Parashat Pinhas Numbers 25:10−30:1 

Dear TBE Community,

Last Sunday began, on the Jewish calendar, a period of time called The Three Weeks. You may not be in Rosh Hashanah mode just yet, but with the onset of these three weeks leading up to Tisha b’Av, the High Holy Days have been put on deck.

Tisha b’Av is the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, which we will commemorate this year together with Congregation Ner Tamid and Temple Menorah. It is a date that commemorates many calamities that have befallen the Jewish people over the millennia. In its wake begins a period of seven weeks: The Seven Weeks of Consolation, which lead all the way up to Rosh Hashanah.

During these ten weeks, selected haftarot are read that rebuke and comfort, reminding us that often, we have contributed to loss and damages by our own shortcomings, while also reassuring us that we can make changes for the better, that reconciliation and forgiveness are possible, that loss can be followed by regain.

The first haftara of rebuke that compliments this week’s parsha, Pinhas, comes from the book of Jeremiah, a prophet known for his dismay and warnings, his criticism and, well, rebuke. He lived during the time of the destruction of Jerusalem through Babylonian troops, in the 580s BCE, and witnessed the subsequent exile of much of its population to the rivers of Babylon. And he had seen it all coming, from the very beginning of his prophecy.

Here are two famous examples of how he expressed, in linguistically playful imagery, the destruction that was on the horizon:

The word of God came to me: What do you see, Jeremiah? I replied: I see a branch of an almond tree.

God said to me:

You have seen right,

For I am watchful to bring My word to pass.

(Jeremiah 1:11-12)

In Hebrew, the words for almond tree (shaqed) and watchful (shoqed) are spelled identically – shin, quf, dalet – thus the pun, and punchline: The prophet insists that the words of rebuke God is speaking through him will come true. Because God is watchful, or diligent, like the almond tree that is known to bloom first of all other trees after the winter. The medieval Torah commentator Rashi adds his personal interpretation: An almond tree, he says, takes twenty-one days from its blossoming to ripening – exactly three weeks.

Here is another example of the prophet’s poetic playfulness, from Jeremiah 1:13-14:

And the word of God came to me a second time: What do you see? I replied:

I see a boiling pot,

Tipped away from the north.

And God said to me:

From the north shall disaster break loose

Upon all the inhabitants of the land!

Here, the pun lies in the similar sounds of the Hebrew words for boiling and opening up, or breaking loose. A large, tipping pot filled with boiling water is a hazard. In Biblical narrative, danger and disaster in the form of invading troops often came from the north, because of the Middle Eastern geography. Rather than coming through the desert, armies like the Babylonians, for example, had to march up the Euphrates River and then turn south, to invade Jerusalem from the north.

Why am I sharing all this Biblical geography, these Hebrew word puns?

One answer is, because I really love that kind of stuff. There is a poetic power to these images and word choices that echo through the millennia.

Another answer is that these images – the branch of an almond tree, the boiling pot tipping to the north – represent symbols of warnings, reminders to be watchful and diligent ourselves. Often, our gut might be telling us that something is wrong, that we should act differently than we end up acting. Sometimes, when we look back in pain, we realize that we might have been able to avert the experience of loss, had we just listened to our inner voice. And that’s when we understand how much the object or the friendship we lost meant to us. That is when we understand how much we are in need of comfort, that we want to make amends.

As the Jewish calendar moves through these three weeks, I would like to invite us to value and consider that which is so dear to us that we don’t need to lose it before realizing how much it meant to us.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Julia Knobloch
rabbiknobloch@bethelsp.org