When the Internet Picks Up the Spear: Pinchas and the Main Character Effect

Tech Tribe Dispatch #309

@songadaymann

💡 Think:

“And Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw and arose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand.”
—Numbers 25:7

“He saw the incident taking place before him and he remembered the halakha. He said to Moses: Brother of the father of my father, did you not teach me this during your descent from Mount Sinai… Moses said to him: Let the one who reads the letter be the agent to fulfill its contents.”
—Sanhedrin 82a

"Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it"
—@maplecocaine

A video from a concert showing the CEO Astronomer, a data analytics startup, in a questionable embrace with his Chief People Officer, has taken the internet by storm.

The Sages teach¹ us that one should “contemplate three things, and not come to the hands of transgression: Know what is above from you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.”

That lesson has become manifestly true online. Everything we do is going to be documented and shared, at scale, for the entire world to pick apart - in a way that is indelibly recorded in servers (and minds) around the world.

If every day there is a main character on Twitter, a person (or persons) picked apart by the collective hive-mind of the Internet and gleefully destroyed, than this couple was without a doubt it… and after-all, what could be more deserving of public scorn than a couple engaged in the most profound betrayal that can be?

Indeed, in this week’s Torah Portion, Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron and great-nephew of Moses, is called to action. Seeing that a prince of the tribe of Shimon, Zimri ben Salu, was indecently involved with the Midianite princess Kozbi, the daughter of Tzur, Pinchas stood up against the couple.

The details and timing seem almost providential… but there is a key difference. Pinchas saw an issue that he alone was in the time and place to address - his actions were in the face of communal scorn, an attempt that transcends the societal norms in order to stop a trend of public and willful desecration of the highest order.

It was countercultural in the most extreme — a one time act than transcends the norms. Indeed, had Pinchas asked the court if he could strike the couple, he would have been told not to.

If the lone zealot finds himself as one of many, it may be time to consider the focus of his actions.
King Yannai, the autocratic Jewish king during the Second Temple, said to his wife² before he died: “Do not be afraid of the Pharisees [the Sages, who Yannai betrayed and later executed], and neither should you fear from those who are not Pharisees [the Sadducees who denied the Oral Torah and embraced Yannai’s rule]; rather, beware of the hypocrites who appear like Pharisees, as their actions are like the act of the wicked Zimri and they request a reward like that of the righteous Pinchas.

The internet lacks a judge - instead each and every individual takes action not to address the wrongs that they alone see, but rather the communal sport of monitoring the situation… One might need to ask: The lives of multiple people are being undone in the most public way possible. Is my action the spear that ends the desecration or the action that adds too it?

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1. Pirkei Avot 2:1

2. Sotah 22b