Parshat Pinhas

‘…give us a piece of land, amongst the brothers of our father.’ (Bemidbar 27,4)

Chapter 27 of Bemidbar features great yearnings for the Land of Israel. Moses, who despite his pleas will not enter the Land, is shown a panoramic view of Israel. Our verse is part of the claim by the daughters of Tzelopchad for a stake in the Land of Israel, at the time when Moses is commanded to apportion the Land of Israel so that each family will gain a piece of land to which they will have a freehold right in perpetuity, so that no family would ever be deprived of land.

These women represented the first case recorded in the Torah of female inheritance. Partially in order to preserve a family’s rights to a piece of land through the generations, inheritance of land goes through male heirs, but as Tzelopchad’s daughters point out, their father died without sons, and as a result of ‘his own sin’. As Rashi explains, the Talmudic Sages (Shabbat 96b) debate what this sin was - perhaps he was the anonymous gatherer of wood on Shabbat in contravention of the laws of Shabbat (Bemidbar 15) - but crucially he did not cause others to sin with him, in distinction to Korach (Chapter 16) or the anonymous complainers (Bemidbar 11). Moses, seeking an answer brings their claim before G-d, who says that the daughters of Tzelopchad can inherit their family land.

The late former Chief Rabbi of Britain, Lord Jakobovits, citing the commentary of Rashi, contrasts the zeal of the daughters of Tzelopchad to live in Israel, and the righteousness of Jewish women in Egypt to continue Jewish life during the slavery, with the negativity of the male spies (Chapter 13) and those who wanted a new leader to return them to Egypt (Chapter 14) when faced with the challenges of going to Israel. Indeed, the decree against entering Israel only applied to men over the age of 20 at the time of the decree (with the exception of Calev and Joshua, the later another great lover of the Land, who also appears in this week’s Sidra), but did not apply to women as they had shown their desire to be in the Land of Israel, the place where Jewish life can be expressed most fully.

At the start of the three weeks of mourning for the loss of both Temples and the destruction of Jewish life in Israel by the Babylonians, Romans and others, let us tap into the zeal for Israel shown by the daughters of Tzelopchad and the other righteous women.