It is that time again for a word or two on this week’s parsha (Torah portion).  The parsha is titled Pinchas (or Phineas for those of you with an English bent) and it is a strange beast.  The week before, we left our heroes fighting a plague for getting involved in idol worship and having Pinchas come to the rescue by killing a high ranking Jew and his Midianite lover.  In this parsha, Pinchas gets rewarded, and god tells Moshe (Moses) to harass the Midianites.  Then Moshe and Elazar (Aharon’s son and the new high priest) count the people again (ok, for the first time in 40 years), and we have the five daughters of Tzlaphchod come forward requesting land in the name of their father.  Moshe then asks for a successor, and we end with details about the daily offering and the additional offerings for Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh (the new month), Pesach (Passover), Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Succot and Shmini Atzeret. What is going on?

I don’t have a good answer for the big picture of what is going on with all this, but I do have some thoughts regarding pieces of the parsha.

First, this is the parsha of transition.  We are going from the old generation, the generation of the slaves, to the new generation, the generation of the inheritors.  And we see this change in two ways. First, we have a new leader:  Joshua.  Second, we have the census.  We had a census at the beginning of the book of Bamidbar (Numbers) which counted the original people leaving Egypt.  HaShem (god) was originally going to give them the land, which is why the census was needed.  However, because to their lack of faith, the land was given to their children, and hence another census was required after the original generation died off.  Why was the census needed at all?  To determine how to apportion the land, as the size of each tribe’s inheritance was dependent on their size.

Now comes the question of the daughters of Tzlaphchod.  Why are they brought up here? Well, several parshas ago, we had some folk that could not participate in the Pesach sacrifice and went to Moshe expressing a great desire to participate in any way possible.  The result was a second Pesach sacrifice one month later.  It was a teaching of how to petition haShem:  by showing a desire to do something, and not just by complaining.

Well, the daughters of Tzlaphchod do the same thing.  They come forward, not as victims of an injustice, but with a strong desire for their father to not be forgotten.  They did not say, haShem is doing us wrong; they are saying, how can our father be remembered?  And they do not stop there, they also give a solution.  And guess what?  Not only does haShem accept their solution, he also tells everybody that they are coming to him in a correct way!  So, why do we have this here, after the census?  To teach this new generation the right way to handle a grievance or injustice – something the previous generation never got.

Likewise, the sacrifices are brought down after we learn that Joshua is the new leader, for two reasons:  the first is to remind this new generation that they have to make these offerings to haShem, and the second reason, and the reason it is not before the transfer of leadership, is so the people can see Joshua in the position of leadership when they are told of things that haShem wants; they can start getting use to Joshua running things and not Moshe (who was the leader of the previous generation).

If we remember that we are made up of cells that are replaced by a new generation of cells periodically, then we can see this as a metaphor for how we can change our patterns when we get stuck in an old habit that tells us we can’t grow or improve or get closer to the divine.

Well, that is it for now and from here. I wish you all an orderly transition from the generation of being stuck to one where we can inherit all that the divine desires to give us.

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.