Parshas Pinchas: Speaking Up, Stepping In, and Bringing What You Can
I used to think silence kept me safe. But all it did was keep me small. And hungry.
For years, I carried questions I wasn’t allowed to ask. Stories I wasn’t sure I was allowed to tell.
Grief I had to package as gratitude. I knew how to follow the rules, how to smile and nod and do what was expected.
I wore all the right names. But none of them felt like me. Underneath it all was a voice swelling like dough left too long in the bowl. Fermenting. Quietly alive. Waiting its time.
It stayed there a while. My teens. My early twenties. A thick silence that kept rising underneath. And in those years, I stepped back. Not in rebellion. Just in survival. I did less. I davened less. I hid more. It hurt to pretend it was all still working.
And now? I’m rising again. Slowly. But it’s real this time.
—
This week, the Torah is pierced open.
Not from a mountain, but from a man with a spear and five women with a question.
Pinchas doesn’t speak. He acts quickly.
With clarity. With cost. And Hashem calls it peace. Bris Shalom.
Then come the daughters, Bnos Tzelafchad.
No swords. No drama. No script. Just presence.
They walk into the center and ask, “Why should our father’s name disappear?”
Pinchas breaks through. They ask for space to be held.
One acts. The others speak.
And both, in their own way, shift the world.
The halacha moves. The future expands.
Women get a place at the table too, because they spoke up.
—
That kind of presence feels familiar.
I’ve been speaking more. Not shouting, just not hiding.
Telling my story without wrapping it in apology. I’m not here to argue.
I’m here to stay connected to something true. To remember I still have skin in the game.
And breath in this body.
There are parts of me that went quiet too long. They’re rising now.
Not with fury. Just with the steady truth of: This is my portion. This is my name. I am not disappearing.
Some voices come like thunder. Others rise like a quiet proof, warm and alive beneath the surface. But all of them, if they’re true, are holy.
—
The Parsha ends with Korbanos. Offerings.
Daily. Monthly. Yearly. Steady. Quiet. Not dramatic. Just consistent.
A way to say: I’m here. This matters.
Some brought more. Some brought less. But everyone brought something.
I’ve never learned Zohar before. But I heard recently that Parshas Pinchas is where something opens.
That the Korbanos in this Parsha aren’t just about sacrifice. They’re about cosmic alignment.
That each offering, each cycle of time, carries a kind of rhythm. Daily. Monthly. Yearly.
I don’t understand it yet. But I’m starting to feel it. Like maybe we’re not just moving through time. Maybe time is moving through us. And maybe showing up, bringing what you can when it’s your moment, is already part of the pattern.
So if there’s something in you that wants to be heard;
a truth, a memory, a question that doesn’t have a home yet; you’re welcome to bring it.
I won’t have all the answers. But I’ll hold space. Sometimes that’s enough.
—
I used to think I had to stay hidden to belong.
But I’m done disappearing.
This is my portion. This is my place. This is my name.
Some words are meant to stay folded.
But some, some need to rise. To crack open. To burn, just enough, to become bread.
Good Shabbos,
Berke