Bamidbar 25:10 – 30:1
Five Sheroes for Our Times
Our Parsha Pinchas opens where our last parsha let off. Pinchas, Aaron’s grandson, had slain Zimri, an Israelite and Cozbi, daughter of a Midianite chieftain after they had cohabitated and encouraged Zimri to worship foreign gods. His zealotry prevented annihilation by Hashem of all Israel and earned for Pinchas the leadership of the priests in the land they would soon enter.
After the plague had ended, Adonai tells Moshe and Eleazar to take a census of all Israelite men by clan ages 20 and up. They are listed in our parsha. Of the generation that left Mitzrayim (Egypt), only Caleb and Joshua have survived to enter the promised land.
What follows is the story of the five daughters of Zelphehad of the Manassite family. Malah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah step forward in front of the Tent of Meeting to confront Moshe and Aaron. This in itself was a courageous move. Not long before we saw what happened to others who did so. In a world where women had little or no status, where Miriam contracted a skin disorder for confronting her brother, where Korach, Dathan, and Abiram paid with their lives for doing so, they question the law where their father who had no sons, must lose his namesake for property that was his. Moshe takes this to Adonai, and surprise of surprises, the law is revised protecting these brave sisters.
A bit more about this. They appear in Bamidbar 27 and 36, as well as in Joshua 17. Even more unusual as women in a patriarchy hardly are mentioned, each one per Carol Meyers in Torah: A Women’s Commentary is named on each occasion. There apparently was a significant tradition around these women, as in Samaria where their land was assigned, 66 ostraca from broken pottery have been found bearing the names of Hoglah and Noah, Tirzah, Milcah, and Hoglah are town names in this same region of the land today. Here we see Adonai side with women in what could be a very unjust system. Even more so, their prominent mention, for we know that in the patriarchy, men did the writing.
Moshe is then instructed to climb where he may see the land, but he will not enter. Moshe asks Adonai to name a successor for the people before he dies. Adonai says Joshua, son of Nun will be named. Adonai says to stand with Eleazar before the people. Eleazar consults the Urim (lots) and Joshua is named. They then recite per Hashem the sacrificial obligations to the people. The parsha ends affirming Moshe has shared all that Hashem has commanded and that these were indeed the words of Adonai.
I want to focus more on the five daughters of Zelphehad. As I mentioned before, theirs was a courageous move in a patriarchal world. But the result was the rewriting of the law by Hashem. Within the context of the world in which they lived, why were they successful when others were not so fortunate? Indeed, you must wonder, when they made their request, did they think they would be successful? In the Babylonian Talmud Bava Batra 119B, the reason they were successful was because they were wise because they spoke in the precise moment the decision was made, astute interpreters by saying that if their father had a son, they would not have spoken, and pious because they did not want to marry men who were unworthy.
An interesting question is brought by Rabbi Leah Berkowitz in a dvar for the URJ. If the plea by the sisters was just, why wasn’t the law of inheritance written to include them in the first place? Midrash Tanhuma Pinchas 9 (400-600CE) suggests this encounter was designed to humble Moshe, reminding him his knowledge of the law is limited so that “even the women” know something he does not. However, she and I prefer an interpretation made in Dirshuni, a midrash written by Israeli women. In Dirshuni, Rivka Lubitch:
“Tanot asked God: If Zelophechad’s daughters spoke the truth, why didn’t you write that in Your Torah in the first place, for, after all, You are truth and Your Torah is truth, and Your word endures forever?
“God answered …. There is truth that descends from on high, and there is truth that grows from below. Blessed is the generation in which truth from above meets truth from below. And this is what Scripture means when it says, Truth will grow from the ground, and justice look down from Heaven (Psalm 85:12)” (“Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash”).
Looking back over centuries, time and again we have seen examples of truth rising from below. In Torah we see laws regulating slavery, but today, slavery is seen for the evil it is. As someone who is gay and trans, in my lifetime I’ve seen civilization go from my early years when homosexual acts were punishable by felony conviction to the day when gay marriage would become the law of the land. We have seen women becoming bat mitzvah ever since Judith Eisenstein in 1922, then women becoming rabbis. In my lifetime, I remember when women could not get a credit card. How far we have come, and yet, in this reactionary time, voices of truth, the cry for justice, remains a much-needed commodity. But we stand on the shoulders of Malah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, five unlikely examples of speaking truth to power. Baruch Hashem!
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