The Strange Peace Prize

This week, we meet a fascinating peace prize laureate. His name is Pinchas.
Pinchas takes drastic action. He runs to the center of a moral crisis unfolding in the camp and kills the perpetrator, Zimri. It is a violent, radical, unforgettable moment. And as a result, Hashem tells Moshe that He is granting Pinchas *Bris Shalom* — a covenant of peace.

That is fascinating, because I would have imagined a different reward for such an act. A badge of valor. A medal for service. Some recognition of passion and conviction. But a *peace* prize? This isn’t the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to statesmen and negotiators. This is a peace prize given to a man who just took a spear in his hand. He didn’t do anything peaceful. So why is peace the reward?

Eliyahu’s Ultimatum

Fast forward a few hundred years. We meet a man, tradition teaches is in fact Pinchas - Eliyahu HaNavi. At a terrible moment in Israel’s history, when the nation is caught between Hashem and the Baal, Eliyahu confronts them on Har HaCarmel. He calls out: *Ad masai atem poschim al shtei haseifim* — how long will you keep hopping between two opinions? *Im Hashem Elokim, lechu acharav; v’im haBaal, lechu acharav* — if Hashem is G-d, follow Him; and if the Baal is, follow it.

What’s fascinating here is that Eliyahu seems to be saying something almost heretical: it is better to serve the Baal than to live with no decision at all. Why would that be? Because the moment a person makes a decision — commits to something — they become accountable to it. They may be right. They may be wrong. But indecision carries no accountability at all. It costs nothing, and it means nothing.

Who We Are

Who are we?

This sounds like a big question. But we can start with who we are not.

We are not our body. A person can lose the use of most of their body and still be themselves.

We are not even our brain because at the end of our life, that too will be retired and yet our memory will live on.

What makes us you and me?

When a person arrives on this earth, they endowed with certain gifts - a body, a psychological profile consisting of genetic predispositions some already formed and some to be formed by environment. Jewish tradition argues that at the end of life, every one of those endowments are taken back. All of that was just a lease - a vehicle for the course of a lifetime but not something owned and therefore not definitional. The only thing which remains is our decisions. What remains, what actually belonged to us, is the sum total of the decisions we made along the way.

Which is why the saddest character isn’t the one who decided wrong. It’s the one who never decided at all.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot captures this in his portrait of a middle-aged man who never felt his life amounted to anything — a man paralyzed by his own hesitation, endlessly rehearsing decisions and revisions he never quite makes, measuring out an entire existence in small, safe, forgettable increments. He second-guesses himself into non-existence.

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

The Peace of Pinchas

That is precisely what Pinchas avoided. That is why he earns a blessing of peace rather than a blessing of valor. Because Pinchas’s peace was never about the Nobel kind — it was not peace between nations or peace on a battlefield. It was inner peace. Hashem was granting him the peace of living with a decision — a costly, irreversible, high-stakes decision that he made and then had to carry.

I doubt anyone has ever made a decision knowing every variable, guaranteed to be right, with zero cost. That isn’t how life works. Every real decision comes with a cost, and every real decision is made in some degree of darkness. But when we look at what’s in front of us — what’s genuinely ahead of us — and we commit to it with everything we have, and then we live with it without endless second-guessing, that is the peace Pinchas was given.

That is the peace of a decision.

Picture Credit: Photo by Ann H from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/sneakers-beside-arrows-2646530/