Title: The Severed Letter and the Unbroken
Soul: Zimri, Pinchas, and the Redemption of a Cut Covenant 

This
Shabbat: A broken
letter. A severed soul. A redemption that spans lifetimes.

Join us for “The Severed Letter and the Unbroken Soul” — a journey from
Zimri to Rabbi Akiva and beyond. 

Opening:
Questions That Demand Answers 

What do we
do when we find a broken letter in a Sefer Torah? We stop. We call a sofer. We
declare the scroll pasul. One letter broken, and the Torah’s voice is silenced. 

But there’s
one shocking exception. 

In Parashat
Pinchas, Hashem rewards Pinchas with a berit shalom — a covenant of peace. Yet
in every kosher Sefer Torah, the word שָׁלוֹם is written with a vav
ketu’ah — a broken vav. Not a sofer’s error, not an oversight, but a
halachic requirement. 

Why here?
Why now? Why peace — a word that also appears in Hashem’s name — fractured? 

And why was
Pinchas, the hero of the moment, so hated by the people? Why did the mal’achei
hasharet, the ministering angels, seek to kill him? What did they see that
we don’t? 

Even more
puzzling: our Sages reveal that Zimri’s soul returns — not once, but twice —
once as Rabbi Akiva, and again as Ketiah bar Shalom both alive at the
same time. Moreso Zimri had been here before and failed and this was his
chance to fix things.  

What’s the
thread tying all this together? 

To
understand, we’ll journey together today. The inspiration for this class is a
66 page booklet I received last week from Rav Chaim Rosenblatt of Netiv
Aryeh in Jerusalem, it is based on the teachings of Rav Moshe
Wolfson zatzal. I have also interwoven, as is natural, my own thoughts based on
my limited understanding as I was taught by Rabbi Abittan Zsl.  

Lets call
this a tale of a soul. Shattered. Elevated. Redeemed. 

To me, it’s
the story of how Hashem never gives up on us.