Over at Jewschool, I have some thoughts on how, amidst rockets and airstrikes, Jewish lefties have a strange double task, to both console and further trouble their people:

This week we read Parshat Pinchas, which opens with God’s approval of Pinchas’s vigilante killing of Zimri, an Israelite prince, who is sleeping with Cosbi, a Midianite princess (Numbers, 21:1-15). Liberal Jews are used to being alienated from Pinchas or condemning him, but this week, some of us uncomfortably find ourselves in Pinchas’s position.

Read on to see why, and how to strike the balance.