Next time you’re on google, type in the words - if women ruled the world - and see the
results that come up. There are 2 types
of pages that you’ll find on your search engine. One set of those pages deal with the subject
from a humorous point of view, or, at least they try to. Making light of the suggestion and trying to
make fun of what the world would be like.
On the other side, there are a number of serious articles dealing with
this as a real possibility. In one BBC
article, it begins with the sentence "Not so long ago the idea that women might
rule the world seemed slightly ridiculous, like something out of science
fiction. But in an essay to mark
International Women’s Day, political analyst and former White House press
secretary, DeeDee Meyer, argues it’s now
a topic that can be seriously discussed."
A lot has changed in the place of women in our society over
the last few years. But we might see in
this week’s Torah portion one of those first important female
interventions. In the last few weeks,
our Torah has been dominated by men challenging Moses in negative ways. We had Korach and his rebellion, we had Balak
and Balaam trying to curse the Israelites and this week we see true religious
fanaticism in the person of Pinchas in the aftermath of the murder he committed at the end
of last week’s Torah portion.
Against this backdrop, suddenly we read about the daughters
of Zelophehad, a family from the
tribe of Manasseh, who came before Moses and Eleazar the High Priest, the chieftans
and the whole assembly at the entrance of the tent meeting and they said “Our
father died in the wilderness, he was not one of the faction, Korach’s faction,
which banded together against Adonai, but died for his own sin and he has left
no sons. Let not our father’s name be
lost his clan just because he had no sons, give us a holding among our father’s
kinsmen.” Moses takes the matter to God,
who says that you should give them a holding amongst their father’s
kinsmen. Allowing female inheritance for
the first time.
Most of the time,
we focus on this important breakthrough in women’s rights. But it’s also worth noting the different way
that the daughters of Zelophehad dealt with their issue as opposed to the men
we’ve been reading about in the last few weeks of Torah. These women came calmly in a measured way and
brought their concern, their challenge to Moses. They did it with words not with rebellion,
and at the end of it when Moses took the
matter to God, God said that they were right. And actually set up a law as a result of
their intervention.
In this way, the
daughters of Zelophehad are not just important for women’s rights, they’re also
important as an example of how we might deal with
challenging situations. We shouldn’t be
the revolutionaries of Korach, we should not be the zealots of Pinchas,
instead, we need to be like the daughters of Zelophehad. Their female intervention stands counter to
all of those male examples and in many ways, elevates our story, our people and
us today.
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