Parshat Shavua

This week's Portion of the Week is Pinchas. Is it "incitement" to comment on it? or teach it? Do you know what Pinchas did? When anti-G-d, immoral behavior was going on among the Jewish People Moshe was bringing to the Promised Land, a man from the preistly tribe took his sword and stabbed Zimri and the Midian whore he was publlicly --ing. Yes, he killed them! Yes he did and that act stopped the dying that had been going on. 24,000 had died, and it all stopped when Pinchas killed Zimri. That's in the Bible. I'm at my sister-in-law's and her husband was leading a discussion at the Shabbat table about the parsha. Where was Moshe, the leader, at such a crucial time? Shouldn't he have been the one to punish to sinner? That's what we thought. Then suddenly it hit me, he was probably reacting like Menachem Begin when the Altelena was shot by Yitzchak Rabin and his Palmach unit. Begin didn't do much; reports are that he was took upset and cried. Then he made a sad speech, but he didn't deal with the real problem. The real problem is that there are Jews willing to kill other Jews and just being nice won't help. That's why things are the way they are today. The Labor Zionists got away with accusing the Revisionists of murdering Alosoroff, which was a lie. And the Haganah and the Palmach and Labor Zionists got away with turning in other Jews, Lechi and Etzel to the British for hanging and imprisonment. And then they shot and sank the Altalena, killing Jews who had come to fight for the Jewish State, and they sank military supplies that had been brought to free Jerusalem. And they never had to apologize, do cheshbon nefesh. And I can't really write more about Pinchas, because....