John Lewis and the Torah Feminists
We're riding on the escalator of life, we're shopping in the human mall," Robert Hazard sang to us 40 years ago, to which we might rejoinder "We're riding on the elevator of Torah, we're screening in the Hollywood hall."
An interesting week, this week of Pinchas, as we actually covered him and his zeal back in the spring when Will Smith had his own moment of heatedly defending a divinity's honor. (You can read all about it here and not feel left out of this weekend's Pinchas-portioners. And read all our old posts here.)
But don't despair, there's something maybe even juicier in store this week — a look at some of the Torah's original feminists. Jump aboard the moving sidewalk, we’re flying from the TGH gate.
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So after we get through the heavy-duty specter of Pinchas slaying some evildoers and a last tally of the Israelites as they get ready to finally enter the land of Israel, we arrive at the story of B'not Tzlofchad. These are the five daughters of, well we really don't know who Tzlofchad was, but then, it's about the daughters.
Theirs is a story in eleven neat verses. The young women come to Moses and other leaders and say their father died with no sons. According to the property law of the time, they note, they're not entitled to any of what their family would have gotten in the tribal plot of Menashe had in fact some boys been born to ol' Tzlophy. And “Lama yigarah shaim avinu b'toch misphacto ki ain lo ben?" they ask in 27:5, "T'nu lanu achuzah." Basically, why should we suffer because he had no sons; give us a share."
Moses takes the question to God, who says not only should the five daughters get a plot, but that the new law is that in any future case with no sons, the female inheritors get the piece themselves.
So we got a timing question and we got a different timing question. First, why are we hearing about this now, after this solemn tally of all the tribes and right before Moses is asked to make a succession plan for his imminent death, which is what comes next. Seems like an odd legal sandwiching between all this gravitas; couldn’t it have been told in another portion?
Also, the other timing question: why wasn't this, like, built in to the law in the first place? God knew there'd be situations of daughters but no sons; surely Tzlophy's kin weren't the only ones. So why, if He wanted this to be the law, didn't He just decree it so from the outset?
Rabbi Joseph Dweck of the S&P Sephardi Community of the United Kingdom offers a novel interpretation. The story of Tzlofchad’s daughters is not just here to describe land rights among the genders. It is here to tell us a deeper point about our relationship with justice — it is here to tell us that sometimes we must fight to realize it, unfair as that might be.
It's true, he says, God could simply have built daughters-rights in to the initial laws of inheritance; He had certainly delineated many other laws. But instead they were consciously omitted, creating both the message and the reality that sometimes we must struggle to receive. Equality is less gift than gift card. It's something you seize, initiative you take.
And these sisters seized plenty of initiative. “Va'ta'modnah lifnei Moshe v'lifnei elazar hakohen v'lifnei ha'n'siim v'chol ha'eidah petach ohel moed leimor," the text tells us “They approached not just Moses but Elazar the Priest and tribal leaders and the whole assembly at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.” This was no small thing. They were ordinary people who took on an entire political establishment — and won.
I dig this Dweckian disquisition and want to expand on it in a maybe unexpected way.
The episode of B’not Tzlofchad comes just several portions after another tale, that of Korach, the leader of an ill-fated rebellion. (You remember him.)
There, too, a member of the Jewish people demands rights they feel have been shorn from them. There, too, a person approaches Moses seeking a new measure of autonomy, confounded by why his influence is so limited while others are passively showered with it. But despite the similarity in shape, the two incidents are instructively different in their specifics.
Korach, for one, angrily demands power while B’not Tzlofchad evenly point out injustice.
Korach also comes to defy an entire system, where B’not Tzlofchad question why they have not been empowered within it. This is a difference fundamental in nature. The daughters accepts the divinely ordered realities but aim to improve them. Korach, meanwhile, seeks to subvert divine authority itself.
The text seem eager to underline this divergence:
“Va’yikach Korach…va'yakumu lifnei Moshe,” it tells us of that story. Korach “took…and rose up against Moshe.”
As opposed to the story in our portion. “Va’tikravnah b’not Tzlofchad…va’tamodnah lifnei Moshe.” B’not Tzlofchad “approached…and stood in front of Moshe.” Rather different.
And, of course, there is a stark difference in result, with the former losing and the latter victorious. The contrast is almost poetic: the rebels in that portion are swallowed up by the earth. B’not Tzlofchad are given a land grant.
Lest this comparison seem like simply the product of the overworked literary-critical mind of Mr. TGH, note that B'not Tzlofchad themselves are keen to emphasize the analogy.
