By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
We live in an age marked by confusion, contradiction, and crisis. Familiar moral anchors are being uprooted, truth has become increasingly subjective, and people flounder when clarity is most needed.
Wherever we turn, fiction is portrayed as fact, tumah as kedusha, sacrilege as something holy and praiseworthy. We don’t know whom to trust, when to trust, or whether to trust at all. At times, we feel utterly lost. At other times, we’re shrouded in a fog, struggling to navigate our way to clarity.
As Jews, in a world that increasingly displays both hatred toward us and ignorance about us, this reality carries added danger. But the hazard of a teetering world should concern everyone. How does this happen? How do good, decent people become so lost and estranged from what was widely accepted just a short time ago? And how can we begin to rectify at least our own corner of the world?
In times of upheaval, society tends to freeze. People wait for someone – anyone – to speak up, to act, to lead. No one wants to challenge entrenched and corrupt powers for fear of being mocked or vilified. Good people who could bring change remain silent, paralyzed by the threat of public backlash or personal loss. It’s easier to complain in private than to rise up and confront the root cause of our frustrations.
This has been true throughout history. Leadership has always been scarce, and the absence of it has often led to chaos, corruption, and collective suffering. But it doesn’t have to be that way. People armed with moral clarity, conviction, emunah, and resolve can rise above the masses and change the course of history. This is true in the broader world, and it is true in our world as well.
Throughout our history, there have been gedolei Torah, rabbonim, and manhigim who, despite personal danger, forged ahead and led our people with emunah, bitachon, and Torah-based conviction. We grew up hearing their stories, and have repeated them to our children and students, for these accounts provide the strength and endurance our people need to persevere in golus and journey toward geulah.
In this week’s parsha, that individual is Pinchos. His story is told in the Torah to serve as a lesson for us, ensuring that we don’t falter in times of uncertainty and moral fog. His rebbi, Moshe Rabbeinu, had taught him what to do in exactly the situation in which he and the rest of the Jewish people found themselves. Pinchos acted without fear, following halacha, and in doing so, he saved the entire Am Yisroel.
Parshas Pinchos shows us how to respond when the world falls silent in the face of public sin, corruption, and decay. It reminds us that when sacred lines are crossed and others turn away, those who act – guided by Torah, truth, and humility – can repair the breach and restore holiness and goodness.
In times of fear and uncertainty, even the most capable individuals can falter. A new crisis appears – whether it’s societal, spiritual, or medical – and although there are trained leaders and experts, many freeze in the face of doubt. Competence in calm times is not the same as greatness in stormy times.
It’s often said that the true test of greatness is how one handles small matters and how one treats people whom others overlook or take for granted. But it is equally true that a person’s test lies in whether they can act with clarity and integrity when it matters most, when the stakes are high and the risks are real.
Pinchos didn’t act out of recklessness. He wasn’t driven by personal glory or vengeance. He acted because he saw the truth plainly and could no longer bear the chillul Hashem unfolding before the eyes of a passive nation. He acted lesheim Hashem, to stop the disaster that was befalling Klal Yisroel just days after the schemes of Bolok and Bilom had been foiled. The people had fallen so quickly and so far, that others were paralyzed by despair. Pinchos stepped forward.
The Torah introduces the protagonists of Pinchos’s act – Zimri, a leader of a shevet, and Kozbi, a royal princess – to underscore what Pinchos was up against. These were not powerless figures. They were elite and influential. Pinchos did not target the weak. He stood up to the powerful. He didn’t calculate personal cost or consider his own reputation. He saw a moral breach threatening the very soul of Klal Yisroel, and he acted – because someone had to.
It was this fearlessness, this refusal to be swayed by public opinion, that saved the nation from the plague. The message is clear: When fear of retribution controls us, we become partners in our own destruction.
A deadly plague was ravaging the people, and over twenty thousand had already perished. Their crime? Shelo michu – they didn’t protest Zimri’s actions. In a time of chillul Hashem, when the foundation of Klal Yisroel was crumbling, the natural response should have been to run to Moshe Rabbeinu and ask what to do. But only one person did that: Pinchos.
Pinchos wasn’t widely known as a moral leader or charismatic figure with many admirers. He was an ehrliche Yid who didn’t lose his bearings. He showed courage and pressed forward despite the difficulty and unpopularity of his task, simply because it was the right thing to do.
In a sense, he fled from kavod, and as Chazal say, kol haborei’ach min hakavod, hakavod borei’ach acharov – one who runs from honor, honor pursues him. Pinchos ran from fame and it chased after him. Hashem rewarded him with kehunas olam.
Pinchos lives on as Eliyohu Hanovi, who, throughout the ages, has followed Klal Yisroel wherever they have gone, occasionally revealing himself to the very holy and privileged, learning with tzaddikei hador and assisting those in need. Very soon, he will reveal himself to us all and announce the arrival of Moshiach.
