Among the many wondrous episodes in the life of the legendary Mishnaic sage Rabbi Pinchas ben Ya’ir,1 the Talmud recounts the following three stories:2

1. On his way to save a group of people who had been taken captive, he encountered the Ginai River and ordered it to part so he could pass through.

The river responded: “You are going to perform the will of your Maker and I am going to perform the will of my Maker, which is to flow normally. With regard to you, it is uncertain whether or not you will perform His will successfully, as you may fail in your endeavors. I, however, will certainly succeed.”

“If you do not part,” Rabbi Pinchas threatened, “I will decree upon you that water will never flow through you.” Whereupon the river parted for him.

2. Rabbi Pinchas ben Ya’ir stopped at an inn. His hosts placed barley before his donkey, but the donkey refused to eat. The hosts sifted the barley with a sieve [in case this was an extra-fussy animal], but still the donkey refused it. They picked out the remaining chaff by hand, but that didn’t help either.

Rabbi Pinchas asked his hosts: “Perhaps the barley is not tithed?”3

They tithed it and the donkey ate it.

“This poor animal is going to perform the will of its Maker,” Rabbi Pinchas exclaimed, “and you are feeding it untithed produce?!”

3. When Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (Judah the Prince) heard that Rabbi Pinchas ben Ya’ir had arrived, he went out to greet him and invited him to dine with him. Rabbi Pinchas accepted the invitation, and Rabbi Yehuda’s face glowed with satisfaction, as it was well known that Rabbi Pinchas did not accept dinner invitations.

Upon arriving at Rabbi Yehuda’s house, Rabbi Pinchas happened to enter through the entrance in which white mules were standing. He said: “The Angel of Death is in this person’s house, and I will eat with him?” (White mules were known to be dangerous animals.) Rabbi Yehuda heard Rabbi Pinchas’s words and tried to appease him. He offered to sell, disown or even kill the mules, all options categorically rejected by Rabbi Pinchas. The story ends with Rabbi Yehuda in tears.

Those are the stories. Now, let’s take a closer look.

Let’s Dive Deeper…

In the first story, the river has a point. It was created to flow. So what business does a rabbi have telling it to part? Let the rabbi do his thing while the river does its thing. In which way does the rabbi’s mission to redeem captives trump the river legitimately going about its business?

It is particularly troubling that Rabbi Pinchas doesn’t offer a plausible rebuttal to the river’s reasonable objection, responding instead with an ominous threat to obliterate it. How does that count for an answer?

Moving to the second story, we are also left perplexed. Rabbi Pinchas comes to the defense of the donkey on the grounds that it “is going to perform the will of its Maker.”

What are we to make of a kosher-keeping donkey? Since when are animals expected to abide by Jewish dietary laws?

It is one thing for a pious Jew to avoid feeding such food to his animal, and tradition tells of several other instances where the animals of sages insisted on abiding by Torah laws.4

But surely the animal is free to eat unkosher food! How can the animal’s action be referred to as “the will of its Maker”?

As for the third story, it is not at clear why Rabbi Pinchas would refuse to eat in the home of Rabbi Yehuda on account of his white mules.

It is also unclear what the point of this story is. After all, there is no halachic prohibition against owning white mules. If there was, Rabbi Yehuda, a great legal authority, would not have owned them in the first place. And if there wasn’t any real restriction on possessing those animals, how is it right for Rabbi Pinchas to put up such a stiff objection?

Rather, we can presume that Rabbi Pinchas, who admitted that he had never eaten from anyone’s table, simply did not want to dine out! So why link his refusal to eat in Rabbi Yehuda’s home with his objection to the mules?

Three Stories, One Theme

Why are these three episodes recorded together in the Talmud?

It must be because they share a common theme, one that will help us better understand them.

For Rabbi Pinchas ben Ya’ir, “going to do the will of my Maker” was not an activity—it was his very essence. More than a sentiment reflected in many of his activities, it defined him as a person.

One of Rabbi Pinchas’s most important teachings is that “piety is greater than any other virtue.”5 How does he define piety? Fully dedicating one’s entire life to “the will of my Maker.”

Proverbs advises, “Know Him in all your ways.”6 Ethics of the Fathers teaches that, “All your actions should be for the sake of Heaven.”7 And Maimonides8 was excited by how well this rabbinic teaching captures the essence of Judaism.

The Rebbe9 explains that for Rabbi Pinchas, this was not merely an idea but his actual life. There was nothing in him besides that. Not only were his overtly religious acts infused with holiness, but his every thought, speech, and action were equally G‑d-centric.

As a wholly and truly righteous person, Rabbi Pinchas was, as it were, “a chariot to G‑d.”10 The chariot has no will or identity of its own, it only follows the path it is directed on. Similarly, the righteous are completely devoted to the Higher cause.

For such people, even ordinary acts are extraordinary. They live with the credo that nothing will find its way into their lives unless it is going to help them “do the will of my Maker.”

Back to Our Stories

The river argued that the rabbi may or may not fulfill G‑d’s will, since it was questionable whether he would succeed in freeing the captives. But this was not the case with Rabbi Pinchas, who lived every moment as an opportunity to serve G‑d. Even walking along the road was a mitzvah, as he was fully focused on living in accordance with the Divine plan.

And no natural phenomenon should get in the way.

The river is a creation. When a person is dedicated to pursuing a mitzvah, they are above the constraints of nature. They are the ultimate purpose for which nature was created. By right, all of nature should be subservient to the reason for existence. If the river doesn’t get it, it has no reason to exist!

Thus, Rabbi Pinchas was not “steamrolling” over the river. He was simply expressing the truth that a creation that isn’t in harmony with the Divine plan has no place in G‑d’s universe.

On to the second story:

The possessions of the truly pious, such as the donkey of Rabbi Pinchas, are also part of this ultimate mission to be a vehicle for G‑d’s purpose. It is not that the donkey chose to be Torah observant, rather it was fully integrated into the holiness of its owner. It was therefore only natural that it could not tolerate anything that was not acceptable by Torah law.

In the third episode, Rabbi Pinchas was not alleging that Rabbi Yehuda was in violation of any law by owning white mules. However, as someone who has subsumed his entire entity in a holy purpose, he could not reconcile owning an animal that could be dangerous with his single-minded dedication to doing “the will of my Maker.”

Rabbi Pinchas was accustomed never to dine out, perhaps because this would serve as a distraction to his absolute dedication to his goal. But with an invitation from the greatest rabbi of his time, how could that be a problem? Then he saw the mules, which in his view, while not forbidden, are nevertheless not in keeping with his strict focus on G‑d’s will.

That was enough to cause him to reject the invitation.

Seeing this extreme level of piety, Rabbi Yehuda was brought to tears. What is one to say in the face of such saintliness?

Conclusion

Perhaps you and I are not a Rabbi Pinchas, and our lives are going to be more mundane. But we should at least know the truth: that at any moment that we dedicate ourselves to a higher purpose – even a single mitzvah – we are capable of transcending reality. We become beyond nature; we connect with something above ourselves. We too become part of the project “to do the will of my Maker.”

Adapted from Torat Menachem, vol. 11, Parshat Beshalach section 30-33.