Don’t Mind Your Own Business

A Timely Lesson About Our Fragile World

The late Peter Marshall was an eloquent speaker and for several years served as the chaplain of the US Senate. He used to love to tell the story of the “Keeper of the Spring,” a quiet forest dweller who lived high above an Austrian village along the eastern slope of the Alps.

The old gentleman had been hired many years earlier by a young town councilman to clear away the debris from the pools of water up in the mountain crevices that fed the lovely spring flowing through their town. With faithful, silent regularity, he patrolled the hills, removed the leaves and branches, and wiped away the silt that would otherwise have choked and contaminated the fresh flow of water. The village soon became a popular attraction for vacationers. Graceful swans floated along the crystal clear spring, the mill wheels of various businesses located near the water turned day and night, farmlands were naturally irrigated, and the view from restaurants was picturesque beyond description.

Years passed. One evening the town council met for its semiannual meeting. As they reviewed the budget, one man’s eye caught the salary figure being paid the obscure keeper of the spring. Said the keeper of the purse, “Who is the old man? Why do we keep him on year after year? No one ever sees him. For all we know, the strange ranger of the hills is doing us no good. He isn’t necessary any longer.” By a unanimous vote, they dispensed with the old man’s services.

For several weeks, nothing changed.

By early autumn, the trees began to shed their leaves. Small branches snapped of and fell into the pools, hindering the rushing flow of sparkling water. One afternoon someone noticed a slight yellowish-brown tint in the spring. A few days later, the water was much darker. Within another week, a slimy film covered sections of the water along the banks, and a foul odor was soon detected. The mill wheels moved more slowly, some finally ground to a halt. Swans left, as did the tourists. Clammy fingers of disease and sickness reached deeply into the village.

Quickly, the embarrassed council called a special meeting. Realizing their gross error in judgment, they rehired the old keeper of the spring, and within a few weeks, the veritable river of life began to clear up. The wheels started to turn, and new life returned to the hamlet in the Alps.

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Yesterday I had a very bad day. I don’t know how to describe the overwhelming mixture of emotions that ran through my neurotransmitters. Amongst others, I felt unnerved, shaken, angry, violated and clobbered. I guess it can best be summarized as emotionally wounded.

Yet ironically, my trepidation and raw emotional wounds stem from an incident that had nothing to do with me or anything in my own life. The incident that I refer to, as you have likely surmised by now, is the gut-wrenching murder of a pure innocent nine-year-old child at the hands of a vicious predator R’l.

It was an uneventful morning, I was going about my life; minding my own business, when the horrific disruption came barreling into my life. The fact that what has occurred involved someone that I never knew; who lived over a thousand miles away, made no difference with regards to the anxiety, lethargy and downright traumatization it left in its wake.

More than once I found myself musing over why I should be so affected by something that has no tangible connection to me. Yet, affected I was. I felt sick to my stomach – as if I had just awoken from a hellish nightmare. I could not shake-off the deep anguish and distress all day (and night) and, believe it or not, I’m still trembling.

I am not an anomaly. By no means am I unique in my traumatic reaction to this mind numbing evil. It is rather obvious that this incident has shaken the Jewish and non Jewish world to its core. The amount of anger, pain and deep emotional scarring that this tragedy has inflicted is simply unfathomable.

Whatever my feelings, they obviously pale by comparison to those of the parents and grandparents. My heart aches all over again to think of what the poor mother of this little angelic soul is going through. There are the many relatives, friends and the immediate community that are in a deep state of shock and mourning as a result of this horrific atrocity.

And what will this do to the children? Their lives will sadly never be the same; there is a piece of every child; a part of their sweet innocence, that has gone up with soul of Leiby Kletzky OBM. There is a piece of every sensitive individual that will never be the same.

So, when it is all said and done, in the face of this bone-chilling cruelty, the very world will never be the same place. In the face this incomprehensible barbarism, the universe has indeed become a shade darker; it has lost another small piece of its ever diminishing innocence.

The purpose of these words is not to make a bad situation worse; it is not to cause an already suffering segment of society even more heartache, but rather to try and come away with an applicable lesson, as the verse states “And the living shall take to heart” ( Koheles 7:2).

The lesson that we can take away from this national, if not universal tragedy, is that there is no such thing as “Minding your own business.” We need only consider the scores of people who were so severely impacted by the evil actions of this one individual, while minding their own business, to know that the notion is false.

The reality is that the world is one big boat and if someone decides to drill a hole, even if only under his own seat, we are all in for a rough ride. Accordingly, we each have an obligation to interfere with the destructive actions of our fellow shipmates. While turning away in the other direction might buy us some time, it does not stop the ship from sinking.

While this may seem like plain and simple logic, the fact is that it is not. There is a natural tendency to want to keep one’s nose clean and stay out of trouble. How often do we look away when we see blatant evil, thinking: “Why should I get involved, it’s not my problem after all?” Well, besides for being selfish, what we fail to realize is that it is indeed our problem, because of the reverberating nature of evil – because we are all, in the end, in the same boat.

And yet the argument to “Mind your own business,” can be heard from a plethora of sources, not only from outright evil doers who stand to gain directly from having others mind their own business, but from passive ideologists and conspiracy theorists as well.

Passive theorism is a pervading syndrome in our culture for which our universities have become bastions. The logic ranges from, “There is no such thing as evil,” to, “We have no right to impose our definition of good and evil upon people who are not of a like mind.”

The conspiracy theorists, on the other hand, cast doubt and suspicion into the motives of anyone who dares to take a stand against the actions of any particular group or individual, suggesting that they possess impure if not selfish motives. In fact this is precisely the argument against Pinchas, as related in our Parsha whose name is Pinchas.

