Parshat Pinhas opens with the Almighty’s appreciation of Pinhas, who had taken it upon himself to serve as a proxy for God’s jealous rage over the spreading popularity of pagan Pe’or worship among the Israelites. By murdering Zimri ben Salu and Kozbi bat Zur in flagrante delicto, Pinhas assuages God’s anger, thereby rescuing the Israelites from annihilation.

Clearly, from a Torah perspective, legitimate jealous anger is a valid emotion, as is righteous vindictiveness. Validating such emotions and reactions is not very popular in the west because Christianity, despite a 1500-year murder spree of its own, succeeded in brainwashing society with the concept of ‘turning the other cheek’. Not so our God.

It is hardly surprising that those sectors of the Jewish community whose thinking and theology have been shaped and inspired by Christian values are lacking the core zealousness necessary for survival and continuity. Indeed, even among Christians, it is precisely those denominations for whom “the meek shall inherit the earth”  and “turn the other cheek” are the summum bonum of their belief system, whose church pews are emptying as rapidly as those of the liberal Jewish congregations that mimic them.  (And – not coincidentally – it is precisely these liberal Christian denominations and, increasingly, their Jewish imitators who are most hostile to Israel as a Jewish State and the actions it takes to protect itself.)

The Census of the Israelites

It is immediately following the debacle of Pe’or – an indication of the abject spiritual state of the Israelites – that God commands Moshe to undertake a census of the Israelite people.  For those who are uninformed, Pe’or worship involved defecating in front of a sculpture of the god Pe’or and then wiping oneself by rubbing their backsides on Pe’or’s nose.

A census has a purpose. The core objective is to have a count of those members of a society who matter.

For the Torah, the purpose of the Israelite census is made manifest: namely, to determine who is eligible to receive property in the land of Israel

שְׂא֞וּ אֶת־רֹ֣אשׁ ׀ כּל־עֲדַ֣ת בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל מִבֶּ֨ן עֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֛ה וָמַ֖עְלָה לְבֵ֣ית אֲבֹתָ֑ם כּל־יֹצֵ֥א צָבָ֖א בְּיִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, from 20 years old and upward, by their fathers’ houses, all that go forth in the army of Israel  — Bamidbar/Numbers........

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