THE DAUGHTERS OF ZELOFHAD SON OF HEFER SON OF GILEAD SON OF MACHIR SON OF MENASHEH SON OF JOSEPH, OF MENASHEH THE SON OF JOSEPH'S FAMILY CAME FORWARD. THE NAMES OF THE DAUGHTERS WERE MAHLAH, NOAH, HOGLAH, MILCAH, AND TIRZAH. THEY STOOD BEFORE MOSES, ELAZAR THE PRIEST, THE CHIEFTAINS, AND THE WHOLE ASSEMBLY, AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE TENT OF MEETING, AND THEY SAID: "OUR FATHER DIED IN THE WILDERNESS... AND HE HAS LEFT NO SONS. LET NOT OUR FATHER'S NAME BE LOST TO HIS CLAN JUST BECAUSE HE HAD NO SON! GIVE US A HOLDING AMONG OUR FATHER'S KINSMEN!"

MOSES BROUGHT THEIR CASE BEFORE THE LORD. AND THE LORD SAID TO MOSES, "THE PLEA OF ZELAFHAD'S DAUGHTERS IS JUST..."

(Bamidbar 27: 1-7)

 

Women and Men of the Generation of the Wilderness

Of Menasheh the son of Joseph's family - Why does it say this? Did it not already say son of Menasheh? Rather, it is in order to tell you: Joseph loved the land, for it is said: and take my bones up, etc. (Bereishit 50:25), and his daughters loved the land, for it is said give us a holding (Bamidbar 27:4)..

 

(Rashi Bamidbar 27:1)

 

Then drew near the daughters of Zelofhad (Bamidbar 27:1): In that generation the women built up the fences which the men broke down. Thus you will find that Aaron told them: Break off the golden rings, which are in the ears of your wives (Shemot 32:2), but the women refused and checked their husbands; as is proved by the fact that it says, And all the people broke off the golden rings which were in their ears (32:3), the women not participating with them in making the calf. It was the same in the case of the spies, who uttered an evil report: And the men... when they returned, made all the congregation to murmur against him (Bamidbar 14:36), and against this congregation the decree [not to enter the Land] was issued, because they had said: We are not able to go up (13:31). The women, however, were not with them in their counsel, as may be inferred from the fact that it is written in an earlier passage of our section, For the Lord had said of them: They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Kalev the son of Yefuneh (26:65). Thus the text speaks of a man but not of a woman. This was because the men had been unwilling to enter the Land. The women, however, drew near to ask for an inheritance in the Land. Consequently, the present section was written down next to that dealing with the death of the generation of the wilderness, for it was there that the men broke down the fences and the women built them up.

(Bamidbar Rabbah 21, Slotki translation)

 

...this haggadic statement tells us about the distant past, but it may be so in every generation, and we are witnesses to many situations in which the men spoil things and the women repair them.

(Y Leibowitz: Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat ha'Shavua, pg. 731)

 

 

Pinchas as Pariah

Yair Eldan

The previous parasha ends with the glorification of Pinchas's impaling Zimri and Kozbi, which stopped the plague. Our parasha begins with Pinchas receiving a Divine reward in recognition of his act - a pact of peace. However, the midrash (Sifrei 131) offers a reading of this passage which run counter to the biblical narrative:

The Tribe of Simon visited the Tribe of Levi and said: "This son of Puti's daughter wants to destroy an entire tribe of Israel, as if we did not know whose son he is?" When the Omnipresent saw that they were all starting to denigrate him, He began attributing a flattering pedigree to him.

Sanhedrin 82b puts it this way:

Since the tribes would denigrate him [by saying], "Did you see that son of Puti whose father and mother used to fatten calves for idolatrous worship, how he killed a chieftain of a tribe in Israel?" So Scripture came and called him a descendent of Aaron.

The biblical Pinchas is described as a man of great daring who acted instinctually out of zealousness (and he saw - and he arose - and he took a spear - and he impaled). One does not have to worry about the mental or physical health of the biblical Pinchas.

In contrast, the midrashic Pinchas is a man burdened by social - and perhaps even physical - pressures. He was described as a descendent of Aaron's in order to quiet the tribes' ridicule of him; we see that that ridicule must have had an existential importance for him. Why does the author of the midrash overthrow the biblical foundations and suggest that after Pinchas's deed and the halting of the plague, Pinchas suffered insults and was subject to threats from the people?

