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Why can Pinchas kill Zimri for a non-capital offense? The act of living with a non-Jew constitutes expatriation from God's world—not merely a sin but secession from the divine realm. Kanois prevents public acts of expatriation to protect the rest of Klal Yisrael from following suit.
Rabbi Zweig begins by examining the perplexing nature of the Three Weeks mourning period, questioning why we enter mourning rather than teshuvah when responding to tragedies caused by our sins. He then addresses the fundamental difficulty with the concept of kanois (zealotry) in Parshas Pinchas: How can Pinchas kill Zimri for an act that, if brought to Beis Din, would not warrant capital punishment? The shiur develops a fundamental distinction between sins committed within God's system and acts that constitute complete expatriation from God's world. Drawing on the Rambam (רמב"ם)'s observation that humans foolishly deny their mortality by building houses for a thousand years while living only seventy, Rabbi Zweig explains that the difference between Jews and non-Jews lies in their relationship to God's world. Non-Jews (called "Akum" generically by Chazal) fundamentally want to live in their own world separate from God, which is the essence of idolatry.
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Parshas Pinchas
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