The Daughters of Tzelopchad and the Power of Personal Narrative
One of my favorite pieces of writerly wisdom comes from writer and essayist, Joan Didion. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. I love this quote, because it so beautifully captures what we all know to be true– that the stories we tell about ourselves; the stories we aspire to write about ourselves, lie at the heart of each and every thing that we do on this earth. We build community around these stories, we build our families and dearest relationships around these stories. Stories breathe life into everything that we do and everything that we seek to be. And perhaps without stories, without the narratives that emerge from lived experience, the world becomes a lifeless, uninhabitable, and unjust place.
On Thursday evening, in our second session of our course on Judaism and Reproductive rights, we explored the relationship between narrative and law. Our discussion revolved around two central questions: 1. What influence does personal narrative and experience have on the development, interpretation, and application of the law? And 2. What is our responsibility, and perhaps the courts’ responsibility, when faced with human experience and stories that are incompatible and inconsistent with the current understanding of the law?
Two very big, very thorny questions. And two questions that are at the heart of almost all of our contemporary political debates. With each passing day, and each passing news cycle, it feels as if the laws and legislation of this country are moving farther and farther away from the people they must have been initially created to protect. So many of our country’s policies– when it comes to the climate, mass incarceration, gun control, reproductive rights–seem to be wholly out of step with the very real, often very painful stories we hear from the people most impacted by these legal decisions.
There is a story in this week’s Torah portion that lifts up these questions of the relationship between law and narrative.
In Numbers chapter 27 we read:
The daughters of Zelophehad, of Manassite family—son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh son of Joseph—came forward. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.
They stood before Moses, Eleazar 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. He was not one of the faction, Korah’s faction, which banded together against יהוה, but died for his own sin; 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 יהוה.
And יהוה said to Moses,
“The plea of Zelophehad’s daughters is just: you should give them a hereditary holding among their father’s kinsmen; transfer their father’s share to them.
“Further, speak to the Israelite people as follows: ‘If a householder dies without leaving a son, you shall transfer his property to his daughter.
Tzelopchad’s daughters, fearing that their father’s name will be lost, and angered over the fact that as women, they are not eligible to inherit their father’s land, come before Moses, and the entire community to plead their case.
In Dirshuni, a collection of modern feminist midrashim, Rivka Lubitch writes:
Why were they referred to, first, as “the daughters of Tzelafchad” and only afterward by their own names? Because of the the Tzel and Pachad, shadow and fear, that was in them at first. For at first, they dwelled in their father’s shadow, and feared to raise their heads. Once they drew near to one another, they were empowered, and known by their own names, as is written, And the daughters of Tzelafchad drew near…and these are his daughters’ names.
Here, Lubitch points to an important shift in the story of these five sisters. Asking what it was that enabled them to draw near to one another, to share their plight, and ultimately come before the community to demand a change in the law. In answering this question, Lubitch uses an important exegetical tool, and parses the name Tzelopchad into two words- Tzel and pachad, shadow and fear. And it seems that according to this Midrash, it was only after their father died, that these sisters felt free, felt empowered to speak up.
In another midrash on this story Lubitch writes:
Rightly (ken) did Tzelopchad’s daughter speak (Num. 27:7). Tanot asked G-d: If Tzelopchad’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? G-d answered, Truth will grow from the ground (Psalms 85:12). Tanot asked, but is it not written G-d’s Torah is Whole? (Psalms 19:8). G-d answered her, I already wrote in My Torah, Be wholehearted with G-d your Lord (Deut 18:14). And what’s more, I wrote, walk before Me, and be wholehearted (Gen. 17:1). 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 (Psalms 85:12).
In bringing their case before Moses, in publicly decrying the injustice of the law as it stood at the time, the daughters of Tzelopchad surely bind the aspirations of heaven with the needs of those on earth. Blessed is the generation in which truth from above meets truth from below.
Responsible legal authorities put the human experience at the center of these most difficult legal questions. When Moshe doesn’t know what to do, when he doesn’t immediately recognize the answer to this question, and when he is confronted with the possibility of overturning divine legal precedent, he consults with G-d, who sees the answer to this halachic question as obvious- if there are no other male relatives, daughters can inherit their father’s holdings. And this decision represents a radical shift in biblical legal precedent, that at the very least, makes it possible for rabbis and legal authorities down the line, to make room for the most marginalized within the normative boundaries of the law.
I want to share one last midrash that we looked at in our class on Thursday evening. Expounding on the verses in Parshat Mishpatim, Exodus chapter 21, that describe a case in which a pregnant woman is inadvertently the victim of violence, causing harm either to herself or the fetus, Rabbis Emily Langowitz and Joshua Fixler write the following:
The text of Exodus 21 begins with an act of violence perpetrated against a pregnant woman, and yet this woman is all but absent from subsequent conversation about this passage. Across the centuries, almost all of the voices of Jewish interpretation, and even many modern commentators, fail to acknowledge her story. The interpreters miss the opportunity to see her as a subject, rather than an object. To see the woman in this text as merely a hypothetical legal case study is to deny that cases such as these were very real to the people who experienced them. To reach a full sense of justice in our understanding of abortion, we must pair mishpatim (laws) with sippurim (stories).
I love this teaching. But I’d like to make one editorial change. Rabbis Langowitz and Fixler write that to reach a sense of justice in our understanding of the law, we must pair mishpatim, laws, with sippurim, stories. But instead of reading pair, what if we read repair: to reach a sense of justice in our understanding of the law, we must repair mishpatim with sippurim. Our stories can be a source of tikkun, of radical repair to the laws that are most exclusionary and have the potential to do the most harm.
When the law fails to see the human being at the center of those most essential questions, the law fails to live up to its own sense of moral obligation. We must repair our laws with stories so that those who are most marginalized, most underserved, most silent can step out of the tzel and the pachad, and be liberated by their own sense of what is right, by their very personal stories that guide them there.
Our sense of moral intuition is powerful beyond measure. Our own personal experience, those stories that inform every decision we make, those stories that give us life, have the power to transcend and transform the law. So let’s make sure to listen.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Abramowitz
