We stayed in the valley mul Beth-Peor. (D. 4:29)
Hebrew has several ways of saying “near.” The word mul is not commonly used this way, though.
Mul is first used to describe a milah, a circumcision.
Such shall be the covenant between Me and you and your offspring to follow which you shall keep: every male among you shall be circumcised. (G. 17:10)
The purpose of the circumcision is to separate a man from his raw, animalistic self, to understand that we should not be guided by our bodies, but instead by our souls. So a mul is a separation both physically and in other ways (Tzipporah does the same with Moshe). Even Yisro uses the word to describe G-d and the people as counterweights for each other (E. 18:19). Mul is on the opposite side of the scale.
Mul also means “in front” – used for the Tzitz and curtains and menorah. Until Devarim, the word mul never is used as a geographical designation!
So why is this word, mul, used to describe the geographical relationship between Peor and Israel?
Could it be that there is a deeper symbolic understanding of the relationship? And if so, what might it be?
Peor as Oppositional?
Might our relationship with Peor be the same as a milah? Something that we have to cut away in order to serve Hashem?
After all, in addition to milah, the Torah commands us to cut other things away as well:
Cut away (mul), therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more. (D. 10:16)
Then your G-d will mul your heart and the hearts of your offspring—to love your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live. (D. 30:6)
Balak says the same! He sent messengers to Balaam son of Beor in Pethor, which is by the Euphrates, in the land of his kinsfolk, to invite him, saying, “There is a people that came out of Egypt; it hides the earth from view, and it is settled mul to me. (N. 22:5)
Is the Torah directly comparing Peor to a foreskin?! Something that we must cut away before we can connect with G-d?
Can Judaism Be Defined By What It Is Not?
Is it possible that the Torah is telling us something fundamental about Judaism? And that we can understand it by understanding that we are meant to be in direct opposition, mul, to Peor?
What is Peor? The practice of Peor is to expose yourself – make your most fundamental urges something public and something acted on publicly. Those acts are the worship.
So the crime of Zimri and Cosbi was actually a religious practise, an integral part of the religion of Peor! The act was not merely misbehavior – it was always meant to be a direct assault on the core Torah principle that we, in order to connect with G-d, must have a milah, an oppositional division, to the idea that we are led by openly exposing our bodies and our desires to the world!
We know more about Peor as well, directly from the Torah. We know from Bilaam and Balak that Peor has purchasable loyalties and principles: for enough money, Peor will do or say anything, including trying to subvert G-d’s clearly expressed will.
When Moshe dies, the Torah tells us
[God] buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, mul Beth-peor; and no one knows his burial place to this day. (D. 34:6)
Doesn’t this encapsulate the symbolic situation? That Moshe, like Judaism, is never meant to be about physical location. Instead, his symbolic value is in the spiritual location: in death, as in life, Moshe stood in direct contrast and opposition to everything that Peor stood for.
Is this a way of saying that Judaism is meant to be influential in this world in the same way that Moshe was? Through ideas and principles, and not through physical power, presence, or prowess?