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"Lots of times, people just want to say, 'Nah, we'll just write off the Declaration of Independence because of Thomas Jefferson's hypocrisy," said Harvard professor Danielle Allen. "We can't write it off. We shouldn't write it off. It is our inheritance."* Allen should know, she is one of the world’s experts on the Declaration of Independence. Her current research focuses on democracy renovation and how to reconnect citizens to civic power.
This week in Parashat Pinchas, we come across an uncomfortable event that might similarly make us doubt our most holy founding document: Pinchas, the son of a priest, is rewarded by God with hereditary priesthood for having brutally killed an interfaith couple who had committed idolatry.
Yes, the writer who affirmed that all men were created equal was himself a slaveowner, and yes, at times, the Torah condones and even prescribes actions that we now find morally repugnant.
On this 250th anniversary, I pray that we may be brave enough to continue to interpret with wisdom our sacred inheritances. And in so doing, may we continue to become the light to the nations that we were always meant to be.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Fourth,
Cantor Emily Wigod Pincus
*CBS Sunday Morning, June 28th , 2026
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