We want to remind those who are signed up for Minyan that 1) we will start at 9 am and 2) we will begin at the end of Pesukei D'Zimra at Shochen Ad and not at Berachot. If there are more than 25 people, we will have two Mussafim, one in the backyard and one in the parking lot.
Rabbi Feldman's Derasha
The monumental act of protest that earns Pinchas special status came at the end of last week’s Parasha. So why does the applause and the special gift of Kehuna wait until now to be mentioned? I have an approach to this which puts it into the context of the Parasha as a whole.
Already at the close of last week’s Parasha, we know that Pinchas’s act was successful. The plague that ensues after the breakdown in morality with the women of MIdyan was halted by his act. That already marks it as heroic, and that should be the end of the story.
What is left for this Parasha is the award of Kehuna. This award represents a skipping of protocol, a subversion of the normal order. That is what this Parasha is really about, and that’s why this part of Pinchas’s story is here.
Moshe Rabbenu told Pinchas to act because he, Pinchas, had recovered the Halachic response to the breakdown in morality. Everyone else was paralyzed. If Moshe didn’t know what to do, no one else knew. It is Pinchas who, in effect, jumps over Moshe to “bring the Halacha down” himself from Hashem.
Rabbi Shimshon Pinchas, z’l, points out that that is why Pinchas also ends up with Kehuna. Normally, one has to stem from the original source of Kehuna, from Aharon Hakohen, to be a Kohen. As a grandson, Pinchas of course does, but the legal requirement is that you must come from Aharon and his sons from the time they were granted Kehuna. Pinchas was already born by then. Awarding him Kehuna, therefore, means jumping over the source of Kehuna, Aharon, and getting it directly from Hashem.
The overall theme of this Parasha becomes this type of jump.
The sequence of the bulk of the Parasah works like this: In preparation to go into the land, the people are counted and the laws of inheritance are taught. Moshe is reminded that he will not be part of that inheritance because he will not enter the land. This spurs Moshe to ask for a successor to make sure the people will not be like “a flock that has no shepherd,” and Hashem names Yehoshua to be the next leader.
At that point, the Parasha is just over the length of an average weekly portion. But then we add 40 verses of sacrifices. Why are they here? The placement of the Mussaf sacrifices does not seem to fit into Bamidbar at all. The sacrifices in general make up a large part of the book of Vayikra, and the Chagim themselves were also introduced there. Several of those Chagim involve their own sacrifices -- the two loaves on Shavuot, for example -- and those were listed in Vayikra. So why do the Mussafim come here?
It is significant that the Mussafim directly follow not just the laws of inheritance but the appointment of Yehoshua as Moshe’s successor. That transition focuses on the giving way of one generation to another. These epochal transitions always give a sense that there is change in the air. Generations see things differently, and the transition is a chance for one vision to give way to another.
The same goes for the Chagim. When the everyday gives way to the Chagim, people have a sense not of the flow of time but of the jumps in time. We will return someday to when extended families gather for Chagim, and when we do we will be reminded that large chunks of time -- and sometimes big changes -- have taken place between such gatherings.
That’s why the Chagim are here. They echo this sense of epochal change. But the introduction of the Chagim comes with a crucial preamble. Before one has Mussaf, which means extra, one must first have the basics. So before Mussaf, the Torah reviews here what we were told back in Shemot, namely, that there is a daily service in the Mishkan. There are jumps in time -- changes from one generation to another -- but there is also a steady flow of time from day to day. That flow is embodied in the daily continuum, the consistent activity from one day to the next. No change has lasting meaning unless it is built on the foundation of consistent daily activity. That’s why, in the Parasha of change and transition, there is this reminder of the daily service, the foundation upon which all meaningful change must be built.
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