was a wanderer, in a land where he knew he could not build anything physical that would last. But any amount of time is long enough to plant something spiritual.
The acacia trees that he planted were the system of the Mishkan. Unlike the first and second temples, the Mishkan was never destroyed. The Gemara (Sotah 9a) tells us that its beams and bars were only hidden. The difference between the Mikdash and the Mishkan is that the Mikdash was a kedusha of space. That space can therefore be ruined or destroyed. But the Mishkan was a kedusha that moved. It was the kedusha of Hashem dwelling within us. It goes wherever we go. It cannot be destroyed.
We read this parsha during the three weeks, and the message of Pinchas echoes through the generations. We are in mourning for the Beit HaMikdash. But we haven’t lost the spiritual reality of the Mishkan. Hashem remains with us wherever we go. We each have our own unique place in this world. And we can always connect to Hashem from that place, wherever that may be.