<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span style="font-size: 20px;" class="">“Pinhas… has turned back Chamati, My wrath, from the people of Israel.” (Num.25:11)<br class=""> <br class="">So, Pinhas has proven his unusual power to turn back God’s wrath from Israel through a very courageous, <br class="">difficult and controversial act. The Vilna Gaon brilliantly observes that in the word chamati (my wrath), <br class="">the two outside letters chet and yud read chai — life — while the inside letters, mem and tav, read meit — death. <br class=""> <br class="">The hidden meaning is that by Pinchos facing squarely what has taken place on the outside, he has miraculously <br class="">turned back the wrath of the Almighty. In doing so, he has removed death (meit) from the inside, replacing it with life (chai).<br class=""> <br class="">(Also, if you remove the "W" (for Wilderness) from "wrath" and replace it with "O" (for Obedience to God), the “orath” can be rearranged to read Torah). <br class=""><br class="">Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. <br class="">Norman Cousins</span><br class=""></body></html>