Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse, the parsha podcast where we dive deep into the verses to share new and unexpected insights, illuminating the parsha like you’ve never seen before. 

This is Ari Levisohn, together with the one and only Rabbi David Fohrman.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Hey, Ari, how are you? It's great to be with you, albeit separated by many thousands of miles.

Ari: Great to be with you, too. So today we're going to be talking about Parshat Pinchas. And I understand you have some really exciting stuff for us. I've actually been waiting a while to hear what you have on this parsha, so I'm psyched.

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, great. I wanted to talk to you today about the story of the daughters of Tzelafchad. It's this little story tucked away in Parshat Pinchas where these daughters of Tzelafchad, there's a bunch of them, and they all get named – Machlah, Noah, Chaglah, Milcah and Tirtzah. We're looking at Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers, chapter 27. They end up coming to Moses, and not just Moses, also Aaron's child, Elazar HaKohen. And they have an issue, which they sort of respectfully put forth to Moshe. They say: אָבִינוּ מֵת בַּמִּדְבָּר - Our father died in the desert. וְהוּא לֹא־הָיָה בְּתוֹךְ הָעֵדָה הַנּוֹעָדִים עַל־יְקוָה בַּעֲדַת־קֹרַח - He wasn't one of the rebels in the story of Korach. כִּי־בְחֶטְאוֹ מֵת - He died for his own sin, וּבָנִים לֹא־הָיוּ לוֹ - and he didn't have any boys. He just has us girls.

And the reason that was significant is because the land would be apportioned to men, and because the father of the household had died and there were just these daughters with no surviving male heirs, their family ran the possibility of getting dispossessed.

And they make the following argument: They say לָמָּה יִגָּרַע שֵׁם־אָבִינוּ מִתּוֹךְ מִשְׁפַּחְתּוֹ. Really, not so much talking about their own dispossession, but really the name of their father. “Why should our father's name be allowed to sort of slip away from amongst his family, that only his brothers would take possession of land, but he wouldn't?” And, you know, the land somehow carries on our name when we're no longer here, and if there's no land for our father, then it's as if his legacy is dissipated. And so they make an argument. They say, “We, the five daughters of Tzelafchad, would like to have a portion of the land of Israel, along with our uncles, who would be the normal recipients of the land.” And Moshe does not answer them. Instead, Moshe brings their case to God. Interesting language: וַיַּקְרֵב מֹשֶׁה אֶת־מִשְׁפָּטָן לִפְנֵי יְקוָה - Moshe brings their mishpat (judgment) before God.

And God answers them and basically says, “I agree with what the daughters of Tzelafchad have said. They should indeed get a holding, an ancestral holding along with their uncles. What would've gone to their father should go to them. It will keep the legacy of Tzelafchad alive.” And this is basically the story of the daughters of Tzelafchad.

A Few Small Oddities

Ari, so if you just look at that story, there were a couple things that sort of jumped out at me as maybe not, like, these earth-shattering questions, but just a couple things that I thought were odd. I'm wondering if, when you look at the text, if there's anything that strikes you.

Ari: So, what strikes me the most is this moment where Moshe hears the request and then immediately goes to God. Interesting. They come to Moshe with the language of וַתִּקְרַבְנָה. They come close to Moshe, and then Moshe comes and brings that request to God with that same verb of karev. He kind of just passes it along to God, and then God offers a ruling of it affirming that they were noble in their request. But Moshe made no attempt to try to figure out himself what should have been done.

Rabbi Fohrman: Which is interesting, right? Because here's Moses; if there's anything we know about this guy, he's the great law giver, right? Indeed, in the story of Yitro's judges, if people were stumped about anything, who would they come to? They would come to Moses. And Moses feels himself unqualified, for some reason, to answer this question and feels that this is something which needs to be taken back to God.

Ari: And yeah, that's a great point. Moshe, as we know, is sitting and doing, at least used to be sitting and doing this all day long. He was sitting and answering questions. Is this like the one that stumped him?