Pinchos rose not only for his own generation but for ours as well. We, too, live in a world of inaction and moral ambiguity. At times, we witness public breaches of ethics, halacha, or basic decency, and we wait for others to take the lead. We rationalize our silence. We tell ourselves that it’s not our place.
But the Torah teaches us that in such moments, our silence becomes complicity. Great people see through the noise. They move beyond excuses. They do what needs to be done.
Sometimes, that action isn’t dramatic or confrontational. Sometimes, it’s as simple – and as powerful – as standing up for what is right: in a conversation, in leadership, in halachic integrity, or in the moral tone we set for our families and communities.
Pinchos was not a vigilante. He didn’t act on impulse. He first discussed the issue with Moshe Rabbeinu.
When we see wrongdoing or perceive evil, we must not act on our own judgment. We must consult our rabbeim, those greater than us, those who carry the mesorah from the giants of previous generations. We must never act rashly or cause harm – physically or emotionally – even if we feel justified, unless we are directed by those qualified to decide what is truly proper halachically and morally.
When Pinchos acted, the plague came to a halt. But more than that, he healed the rift between the Jewish people and Hashem. He brought about a return to shalom, peace and wholeness. That is why he was rewarded with brisi shalom, the covenant of peace.
In doing so, he followed in the path of his grandfather, Aharon Hakohein, who worked to bring peace between people, and between people and Hashem.
Today, we must also strive to heal not only the rift between man and Hashem, and between one person and another, but also the internal divisions within our families, communities, and nation. We must be kano’im when it comes to breaches in shemiras hamitzvos, but also become healers, restoring broken connections wherever they are found.
We are all capable of this. We can each be a Pinchos, not necessarily through bold, dramatic action, but by rejecting passivity, rising above the crowd, and grounding our actions in Torah and truth. It’s difficult to speak up. It’s often much easier to remain silent. But we must act when others are paralyzed by fear and lead when leadership is absent. The corrupt thrive when the principled are silent. The immoral succeed when the moral hesitate.
The world doesn’t need more spectators. It needs people willing to act, responsibly, wisely, and fearlessly. People who rise when others remain seated. People who care enough to step forward, even when the cost is great.
If we do, we won’t merely remember the Bais Hamikdosh. We will help rebuild it.
This week, we entered the somber period known as the Three Weeks. It was on this past Sunday, many centuries ago, that the Romans breached the protective gates of Yerushalayim. That breach led to a brutal siege and, ultimately, the destruction of the Bais Hamikdosh on Tisha B’Av.
That destruction has never been fully repaired. Its wounds still remain.
If you go to Yerushalayim today, you can still see the broken wall the Romans pierced. It stands quietly near Migdal Dovid, passed daily by thousands on their way to and from the Kosel, often unnoticed. But it is still there. Still broken. Still bearing silent witness to what was lost.
If, when visiting the Kosel, you walk a bit farther along the southern wall of the Har Habayis, you’ll find massive boulders scattered at its base, stones believed to have once sat atop the Kosel wall. They lie there, undisturbed, silent reminders of the physical and spiritual glory that once stood and the devastation that followed.
It is worth going there. Worth standing there to reflect.
The Kosel remains a silent witness, a remnant of what once was, a stark reminder of what we lack.
But we’ve grown used to it. We go. We daven. We take pictures, sometimes with awe, but too often without reflection. The sight of those ancient stones no longer stirs us. Our eyes stay dry when they should be filled with tears. Our hearts remain still when they should tremble.
The great tzaddikim of previous generations would tremble at the sight of the Kosel. It wasn’t merely a destination for tefillah. It was – and still is – the place from which the Shechinah never departed. A visible scar of the churban. A raw reminder of our spiritual exile and our nation’s brokenness.
Halacha requires us to tear our garments upon seeing the Kosel or the ruins of Yerushalayim. It is meant to be an expression of grief, a jolt to awaken our mourning. But too often, the act is performed by rote, devoid of the pain it is meant to symbolize.
We must look at that wall not just with our eyes, but with our hearts. We must picture the Bais Hamikdosh that once stood proudly behind it. We must reflect on the pain, the destruction, the massacre that overtook our people. We must mourn not only the physical loss of the Bais Hamikdosh, but also the spiritual churban, the severing of the connection between Hashem’s home and His people.
So many of our current struggles trace their roots back to those dark days. It all began with a breach, not just in stone, but in spirit.
But if more people would rise like Pinchos – with courage, with clarity, with unwavering devotion to Hashem – we could begin to repair that breach. We could draw our people closer to the Source of life. We could open the door to teshuvah, to healing, and to geulah.
May this be the year it happens.
May this be the year we finally come home.
{Matzav.com}
