The Jew cannot be removed from the galut (the state of exile, the state of evil). The galut must be excised from the Jew.  However, one must not fight evil. A small quantity of light, banishes much darkness.

The Talmud in Bava Batra 73b declares: “Come and I will show you those who died in the Wilderness: those who died in the Wilderness did not die.” According to this midrash, these individuals entered a spiritual coma, and, therefore, their bodies were rendered inactive. When they are revived spiritually, their bodies will also spring to life. Thus, we learn that earthly redemption will only come after the Jewish nation undergoes a spiritual awakening. The mistake made by the Zionists, the Religious Zionists among them, was to undertake the redemption of the land instead of the redemption of man’s spirit.

Am Yisrael (literally, nation of Israel). The holy Alsheikh differentiates between the word “Am” (nation) and the word “Yisrael” (Israel). The “am” are the common folk. The “Israel(ites)” are the “good”  individuals, the quality people. The Moabite women ensnared the common folk within their net of illicit sexual relations. The “good” people were seduced by the daughters of Midian who enticed them with Ba‘al Pe’or worship. Only after falling for Ba‘al Pe’or did they fall into sinning with the Midianite women. Therefore, the Torah punished them harshly.

“By the trickery they practiced against you” (Numbers 25:18), trickery wherein the proverbial wolf of evil wore sheep’s clothing, evil concealed within good. How were Bnei Yisrael enticed into worshipping idols? Bilaam advised Balak to conceal his evil design within a web of goodness, within an act of kindness. Bilaam encapsulated in the phrase “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob” the source of Israel’s quality; its extraordinarily high level of mutual reciprocity; its instantiation of the verse “And you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself, I am Hashem.” Bilaam advised Balak to introduce a separation between the two halves of the verse: “you shall love” and “I am Hashem.” When one human being loves another without the supernal dimension’s mediation nothing good will come of it. Only evil can result. “Chesed hu (kindness it is)” refers to illicit sexual relations. She presents her favors to all and sundry.

The very nature of idolatry is the concealment of evil within good. This was Bilaam’s malicious invention, and so he is called Bilaam, the wicked one. The “good,” Jewish people recognized idol worship and rejected it, battling against it by degrading it. They did not suspect that the manner in which this particular idol was worshipped was by degrading it. Thus, we learn a bitter lesson: one must not fight evil; it must be totally ignored. One who sees a sotah (rebellious woman) in her fallen state should swear off drinking wine. He should not try to fight the evil she embodies.

Bilaam caused evil to be mixed with good, and used good as a Trojan horse to allow evil to penetrate within the fortress of Bnei Yisrael. Pinchas sensed this when he saw Zimri with the Midianites; he felt that he had to shout out a warning against this dangerous phenomenon, but he was in a catch twenty-two situation. On the one hand, he realized that evil must not be fought; rather, good people must immerse themselves in doing good. Therefore, he understood that playing the part of a zealot was taboo, for, ultimately, the zealot falls into the same evil he fought against. On the other hand, he sensed that the evil before him was not a revealed, defined kind, against which one should not fight. Rather here was a new and inherently dangerous phenomenon, evil masked by good. Against such a phenomenon zealotry would seem to be an appropriate response. However, he understood the dialectical flaw (the logical contradiction) inherent in this argument, for in fighting this phenomenon, he would fall into the trap of fighting evil like any errant zealot. Therefore, he was unsure of what to do.

Pinchas approached Moshe for a ruling on the matter, and Moshe excused himself from ruling, lest he appear to be an interested party, for his wife was the daughter of Yitro. Pinchas took counsel with himself, taking into account the possibility of his being harmed by the tribe of Shimon who would claim that he acted against the tenets of Jewish law. He put himself in harm’s way (delivered himself up to possible death), in order to warn the people of this evil. For this reason, Hashem established a covenant of peace with him, to warn the people that anyone harming Pinchas would, as it were, be doing injury to Hashem. Ultimately, Pinchas merited defeating evil by doing good. He overcame his physicality and sacrificed it on behalf of the divine quality, the source of good, for there is no good that does not have divine quality as the central component within it. Thus, Pinchas defeated evil by increasing the good. In his case, the physical body represented evil, and the soul represented good, so he was granted eternal life. A physical body with no expiration date, according to the rabbinic tradition that Pinchas was Eliyahu (the prophet).

The “Covenant of Peace” –a new yardstick for measuring good and evil– the supernal dimension. Only to be used in cases where the halacha is in doubt.

The twenty-one days, “between the straits” of the seventeenth of Tamuz and the ninth of Av, parallel the twenty-one annual festival days (including Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh), and the twenty-one days from Rosh Hashana until Hoshana Rabba. These parallels teach us that these days of sorrow will be transformed into days of rejoicing, as the Rambam writes in the “Laws of Fasts”:

All these fasts will be abolished during the messianic period, and, furthermore, they will become festive days, days of joyousness, as it is written: ‘Thus sayeth Hashem … the fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth month, and the fast of the seventh month, and the fast of the tenth month shall become occasions of joy and gladness and happy festival days for the house of Judah; and truth and peace you must love [Zechariah 8:19].’(Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Fasts” 5:19)

What could the concluding statement about truth and peace have to do with Zechariah’s messianic vision other than to teach us that when truth and peace are bound together in a package containing love of Hashem, which leads to love for one’s fellow man, the galut will be excised from the Jew. The outer layer – the broken vessels, which are the state of galut, will not make-up the Jew; rather, the divine-human goodness will bring shalom, a state of sheleimut, wholeness or perfection, where harmony is reached between the principle of truth and human reality (the peace). Only at this point will the galut –the evil– end, for finally it has been beaten by the good. The awakening of the good, the qualitative good, will manifest itself through the love of one Jew for another, on the level of mutual reciprocity, of “And you shall love … I am Hashem.” Man’s love for his fellow man will lead to the rebuilding of the Temple, just as causeless hatred caused the Temple’s destruction and the Exile. It is forbidden to remove pesolet (undesired elements) from a mixture in which there is food one wants to eat on Shabbat. However, one may remove the food from this mixture. From this halacha we learn that one must always focus upon the positive, rather than dealing with the negative. A small quantity of  light …

Good that does not derive its sustenance from the Divine is actually evil garbed in goodness. From this we learn, that only the Torah can be used to determine what is good and what is evil. Through the halacha, the “Covenant of Peace,” making use of the supernal dimension –albeit only in a case where the halacha is in doubt– we can try to determine the good. However, it is difficult to use the supernal dimension to define the legal parameters of what is good. Man may, and, indeed, must use the chief instruments that the Creator gave him: his ability to reason and his common sense.