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. Moses takes it all the way up to the Supreme Court of Courts, the Heavenly Court, and says: וַיַּקְרֵב מֹשֶׁה אֶת־מִשְׁפָּטָן לִפְנֵי יְקוָה.

Another thing which struck me as interesting, a little bit, was the language of מִשְׁפָּטָן. It's not, “Vayakreiv Moshe et hadavar lifnei Hashem,” right? It's not that he brought “this thing,” it's not that he brought “their question,” it's not that he brought “their wondering,” it's not that he brought “the matter.” He brought their, I guess, mishpatan, literally “their judgment,” or maybe more colloquially “their case,” but literally “their judgment” before God. It's a strange thing. Are they making a legal argument? The daughters of Tzelafchad seem to be making an argument sort of in the realm of tzedek (righteousness) and compassion. It doesn't seem like they're sort of standing up and demanding justice, yet the text seems to tell us otherwise. וַיַּקְרֵב מֹשֶׁה אֶת־מִשְׁפָּטָן לִפְנֵי יְקוָה - Here's this mishpat. It's just a strange word, isn't it?

Ari: Yeah, it's a strange word, and I've never thought about this before, but the way it's usually used is to imply a judgment that already exists.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. as if they're giving a suggested decision. “Here is the mishpat, here is the outcome of the court case.” Maybe that's something you could describe as a mishpat, and Moshe is bringing their proposed solution, maybe.

So some of the words which you're pointing out here, which sort of raise an eyebrow, is this repetition of, you know, וַתִּקְרַבְנָה בְּנוֹת צְלׇפְחָד...וַיַּקְרֵב מֹשֶׁה אֶת־מִשְׁפָּטָן. This “coming close, coming close,” this notion of mishpat that we're talking about. Why it is that Moshe feels the need to bring this to God…All of this is stuff that is interesting.

A Mysterious Cause of Death

And then of course, you know, one other thing I thought was interesting is just the argument which they make. If you were the daughters of Tzelafchad and you wanted to make the cleanest, quickest argument you could, what might you say to Moses? Like, I hear the part about “our father died.” I hear the part about “he's only got us girls to inherit him, and we don't stand to get land.” I hear the part about “we don't want our father's name to be diminished,” right? I hear all that, but there's one little detail that they seem to make a whole big naughty tzimmes out of. What's that?

Ari: Yeah, so before any of that, they say, “Our father died in the wilderness.” This is in 27, verse three. “Oh, and he wasn't part of the Adat Korach, the people who Korach led as a rebellion against Moshe. He died because of his own sins.”

So seemingly, there's some assumption that maybe he would've been part of that rebellion that we read just a few chapters earlier, and if he was, then this whole argument would fall apart. But don't worry, he died for some other things that he did by himself. And that's the basis of this whole argument.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, so you hear three strange things, as if they are really focusing on this issue of how their father died. We hear three things about it. A: אָבִינוּ מֵת בַּמִּדְבָּר - Our father died in the desert. I mean, first of all, don't you think that's a little superfluous? 

Ari: Of course they're in the desert. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Everybody's in the desert. Where did you expect him to die? Just say: אָבִינוּ מֵת - Our father died That's A.

B. The notion that, “and he wasn't part of Korach” – Korach's people were a very small amount of the people who died. It was like less than 1% of the people. It sounds like, as you suggested, you would've thought that he died with Korach, but he didn't. And why is that interesting is another question.

And finally: כִּי־בְחֶטְאוֹ מֵת - but he died because of his own sins. Which is also interesting because, Ari, let me ask you, given the sort of context here of where we're at, we're now in Parshat Pinchas, sort of toward the end of Bamidbar, you would have people dying in the desert...why? Because of a sin.

Ari: The sin of the Spies, when God decreed that that entire generation would die out in the desert over the course of the next 38 years. And so, applying that logic, anyone who died in the desert died because of that sin. But it wasn't their personal sin. It was the whole national sin, which everybody but Yehoshua and Kalev died for.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. Every single person is going to die because of a great communal sin, the sin of the Spies. So obviously this guy died because of the sin of the Spies. Everybody else did. But no, they come along and suggest that he didn't die because of the sin of the Spies, and he didn't die because of Korach, he died because of his own sin. Which suggests that there's actually something else going on besides the sin of the Spies when it comes to Tzelafchad.