At the end of last week’s Parsha, following G-d’s instruction to eliminate the Israelite men who were led astray by the Moabite women, we read about an Israelite Prince from the tribe of Shimon, by the name of Zimri, who acted in a particularly egregious and immoral manner.

Claiming that since Moshe was allowed to marry the daughter of the Priest of Midian, he too ought to be allowed a Midianite woman, he proceeded to consort with a Midianite woman named Cozbi in front of the Tent of Meeting in defiance of the express Heavenly order.

By bringing the Midianite woman into the camp “Before the eyes of Moshe and before the eyes of all the congregation of the children of Israel,” Zimri publicly flouted Moshe’s authority, hoping thereby to unlock the floodgates of illicit relations. He aimed to abolish the Divine barrier between the holy and the mundane.

While the humble Moshe stood amidst the entire leadership in a state of shock and consternation over the public scandal, a young unassuming Pinchas swung into action, confidently ending the lives of the Prince and the Midianite woman at the very entranceway to the Tent of Meeting.

His bald-faced vigilantism gave rise to civil unrest. A highly charged dispute erupted among the people as to whether his actions were justified or murderous. According to the Talmud the Elders of Israel sought to excommunicate Pinchas (Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 9:7). The tribe of Shimon was particularly irate over Pinchas’ self styled justice, since Zimri was their tribal leader.

In the opening of our Parsha, G-d puts a decisive end to the simmering undercurrent. The Almighty establishes Pinchas’ righteousness for all time, by tracing his lineage to Aharon the Kohen. Pinchas is further credited with halting the plague that had broken out as a result of the lewd conduct on the part of the Israelites. Finally, he is rewarded with nothing less than the covenant of Peace and eternal Priesthood:

“The Lord Spoke to Moshe, saying, Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aharon the priest has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by displaying his zealousness for me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in my zealousness. Say, therefore, I grant him my covenant of Shalom. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a covenant of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.“ (Numbers 25:10-13)

The Torah’s description of Pinchas’ action, Moshe’s inaction, and G-d’s reaction raises some intriguing questions: Why for example, was it Pinchas of all people who rose up to take vengeance into his own hands? Was he animated by selfish malice or by high conscience?

Rashi, citing the Midrash, asserts that damming aspersions were in fact cast upon Pinchas by the Tribe of Shimon, with regards to his true motivation for slaying their prince. Pinchas, they sullenly alleged, was the maternal grandson of Yisro. This same Yisro, they noted, had once been an idol-worshipper who was in the habit of fattening calves for sacrifice – an act of supreme cruelty.

After all, bemoaned the Shimonites, what can be more cruel than to appear to be acting in someone’s favor; feeding him well, only with the ultimate mind of slaughter? It was undeniably the streak of cruelty that he inherited from his grandfather Yisro that had motivated him toward his zealous behavior.

In light of these accusations, asserts the Midrash, we can appreciate why the Torah underscores Pinchas’ genealogy: “Son of Elazar, the son of Aharon the priest.” As Rashi tacitly points out, the crucial emphasis here is on Aharon’s character. For aside from his priesthood, Aharon is remembered as one who “Pursued peace and caused love to descend between contending parties.”

The Torah’s intent is to establish that, in his act of zealotry, Pinchas was not the “Grandson of Yisro” but the “Grandson of Aharon.” He was not driven by cruelty but by a burning religious zeal. When strife set-in between Israel and their heavenly Father, Pinchas the lover of his brethren and the lover of peace, took it upon himself to turn it around, as the verse states, “Pinchas . . . has turned My wrath away from the children of Israel.”

It was his particular nature which he inherited from his grandfather Aharon that led him of all people to remove the cause of the bitterness between G-d and His people.

Pinchas did not even consider the danger to himself. Given Zimri’s tribal support, he could have easily been killed. He furthermore risked fortifying his place in the world to come, which might have been the case had he been wrong. “Pinchas expounded” says the Midrash, “A horse goes to war risking his life for his master, how much more so should I risk my life for the sanctification of the name of the Holy One Blessed Be He…” (Shemos Rabbah 33:5).

His concern for the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the Jewish people was so great that he was willing to risk his life in two worlds in order to eliminate the threat. For this he is awarded G-d’s ”Covenant of peace.”

The story of Pinchas contains pertinent lessons; relevant for all time and place. The foremost lesson of Pinchas’ zealous actions and its Divine glorification is that there is a time to stand up for what’s right regardless of what the consequences might be.

Public opinion and public approval is not the ultimate compass for what is right and what is wrong. There are rights and there are wrongs that are not established in the court of public opinion. Despite popular culture, there are some things that are objectively good and things that are objectively bad, and when facing such issues we cannot afford to “Mind our own business,” lest the ship sink.

In relating the story of Pinchas the Torah alerts us to the fact that when minding peoples business you are likely to become disliked and unloved. In fact, it is very likely that people will cast aspersions regarding every aspect of your behavior, from your motive to your choice of words or weapon to the expression on your face. They will try to defame and besmirch you and even demonize you in any way possible, but we dare not be intimidated, lest the ship sink.

The Talmud tells us that Pinchas is Elijah. This is to say that the Profit Elijah is a reincarnation of Pinchas. We know that Elijah is the harbinger of the final redemption.

It is Pinchas who stopped the plague and brought down peace upon Israel, and it is Pinchas and his incarnation Elijah that will put an end to this dark exile and hasten the final and ultimate redemption, may it be speedily in our day!

May the Lord comfort all of us among the remainder of the Children of Israel and Yerushalaim!