It is quite significant that the 250th anniversary of America, on their calendar, is falling on Shabbos Parshas Pinchas.

America is widely recognized for ushering in a new era of religious liberty and tolerance, offering welcome to Jews, and recognizing their contribution.

First of all, the Founding Fathers recognized that certain rights are given to people by their Creator, Hashem. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness were called unalienable rights. As George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, RI in 1790:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Many regard this sentiment as a precursor to the first of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment said that each citizen can believe what they want and practice their faith, while government was prohibited from recognizing a particular religion or denomination.

But Further, America’s second president, John Adams, recognized the key role of the Torah in helping America choose a better form of governance, one built upon not only individual rights and liberties, but Biblical values such as life, peace, tolerance, universal justice, and education.

[The Hebrews] are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a Bauble in comparison of the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the Globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily, than any other Nation ancient or modern.

And elsewhere, he wrote in a letter in 1809:

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of another sect… I should still believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate for all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

America’s founders drew more upon Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, than any other work. But there is a different, special link to Parshas Pinchas. George Washington also expressed, in his letter to the Newport congregation, his dreams of peace: “everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid” [cf. Michah 4:4]. Yet he was also America’s first military general, and the Second Continental Congress issued a Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms in 1775. How can Washington support peace, yet wage war?

One can ask precisely this question of Pinchas: immediately after he commits an act of violence, Hashem gives him His “Covenant of Peace!” Why are these not contradictory?

The answer, though, is clear. Hashem placed us in a world in which there is both unmistakable good, and great evil. Our task is to choose the good, at every level—and even to fight the evil. Because if the good people ignore evil and lay down their arms, those on the side of evil will surely not.

Sadly, that simple truth is now a source of political contention. And it is intimately connected to the fact that while America’s Bicentennial was a bipartisan celebration of patriotic enthusiasm, the much-less-elegantly expressed Semiquincentennial, as simple a gesture as flying the American flag is now divided by partisan lines.

Today, many are confused by whether it is correct to fight evil, and prevent its spread. In fact, they are confused regarding which is good, and which is evil, accusing the good (whether America or Israel) of the very crimes that the evil (Iran and its terror proxies) commit indiscriminately. In that context, Pinchas reminds us that we are indeed fortunate to have American leadership, strength, and commitment. We do wish for cessation of that leadership—but only when Moshiach ushers in the era of world peace.

That future vision, of course, is described as Michah 4, making it a vision as patriotic as George Washington himself!

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Yaakov Menken