The Source of Healing

The Zohar, in the portion of Pinchas, specifically deals with healing, while healing appears to have nothing to do with the portion. The Zohar explains every aspect of the physical body, and describes the driving force behind every bone, every organ of our body. Rav Shimon bar Yochai chose this particular section to review this with us because it has so many peculiarities that help us to understand the reason why Pinchas is so powerful.

"We can become free of mortality, free from the Angel of Death."

In the previous section, Pinchas put an end to the plague where 24,000 people perished by killing the two people whose action was the cause of the plague, and was rewarded. As it says “I will give and bestow to Pinchas the Covenant of Peace.” What does the Covenant of Peace mean? The Zohar explains that peace means freedom from the Angel of Death. In other words, Pinchas never died. Pinchas entered into a dimension of pure reality, of Etz haChaim (Tree of Life), the dimension where there is no chaos, no death, because he had the courage to go against robotic nature and in doing so he put an end to the plague and he survived.

The Zohar raises this question, how can a priest who has murdered and is therefore now invalid for priestly service receive a reward of everlasting service? This is a contradiction. The Zohar explains that when Pinchas slayed these two people, one of them being Zimri the chief of the tribe of Shimon, tens of thousands of people from the tribe of Shimon swept down upon him and were going to kill him, and from that fright he actually died. Pinchas' body became separated from his present soul and in turn he received a new soul. In other words, the soul that Pinchas came into this world with separated from his body to create a space for this same body to now embrace the souls of two individuals, Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron who had perished. So powerful were these two, who now became incarnated into Pinchas.

The Zohar says that it is in this portion where Pinchas is provided with eternal priesthood, and with it came the freedom, the knowledge, that we can become free of mortality, free from the Angel of Death, and consequently embrace immortality.

We also find in the word Shalom in this portion—a word meaning complete freedom from death (immortality)—that the Vav is intentionally split. As we have all learned, we are careful with the letters of the Torah Scroll because if there is one hairline split in any of the letters, the scroll becomes totally invalid unless it is repaired. Here, Moses was specifically instructed to create a hairline split in this letter. 

"We also find in the word Shalom in this portion—a word meaning complete freedom from death"

There are many reasons as to why there was an instruction to Moses by God Himself to have this letter Vav split, but the Zohar explains that the Bible is teaching us, in this particular word concerning immortality, that splitting means the separating of soul and body, which is what happens at the time of death—a body without a soul ultimately disintegrates. When we listen to the reading of the portion of Pinchas, we can reinstate and create shalom—completeness, a joining, a connecting aspect between the body and the soul eternally, which is of course immortality.

Healing is about the immune system, for the Zohar says that the cause of all illness is the inability of this pure, normally natural system that the Lightforce created within each and every single person, to fend off disease. The Zohar explains that all the diseases that exist today have been with us since the time of Creation. There is nothing new, no new strains, and the reason we think we have new strains of disease is only because of the inability of the immune system to confront these different, seemingly new, situations. This, according to Rav Shimon, is the Armageddon War. Today, we are facing the reality that the immune system no longer functions, not only among humans, but also among trees, animals and rocks. Everything is becoming unable to combat so many diseases that are being uncovered, and to which there are no cures. 

The Zohar says that we cannot cut out negativity; it will reappear because we have not eliminated its point of origin. But, as with the Vav that is split in the word Shalom, we can transform it back into a state of wholeness. We cannot eliminate any of the energies that exist in this world. What we can do is take that same energy and transform it.

The Zohar says that Pinchas restored the immune system. When he stopped the plague, which had already wiped out 24,000 in an instant because their immune system had broken down, he restored the immune system, and when we restore the immune system, health is being restored and there will be no more conflict.