In making their case, the sisters rather unexpectedly point out that their father was not part of the Korach rebellion. Odd, as no one was saying he was. But according to this analysis they're actually making a really powerful point: “we could be the kind of people who do things like that — our father could have taught us the Korachian school. But he rejected those pop-off ways. And so do we. And so now when it comes time for our own reformist agenda, we’re taking a more measured, strategic path.”
This idea of the best way to fight injustice — and the wise approach to achieve results — comes up in another cause just a little while later. It comes up in 1965's Selma to Montgomery March and the Black voting-rights cause it supported, as seen in "Selma," Ava DuVernay's excellent and intense 2014 procedural-drama about the events.
The movie is infused with compelling strategic discussions among dramatized real-world figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young and John Lewis about the smartest way to fight bias and systemic injustice, with all sorts of echoes to B'not Tzlofchad and their decision to think tactically and verbally in eliciting respect from leaders who'd overlooked them.
One strong moment comes early on. After an incident when Alabama police begin beating and arresting protesters, anger is running high and an understandable need for armed pushback seen as necessary. How else can one match the guns and billy clubs of these manifestly brutal racists?
As one angry marcher agitates for weapons, Young, a key advisor to King and a strategist on many marches, delivers a powerful statement to the marcher.
“How many guns you think they got down there?” he asks, referring to the police. “That's an entire army down there. What’ve you got? A couple of .32s? A .38? Maybe a couple of old scatterguns?”
We use them, Young says, “how many of us you think they gonna kill in retaliation? With their 12-gauge pump-actions, their Colt automatics, their Remingtons, their helicopters, their tanks. We won't win that way, and I ain't talking about the Bible. I ain't talking what's right by God. I am talking facts. Cold, hard facts. Now you take two of them, and they take 10 of us. No. We have to win another way.”
King explains elsewhere what that other way is. “That means protest. That means march. That means jail. That means risk.”
This isn’t, needless to say, how Korach would do it. This is a Tzlofchodian approach — filled with strategy, laden with persistence. It’s working within the system, targeting leaders with words, instead of trying to blow up that system with threats.
And both turned out to be exactly what worked — entire new laws were written as a result.
There's one more wrinkle pertaining to the B'not Tzolfchad episode.
Writing about Mei Merivah, Moses' water-rock episode of two weeks ago, Rabbi Yaakov Meidan of Yeshivat Har Etzion makes the point that the episode is connected to the spies from a week (and 38 years) earlier. In both, Moses shows a surprising passivity, basically despairing and turning to God instead of addressing the people or seizing control of the situation, as he actually did during an earlier water-complaint situation in Refidim.
“Moses is denied entry to the Land not because of a particular transgression but because he is no longer the leader who can accomplish the entry into the Land,” Meidan writes. “It is not so much a matter of punishment as the natural consequence of his shortcomings as a leader."
In the case at Refidim, Meidan argues, Moses "struggled with the complainers, trying to return them to the proper path. Here, at the waters of Merivah, he is silent, falling on his face, actually fleeing...before his people. Waiting for God’s answer is not true
leadership."
Well now the B’not Tzlofchad placement really makes sense. First we had Korach, going way too hard. Then we had Moses (and even Bilaam last week) going way too passive, waiting for God to tell them what to do. And now we have the perfect Goldilocksian happy medium of B’not Tzlofchad, showing the right way to demonstrate leadership — not lashing out, but not staying silent. Not causing problems for its own sake, but making sure every provocation is purposeful.
John Lewis himself got a movie, a documentary, in 2020, the year he died. In addition to the Selma to Montgomery marches, Lewis of course worked diligently on behalf of Civil Rights causes for more than 60 years, including the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Rides and the 1963 March on Washington, and on a slew of racial-justice issues as a 17-term Congressman, eventually helping him earn the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In his movie, Lewis offers a rousing bit of oratory. Describing his childhood, he says, “I would see those signs that said ‘White Men/Colored Men,’ ‘White Women/Colored Women,’ ‘White Waiting/Colored Waiting.’ And I would ask my mother, father, grandparents, my great grandparents. And they would say ‘that’s the way it is, don’t get in trouble.’”
He continued, bringing home the punch line.
“I got arrested a few times. Forty times in the ‘60’s. Since I’ve been in Congress? Another five times. And I’m probably going to get arrested again. But my philosophy is very simple: ‘When you see something that’s not right, not fair, just say something. Do something. Get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.’” Tzlofchadian trouble.
Thank you for reading.