Standing and Acting
How Habit Enables Spontaneous Virtue in Pinchas and Beyond
Phinehas stepped forth (va’ya’amod) and intervened,
and the plague ceased. (Psalms 106:30)
It was stated: Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Ḥanina, said: The practice of praying three times daily is ancient, albeit not in its present form; prayers were instituted by the Patriarchs. However, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said that the prayers were instituted based on the daily offerings sacrificed in the Holy Temple, and the prayers parallel the offerings, in terms of both time and characteristics. The Gemara comments: It was taught in a baraita in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Ḥanina, and it was taught in a baraita in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. The Gemara elaborates: It was taught in a baraitain accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Ḥanina: Abraham instituted the morning prayer, as it is stated when Abraham came to look out over Sodom the day after he had prayed on its behalf: “And Abraham rose early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord” (Genesis 19:27), and from the context as well as the language utilized in the verse, the verb standing means nothing other than prayer, as this language is used to describe Pinehas’ prayer after the plague, as it is stated: “And Pinehas stood up and prayed and the plague ended” (Psalms 106:30). Clearly, Abraham was accustomed to stand in prayer in the morning. (Brachot 26b)
The rabbis said, they inferred prayers from daily sacrifices. The morning prayer from the perpetual sacrifice of the morning (Num. 28:4): “The first lamb you should present in the morning.” (Talmud Yerushalmi Brachot 4:1)
Parashat Pinchas, begins with a sequence of spontaneous and unprecedented acts. Pinchas ends a plague by thrusting a spear through Zimri and Cozbi. He doesn’t consult Moses and the Torah apparently approves of his spontaneously inspired act; God gives him a “covenenant of peace.” Pinchas follows no due process and the Talmud describes his behavior as virtuosic, but also dangerous. Had he been just slightly off in his timing, he would have been liable. After the Pinchas episode, we read of Zelophehad’s daughters who come to Moses with a new case. Can they inherit their father’s property, given that he has no male heirs. Moses doesn’t know the answer and has to consult God. While Pinchas acts with passion and Moses deliberates, both engage in “situational ethics”; that is, they don’t consult a textbook or try to derive their response from first principles. Instead, their cultivation of practical wisdom directs their behavior.
But right after reading of these events we encounter a commandment to bring regular sacrifices each day:
Command the Israelite people and say to them: Be punctilious in presenting to Me at stated times the offerings of food due Me, as offerings by fire of pleasing odor to Me. Say to them: These are the offerings by fire that you are to present to the Lord: As a regular burnt offering every day, two yearling lambs without blemish. You shall offer one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.” (Numbers 28:4)
The Talmud describes a debate as to whether prayer originates from spontaneous prayer or whether it derives from the sacrifices. Tellingly, Pinchas himself is marshalled as evidence of the spontaneous prayer thesis. Pinchas’s “standing” is brought as a parallel to Abraham’s, both a kind of anticipation of the standard morning Amidah, or standing prayer. The Torah, and the sages, are pointing our attention to the tension between spontaneity and structure. Novelty without structure leads to anarchy. Structure without novelty becomes rigid.
Moreover, structure enables innovation, serving as a creative constraint. The regularity of habit provides the context in which one can make exceptions, or, more accurately, develop new applications.
Both Pinchas and Zelophechad’s daughters underscore the radical idea that we learn from experience. Some things just can’t be taught at Sinai, but need live, historic cases to elucidate. God can’t just put chips in Adam’s and Eve’s brains and set them up for success. History is designed to be a learning process, full of trial and error, continuous tinkering. Pinchas and Zelophechad’s daughters react to new events. But their ability to update the system requires a backdrop of daily sacrifices. And while Abraham and Pinchas might have engaged in spontaneous prayer, tradition fixes and mandates the time for prayer, transforming prayer from a “special situation” to a basic act of spiritual hygiene.
Socrates argues in the Gorgias that virtuous people know what virtue is; you can’t be virtuous and not know what virtue is. As a corollary, any vice must be the result of ignorance. But Aristotle challenges these premises, aligning himself with the sophists whom Socrates critiqued. Some people know what virtue is, but don’t act on it, because they have a weak will. And other people behave in a virtuous manner, yet they do so not because they are theoretically well thought out but simply because they’ve cultivated practical wisdom. It turns out, for Aristotle, that, you can know things by habit, rather than by pure intellect alone. And that moral virtue is more like playing an instrument than solving a math equation. It is in the context of this debate that we can appreciate the Torah’s emphasis on regular sacrifice, and ultimately regular prayer.
Pinchas and Moses might have appeared to be acting spontaneously, but their practical wisdom was forged over time by habit. Regular prayer is how you build the muscle for spontaneous prayer. Regular study is how you build the habit for spontaneous insight.
We read this parasha during the Hebrew month of Tammuz, which begins the three-week period of mourning for the destruction of both the First and Second Temples. This timing creates an irony. The very system of daily sacrifices that the Torah commands here—designed to build the practical wisdom that enables right response to unprecedented situations—could not prevent its own destruction. In times of crisis, it is the creative energy of Pinchas and Zelophechad’s daughters that come to the rescue. They summon us to ask, “How do we maintain our capacity for right action when our infrastructure is broken or gone?”
In Menachot 110a, Rabbi Yitzchak makes a radical claim: "What is the meaning of that which is written: 'This is the law of the sin offering' (Leviticus 6:18), and: 'This is the law of the guilt offering' (Leviticus 7:1)? These verses teach that anyone who engages in studying the law of the sin offering is ascribed credit as though he sacrificed a sin offering, and anyone who engages in studying the law of a guilt offering is ascribed credit as though he sacrificed a guilt offering."
Torah study becomes a form of spiritual practice even as we no longer have the sacrifices or the Temple. There is the Torah of special events and the Torah of regularity. The one enables us to deal with the moment artfully, the other helps us prepare for those moments when they inevitably come.
We don’t need to cultivate novelty for the sake of novelty or be spontaneous for the sake of being spontaneous; rather, by building spiritual habits day in and day out, we prepare ourselves to meet—and even grow through—the critical moment.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins