Pinchas – A TIME TO FIX – July 2025 – Leah’s Blog
We are in the three weeks now- a time I far from relish. Our car broke down on a teeming Jerusalem highway without any forewarning and now our oven door just fell off the hinges to the ground. Rachel told me the heavy lumber they just bought fell off their truck into the road, logs rolling in all directions. Make no mistake – this is all typical for this time of year- for these three weeks. Now, you know I’m not a downer but sharp, hard memories of the expulsion from Gush Katif and the northern Shomron, a self imposed exile happened in this time frame making me recollect, forcing me to feel broken. You can’t avoid the vibe. In an act that empowered beasts, twisted reality, made swaths of land and settlements alongside them void of security, forfeiting rule, and castrating the strong Jewish presence that made sand into thriving life- nothing after this atrocity grew from it but terror tunnels and destruction. This dispossession was not the Romans who banished us, but our own leaders who ordered it – the recipe for disaster, which fast forward led to the fatal carnage of October 7 2023. Like King Saul who let Agag live, Amalek took the lead.
These three weeks are the saddest time of the year, a time full of tribulation. Put aside Gush Katif for a later blog, four beautiful communities in northern Samaria were destroyed- they overlook the Israel electric company in Hadera. A simple anti-tank missile and we’ll all be sitting in the dark. How can my second grader grandson know more than Ariel Sharon? How could they have turned these places into closed military zones with NO-ONE living there? How could the beautiful fields of tobacco now be a garbage dumping ground? Where are the rows of almond trees? The flowing water has become a filthy trickle in the Tirtzah stream now. Yes, again it was a fall of dominion, of the kingdom and the enemy sensed weakness as the very foundations cracked beneath us. Here in the Middle East you cannot be vulnerable, even when you feel exhausted. The minute you retreat, it collapses.
The land we so willingly turned over is by no coincidence what we read about in this parsha- Pinchas, about the very inheritance of the daughters of Tzlofchad. If you stand on the high point of Har Kabir of the northern slopes of Elon Moreh, you can look down into the green beautiful territory of Tirtzah. Drawing a line west, all towns are named after the Tzlofchahd daughters. This is their inheritance. In the hot summer of 1910 archeologists found in the treasury of the palace of the Kings in ancient Samaria (Sebastia) Samarian ostraca- pot shards with dozens of inscriptions written in ink. These were actually shipping and tax records with dates that go way back to when ancient Israel lived on these lands. The products that were transported were jugs of fine oil, jars of wine, balm etc. The territories mentioned on these ostraca are specifically named after major households from the tribe of Menasseh – their legacy- northern Samaria. Some of the names: Shechem, Hoglah, Noa, Tirtzah… about the many districts of northern Samaria after the Tzlofchad sisters. The Mishnah, Tosefta, and Yerushalmi all written in a later period speak about a place- Bedan- the stream of Tirtzah- a place famous for its fertile soil, with running streams from the springs of Mount Gerizzim flowing east into the Jordan River, a place of high quality pomegranates and nut trees.
The Tzlofchad women are personal examples of Zeal for Zion, receiving fertile beautiful lands in the heart of Israel.
At a time that we learn about the trials, mistakes, chasms both in the earth and in the very fabric of life in forty years of wanderings, of the downfalls of Israel like we know in Zimri, a prince of the tribe of Shimone that falls, towards the end of the desert journey, we learn too about a wonderful family of women, the Tzlofchad women of influence and great courage and strength that couldn’t have come at a better time. We learn in this portion of the broken and the fixing. Something uplifting and remarkable- as the nation witnessed the zeal of these women marching to the future -to possess Eretz Yisrael, yearning for it, and laboring for it, this readied all the tribes for their time of entry into their respective tribal territories.
October 7 2023- through now (2025) has seen an incredible “fixing” of the crimes of the expulsion. The self- sacrifice demonstrated by the willingness of so many people, soldiers, recue workers, teachers, doctors, donors, and volunteers who want to remedy the pain and unjust mistake of the expulsion of the summer of 2005. Zealous for Zion, we all want to do the right thing. Israel has been viewed as an individualist, liberal, modern sushi eating western cultured country that was unraveling over political differences prior to the Nazi attack on the music festival and communities bordering Gaza on that fatal day of October 7. We have since risen above division into an exceptional collective people blended together –all different tribes of the same nation. This is for Israel’s survival and future. People of all views on politics poured into the Gaza belt for the klal (the collective), soldiers doing miluim for hundreds of consecutive days- all in a readiness that reminds us of the Tzlofchad daughters. It was not expected for women to conquer, settle and establish within the constraints of their time- We know their internal lives and relationships led to the awesome experience of settling the territory of Mennaseh on this side of the Jordan. Now too soldiers and civilians of polar opposite sides of the spectrum of society share a tank, rebuild a bombed out home and cross sectorial views are shared. We solace together- as we fix. The three weeks will pass and we will move into Elul and then the High holy days of celebration.
One thing that is clear and clarified – we must be a complete nation in a complete land.
From here we go uphill. Back up to the highest point on Mount Eval looking into Efrayim on Har Gerizzim- these parts and parcels all coming together now- Shabbat shalom and blessings to all of our dear friends xoxoxoxo Leah
PS for those who want to read my blog of Pinchas 2008- it’s worth the reading
