pinchas

This weeks Parsha Thought is dedicated
לזכר נשמת יהודה בן ר' נחמן

The parsha starts off with 'ה telling Moshe the reward that Pinchas gets for avenging His honor, and while doing so tells us the names of the people who sinned. ושם איש ישראל.... זמרי בן סלוא...... לשמעני
The name of the slain Israelite man who was slain with the Midianite woman was Zimri, son of Salu, leader of a Shimonite patriarchy.
The Ohr Hachaim asks, if the Torah wanted to reveal the names of the sinners, it doesn't make sense to do it over here where we are talking about Pinchas's reward. It should have said it where the act actually took place. Instead, there it just refers to him as the איש ישראל.
When the Torah mentions Zimri's lineage, Rashi says, just like when we list the lineage of Pinchas, a tzadik, to praise him, we list the lineage of Zimri, a rasha, to denigrate him. Rav Lieff asks, it's understandable how listing the lineage of Zimri, the grandson of great people, makes his act even more despicable.
Whereas Pinchas, being a tzadik the son of a tzadik, a noble act is what is expected of him. How can you compare the two?
After Shimon & Levi killed out sh'chem, they said "are we gonna let him make our sister into a harlot?!". This was what the shevet of Shimon stood for; they were totally against promiscuity. And what was Aaron's motto? Love & peace. He was always running after peace, trying to make peace between man & his friend, husband & wife. His essence was peace.
Now, says Rav Lieff, we could understand what Rashi meant by comparing them. They both went against the grain of how they were brought up & what they stood for. Zimri, whose family was against promiscuity went & committed this act that went against everything he stood for, & Pinchas too, went against his upbringing of peace & love to pick up a sword & kill, which went totally against his core.
The חיד"א says in the name of ר' אליעזר נחמן פואה, that when you talk bad about רשעים they have tza'ar & that could give them a כפרה. The חיד"א says that's what chazal mean when they say ושם רשעים ירקב; that means don't mention them by name, for then they can get a כפרה that they don't deserve.
According to that we can understand why it didn't say Zimri's name when he committed the act, for that would have degraded him, possibly giving him a כפרה. Therefore it just says an איש ישראל. But here, where it's discussing Pinchas & that a great kiddush Hashem came out of his act, the mentioning of the rasha's name doesn't give a כפרה, so it can be mentioned.
We see from this Posuk two things. First, that one can go against his nature for either good or bad, & second, that even after a disaster one has to make a kiddush Hashem.
This week we saw both of these things. First we saw how a person can go totally against the nature of a human and do the unimaginable, and then we saw how we could make a kiddush Hashem by all coming together to try to help. It didn't matter what you looked like or what kind of hat you wore; everyone was in it together. We have to learn from this to keep that sense of unity through good times too. We have to go against our nature of thinking that one type of jew is better than the other, and love each other just because we're jews, and not need any more tragedies to bring us all together. In that zchus may we merit the coming of moshiach now!