Pinchas, פִּינְחָס  "Phineas"  Numbers 25:10-30:1

A Child’s Home

Poetic Notes On The Parashat Pinchas*

Salvation is a world

Build a home there

If you build a home there,

your day is born

Redemption is your horn!

You will rise every morning to be Godly,

an individual member 

of Adam’s resurrected body

Hashem dwells there personally

He will dwell in your relationships joyfully

His mitzvot caress every child there

Only his Torah love can be there

Only his Torah love can sanctify

Only his Torah love can unify 

and beautifully divide the bride

into mother and child

For the mansion of his truth is eternal and worldwide

Pinchas turned my wrath away,

away from Israel gone astray,

Pinchas created peace on the deadly day

To his fortress,

the Land of Israel, 

God came to stay

The daughters of Zelophehad,

the son of Hepher, son of Gilead

from Macir and Manasseh, Joseph’s son,

these five daughters came as one

They came out of time,

like a redemption rhyme

as daughters of Yerushalayim,

wearing the Torah like a diadem,

humming a timeless Messiah hymn,

with their case for an inheritance of holy land

They asked Moses to understand

They called their witnesses to the witness stand,

to testify and reveal

what every living soul could feel,

that All Creation was a gift to the Bride,

and the Holy Land is like Hashem’s side

Therefore when their father died,

for his daughters it was not the time

to claim that their true mother, 

Yerushalayim,

was soon to be a married wife

and the mother of all eternal life

She was a Torah espoused bride

Moses and Aaron themselves testified

Then Hashem said, My Covenant of Shalom

will be forever here in Jacob’s home

It guards are Isaac, Pinchas and David

Yet an intruder had subtly infiltrated,

With shock and awe he gagged the hostage

Moshe’s throat was mute with hot rage

Choked was the throat of Achdut Yisrael

For Bilaam’s scheme would cause its burial

Angels who spoke like brilliant stars

were left as speechless as Elazar

The churning waves of antinomian zeal

bring a love you can touch but cannot feel

The very covenant of day and night,

the very secret of wrong and right,

was at the point of Pinchas' stake

Jacob’s bruised heel crushed the snake

The snake had slithered past the Temple peg

when Pinchas' spearpoint killed the plague

It cut through seduction like a knife

and justified the very core of life

Mercy rests on the Ark of Justice

This is a covenant with the soul of Pinchas

This is the covenant of eternal peace

and redemption’s full release

from Bilaam’s spell

that was born in hell,

Bilaam lied that sin is the sister of grace

But in truth,

redemption is no pride parade or glory race

There are black holes and many camps,

many fires and floods and altar ramps,

many sorrows and broken shepherd lamps;

its a heavy load,

the redemption road

The fences of God surround the Holy Land

Don't come on the journey of the Promised Land

only loving the power brand 

with a money thirst

without knowing that the twelfth will be first,

simply wanting to build a life for yourself,

without knowing that the first will be twelfth

The holy martyrs

and the five daughters

and a little child

with her prayers unstyled,

her heart still young and wild

her ways unplanned,

will be the first to build the Lasting Land

Who will ascend the Holy Hill

Who will do and hear the Holy Will?

In the Holiest Place, who will stand

How do I know I will inherit the land?

asked humble Abraham

Who is prepared to kill Isaac like a ram?

At time's head and toe,

it is through the sons of Isaac's bow

that God redeems his claim from long ago

and all his children come to know

But in the middle, at time’s heart,

where all the hearing starts,

where simple faith flows like water,

it is through the soul of the holy daughter

Plagued children cry, Unfair! Unjust!

We should have been like stars, not like dust!

Let us see the good correct all depravity

From this we will see with certain clarity

Israel’s reason for existence

and understand suffering’s long persistence 

We will accept the eternal reality 

We will believe with firm finality 

that Israel’s glory is solely

to be holy

Moses stood on the Mountain Above

The Holy Land looked like a singing dove

He laid his hands gently on a servant

Armies tried to steal his wisdom but they couldn’t

The soul of time is Temple Three

Its mount is the fount of the world tree

Upon its altar is Israel’s exodus from Rome

He builds justice and mercy as a child’s home