This week's section is called Pinchas. It is the name of a grandson of Aaron, son of Eleazar, who, despite having such a lineage, was not a Cohen (Priest). When God chose Aaron as Cohen, He sanctified him and his four sons, Nadav, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, and their future descendants from that moment onward. But Pinchas had already been born and had not yet been sanctified.
At the end of the previous parashah, when Balak attempts to destroy the Jewish people through Balaam's curse, Balaam advises Balak to lead them into sin by making their women (those of the Moabite and Midianite people) promiscuous with the Jewish people. In this way, they would turn away from their God, making it easier to defeat them in war.
It was then that Zimri, the leader of the tribe of Simeon, took the daughter of Balak, king of Moab, as his wife in front of all the people. Jewish law (Halakha) states that whoever finds another man having relations with a woman from another nation, if he feels a deep zeal for God, is permitted to kill him. Now, Phinehas saw what Zimri was doing with his Moabite wife, took a spear, and killed them both. For this act of bravery, God bestowed upon him the gift of being a Kohen (priest) and promised that his descendants would be High Priests.
This year we read this section during the week of Tammuz, the 12th and 13th of the month. These are the days on which the previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, of blessed memory, was released from prison in the former Soviet Union. The sole reason for his imprisonment was his tireless efforts to keep Judaism, which was banned by communism, alive throughout the country. By sending rabbis and children's teachers, establishing underground schools to teach Judaism, building ritual baths (mikvaot), and meeting the needs of Jews across the nation, the previous Rebbe kept the flame of Judaism burning.
What is the relationship between Pinchas and the previous Rebbe? Both sacrificed their lives for the same ideal: traditional Torah Judaism. Beyond the very concept of assuming responsibility, it also requires the necessary sacrifice to do so. That is to say, both saw that if they did not act at that particular moment in their lives, the continuity of the entire Jewish people was in danger, and they decided to act. But action came with total personal sacrifice. And both were able to do it.
In other words, for every challenge in a person's life, there are generally two stages: 1) realizing the need to act, and 2) overcoming the intrinsic rational selfishness that leads us to not want to sacrifice our lives for an ideal, but rather dictates, influenced by many internal and external factors, the need to survive: if the ideal will cause you to cease to exist, perhaps you shouldn't act, despite having seen the need...
Both Pinchas and the previous Rebbe saw the need to act and set everything aside to sacrifice themselves for that ideal. An ideal that, to this day, requires each of us to make sacrifices in our own small world, both internally, for ourselves, and externally, for our families and communities, sacrifices that lead to the continuity of Judaism.