{"id":48416,"date":"2019-01-29T18:05:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T16:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=48416"},"modified":"2022-08-23T17:51:11","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T14:51:11","slug":"zelophehads-daughters-mansplained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/zelophehads-daughters-mansplained\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelophehad\u2019s Daughters Mansplained"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[370,483,384,391],"acf":{"old_id":"48416","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33859,"related_cahpter":"144","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Human laws privilege men, but Divine justice is egalitarian","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Similar to the story in Numbers chapter 9, the story of Zelophehad\u2019s daughters introduces us to a group of people who, feeling excluded by the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">halacha,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> come to Moses with the question: &#8220;Why should we be any less?&#8221; God&#8217;s response to Moses in chapter 9 demonstrates that he was just waiting for someone to ask in order to introduce new laws that were even more far-reaching and inclusive than that which was requested. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In our story, the message emphasized by Rashi is that not only does God <\/span><b>want<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> people to ask, He <\/span><b>needs <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">them to. &#8220;Thus is it written before me above, teaching that their eyes saw what Moses\u2019 eyes did not see&#8221; (Rashi on 27:7). The halacha of inheritance as it had been presented up until that point was lacking! The daughters of Zelophehad needed to burst into the <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">beit midrash<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and make their demand in order for the &#8220;Torah-true&#8221; approach to be revealed. Without their intervention, there would have been a dissonance between the divine law above and its application in the world below.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But what motivated this intervention? An honest, non-anachronistic reading of the text would seem to yield no proto-feminist motivations behind the daughters\u2019 request, and perhaps just the opposite. What moves Zelophehad\u2019s daughters is their desire that the patriarchal name of the family not be diminished, not any criticism of the lack of egalitarianism in Jewish law. This plain reading is replaced by a \u201cmansplained\u201d reading by the Sifrei, but with an astonishing twist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;When the daughters of Zelophehad heard that the land was being divided among the tribes and not the women, they gathered together to advise. They said: the mercy of flesh and blood is not like the mercy of God! Flesh and blood have more mercy on men, but God is not like this, rather, on men and women, He has mercy on all&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When women in modern times have advocated for halakhic change, they have frequently been met with the accusation that they are not motivated by Torah values, but rather by an egalitarian ideology which is foreign to Torah. The rabbinic readings above tell nearly the same story, with the opposite conclusion. The egalitarian assumptions of Zelophehad\u2019s daughters are what allow them to access to previously unrevealed truths of Torah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYes, Zelophehad\u2019s daughters\u2019 words are just\u2026\u201d (27:7). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what of the words of their spiritual great-granddaughters?<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":73253,"id":73253,"title":"ez6-justice","filename":"ez6-justice.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/ez6-justice.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/joy-and-pain-the-joy-of-pain\/ez6-justice\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"ez6-justice","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":73252,"date":"2020-04-13 07:31:18","modified":"2023-09-15 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