Perhaps the author of the midrash is projecting his own social condition of ostracism, or the ridicule suffered by the community to which he belongs - perhaps the author identifies with the idea of receiving a pact of peace with God. The author reveals the desire for God to address either him or his community with favor. Consequently, he projects his own loneliness and subjection to ridicule - or his community's subjection to ostracism and threat - upon Pinchas. A second possibility is that the author of the midrash identifies with Pinchas's deed or with Pinchas himself; he would like to act as Pinchas did. Accordingly, he attaches the social consequences that he would suffer himself were he to act like Pinchas to Pinchas. Or, perhaps, the author would like to be a "biblical Pinchas," full of power, daring, and instinct, and so he projects his own social situation upon Pinchas. In any case, the midrash "broadens the horizons" of the biblical text. This is expressed, on the one hand, by loyalty to the text and it sacred status (the midrash focuses on Scripture's words and on the question - why is the appellation son of Aaron repeated?), and on the other hand by a feeling of freedom to overturn the biblical narrative. The midrash's ability to interpret the verses as it does is closely tied to its author's own feelings of exclusion. This has a double effect on the text: at the level of the story ostracism is projected upon the biblical account and is read into it - the midrash says that Pinchas was subjected to scoffing. On a more primary level, the feeling of exclusion itself allows for the opening of the horizons of the biblical text. The excluded person understands authority's relative nature and the arbitrariness of the systems of social power; he tries to retreat to a psychological place which authority cannot reach. The excluded person's relativized conception allows him greater interpretive freedom. Here, the proper tension between tradition and innovation is actually achieved with the help of feelings of being ostracized, rather than from the feeling of power and authority associated with the slogan it is not in heaven.

Hannah Arendt claims that the feeling of being a pariah is the source of all positive Jewish traits - the warm Jewish heart, humaneness, humor, independent intellectualism (see her collection of essays, The Jew as Pariah). Being ostracized gives one a clear understanding of the relativity of power, status, and wealth and it emphasizes the importance of things basic to life such as human conversation, the beauty of nature, and physical health. The pariah's situation is Sisyphean; he must remain within society so that the process of being ostracized will harm him and influence him. The fact of his being both "inside" as well as "outside" allows him to observe the society in which he lives with a critical eye and measure it by other standards.

Of course, extreme long-term exclusion is a kind of death - "Mai shamta [what does it mean to be banned]? Sham mita [there is death]" (Moed Katan 17a). Ignoring someone affects their basic needs - the need for control, belonging, self-worth, and the need for a meaningful existence. "... Ostracism... is a poignant metaphor for what life would be like if the target did not exist" (Kipling D. Williams, Ostracism: the Power of Silence, pg. 63). That is why the halakhah requires that a banned person practice the customs of mourning - he mourns for himself, for his own social death. However, ostracism has some positive qualities - sharpening of critical faculties, a more existential and less material order of priorities, the development of interpretive sensitivity towards the world - including texts. Perhaps some degree of a feeling of ostracism is an (insufficient) condition for the interpretation of canonical texts. Rene Girard pointed out that unlike comparable mythic texts, Scripture is written from the standpoint of the victim, and that is its greatness. The midrash about Pinchas sheds light on the importance of one's possessing some degree of a feeling of ostracism and victimhood in order to interpret the canon creatively.

Arendt viewed the situation of the Jews following emancipation as that of pariahs - the Jews lived among the peoples of Europe while not being accepted socially. After 2,000 years of exile, the Jews main problem was that they "did not have their feet on the ground," a state referred to by Arendt as "worldlessness". They "retired" from the world and did not see themselves as having the ability to influence their immediate and broader social environments, and they certainly did not think of themselves as bearing any responsibility for the social environment. According to Arendt, even while the Jews engaged in widespread economic activity they did not understand or concern themselves with the political significance of their activities. That is Zionism's greatest virtue and challenge - the return of the Jews to history. During a recent visit to the U.S.A., A. B. Yehoshua lamented the excessive role of involvement with texts as a constitutive part of Jewish identity. He claimed that life in the State of Israel offers the only avenue for the full realization of Jewish identity. He prefers the normalcy of basing identity on language and territory rather than on the analysis of texts. However, the yearning for a "normal" Jewish existence in the Land of Israel forgets the point of departure of the Sages' tradition - their sensitivity to biblical characters and to the psychological processes those characters underwent, as well as their sensitivity to state and social issues that springs from a certain feeling of ostracism. In that sense, the feeling of ostracism is important both for how we read canonical texts as well as for how we decide to execute military operations, such as the firing of missiles at cars in which innocents sit next to terrorists.

