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Shabbat starts on Friday at 5:03pm and ends on Saturday at 6:05pm. The weekly Torah portion is Pinchas and Shabbat Mevarchim Menachem Av. Rosh Chodesh is next Shabbat.
Mincha continues at 1pm at A-P GF/459 Collins Mon (special at L1), Wed, and Thu 1.45pm at L1 Capital using the WhatsApp group to confirm numbers.
Weekly sushi & shiur continues on Wed at 1.10pm (after mincha) at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: fencing law. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.
Thought of the Week with thanks to Mandi Katz.
At the heart of the TV series Downton Abbey is the conundrum of a great estate held by a family without sons. Over many years and with innumerable sub plots, the story is told of how a first-born daughter holds on to the family estate through strategic marriage, the forces of war, changing fortunes, untimely death, and shifting norms.
This week’s Torah reading, Pinchas, provides a far more succinct and ethically cohesive paradigm for the hereditary entitlements of daughters where there are no sons.
We read in the portion that the five daughters of Zelophehad – Mahla, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah – came before Moshe and Elazar and jointly petitioned for the right inherit their father’s estate.
It would have taken great courage and clear thinking for them to explain as they did, that their father had not been part of the Korah rebellion and had died in the wilderness for no specific offence, and to plead that his name should not be lost nor his inheritance passed to his brothers’ families simply because he had no sons.
Moshe recognized the injustice of that outcome and formulated a law of inheritance that if a “man dies without a son, you shall pass his estate to his daughter”, stipulating that the hereditary rights of daughters precede the entitlement of the deceased’s brothers, uncles and extended family – a radical change then and even in the twentieth century.
The passage is often cited as a proof text that the Torah’s treatment of women was well ahead of the time in which it was received. But the story also provides a beautiful model of what siblings can do when they work together.
Unlike the many, realistic depictions of sibling rivalry and animosity in the Chumash (and, for what it’s worth, unlike the tensions between the two older sisters of Downton) the daughters of Zelophehad were united in their advocacy and were motivated by shared respect for their father’s name. The establishment of a (limited) law of inheritance for women certainly matters, but the examples of courage, respect for family legacy, and sisterly love are equally powerful elements of the episode.