Arendt calls the poet Heinrich Heine "the conscious pariah." She cites his poem on Judah HaLevy in order to show Heine's humor and the unpretentious way he viewed the world - through the eyes of a naive schlemiel. In that song Heine rereads the act of zealousness which concludes last week's parasha:

One day Pinchas saw/ how the noble Zimri/was making love/ to a Canaanite woman/ and immediately grasped in anger/ his spear and Zimri/ he stabbed to death on the spot - / So it is in the Holy Scriptures/ but from mouth to mouth is transmitted/ a legend which says/ that Zimri was not injured/ by Pinchas and his spear/ rather that blind with anger/ he missed the sinner/ and hit some innocent/ Shlumiel ["Schlemiel"] ben Tzurishadai/ this Shlumiel was the first/ the father of all Shlumiels/ and we - are descended from/ Shlumiel ben Tzurishadai. (Hebrew Melodies)

Heine's reading of the biblical tale lacks the qualities of midrash - it is not tied to the biblical story and does not reinterpret it from within; rather, it paves a path parallel from which the story may be viewed. Jewish creativity that broadens the horizons of the world and of the text depends on consciousness of ostracism when approaching the text - first from within, and only afterwards from without.

Yair Eldan is a doctoral candidate in the program for the Management and Resolution of Conflicts and Negotiations at Bar Ilan University

 

 

The Leader As A Shepherd, a Public Servant Who Does Not Exploit His Subjects For His Personal Needs

Let the Lord, Source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community who shall go out before them and come in before them, and who shall take them out and bring them in, so the Lord's community may not be like sheep that have no shepherd.

(Bamidbar 27)

 

Who shall go out before them - Not like the kings of the nations who sit in their palaces and send their soldiers to war, but as I did when I fought against Sichon and Og, as is written (Bamidbar 21:34), Fear him not. And as did Joshua, as is written (Joshua 5:13), And Joshua went up to him and said, 'Are you one of us or one of our enemies?' And similarly with David (I Samuel 18:17), For he marched at their head - at their head when going out, at their head when returning...

And bring them - An alternative explanation: And bring them Do not treat him as you did me, for I will not bring them you into the land.

(Rashi, Bamidbar 27:17)

 

The Sacrifices - Slaughtering "Sacred Cows" Within the Framework of the Struggle against Idol Worship

The ancient Egyptians worshiped the constellation Aries (ram). Therefore they forbade the slaughter of sheep and despised shepherds... there were also groups from among the Tzabia who worshiped the demons, and believed that they bore the shape of goats; therefore they called the demons seirim - hairy goats. This belief was very widespread in the times of our teacher, Moses: They may slaughter no longer their slaughter-offerings to the hairy goat demons after whom they go whoring. Therefore these cults also forbade the consumption of goats. Almost most of the idol worshippers despised the slaughter of cattle. They all greatly honored that species. Therefore you find that, even until this day, the Hindus do not slaughter cattle at all, even in a land where other animals are slaughtered.

In order to eradicate the traces of these erroneous ideas, we were commanded to offer exactly three kinds of domestic animals: From the herd and from the flock you may bring your near-offering, so that through that very act which they [the idolaters] considered to be the epitome of sin, they [the Children of Israel] will come close to God, and with this act will their sins be atoned for. Thus will the evil ideas be cured - these ideas being diseases of the human soul - by means of doing the opposite.

(RaMBaM, Guide of The Perplexed III, 46)

 

Then the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to the Lord

... In the future, an abundance of knowledge will spread and will penetrate even animals. They will not do evil nor will they destroy on the mount of My holiness, because the earth will be full with knowledge of the Lord and that offering which will then be the minkha offering - from the vegetables - shall be pleasant to the Lord as in the days of yore.

(Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, Olat R'A'aYaH p. 282)

 

 

 

 

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