And now the question is, and why is that even relevant? Like, why isn't this TMI: Too Much Information? Just tell me, “Hey, we've got an issue. We don't have a father anymore. We just have us. We want to keep his legacy alive.” Why are they telling me about exactly how he died? And what's this mystery sin of why it is that he died?

Ari: Alright, Rabbi Fohrman, you've convinced me that I do not understand a single thing about this story.

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, I mean, these are the questions, right? So how is it that we understand what's going on? 

How Rabbi Akiva Solves the Mystery

So, I noticed a couple things, and I want to see if we can piece together a little bit of a puzzle of how this might come to the fore.

So I noticed something that the Talmud says about this. It cites a dispute between Rabbi Akiva and some other Tanna'im about who exactly Tzelafchad was. It's in Mesechta (Tractate) Shabbos, daf tzadi-vav, amud beis, folio 96b.  Now, what they seem to be doing here is trying to identify the particular sin for which he died, because textually, we've seen that that's an issue. In other words, the girls seem to be saying it wasn't the Spies, it was something else.

Now, why it should be relevant, we don't know. But the Sages kind of pick up that little trail and see if they could run with it. And on the basis of that, they try to figure out who this person was, and what they're going to use is basically two clues: Clue Number One is the idea that this man died because of his sin.

Clue Number Two is another question that we asked, which is: אָבִינוּ מֵת בַּמִּדְבָּר - That strange notion that he died in the desert. Well, who cares? He died in the desert. Everybody died in the desert. They put those two and two, or one and one, together, and they make three out of it. They figure out what this is all about.

Here's what the Gemara says: תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן - The rabbis taught in a baraita, guess who Tzelafchad was? He was the Mekoshesh. He was the person who gathered kindling on the Sabbath. Now, earlier in the text, way back at the end of Parshat Shelach, we have the story of the Mekoshesh (Numbers 15:32-36). This is a guy who's going around on the Sabbath, and he is collecting firewood, and seemingly he's warned that this is not a good idea to do. And yet, in defiance of that warning, he keeps on collecting. And now the Gemara, the same Talmud, goes out of its way to suggest that not only was the Mekoshesh warned, the person who did this act of illegally collecting kindling on the Sabbath, but he was warned and told what the consequences would be, that he would die. And he essentially said, “Af-al-pi-ken (Even so), I don't care. I'm collecting kindling.”

So there's something strange about Tzelafchad. Like, Ari, if you were living in a miraculous world, right, you had just witnessed the giving of the 10 Commandments. You were the generation that had seen the Splitting of the Sea, right? It's not like, “Show me a sign and I'll believe.” You saw all the signs. You literally lived through Charlton Heston's Ten Commandments. And then the Lord Almighty comes out on the top of the mountain and says, “I want you to keep my Sabbath, and there's this death penalty if you don't.” And here you are, you're collecting sticks for this little fire. And some guys who see you say nicely, “You know, you really shouldn't be doing that.” And they say, “We are two witnesses.” He's like, “No, I know this is illegal. I'm not going to stop.” They say, “We really do need to let you know that this is a capital crime,” right?

Ari: And all for some sticks

Rabbi Fohrman: And you say, “Af-al-pi-ken, even so, I am going to do this in defiance.” It's like, where are you going to run? You're in the desert, for God's sake. You know what I mean? Like, you think you're going to escape?

Ari: Like, what was he even going to do with it? Their food came from heaven. Their shelter was miraculous. Like, was he going to go, like, you know, build a treehouse? And I’m looking at it now and...I'm opening, now, we're at Bamidbar, tet-vav... 

Rabbi Fohrman: It's going to be [chapter] 15. And Ari, just read the very first verse and it'll strike you cold. Because the Sages say that this guy whose name was deleted, because we didn't want everyone pointing fingers at him, that this was actually Tzelafchad. You say, “Crazy, why would the Mekoshesh be Tzelafchad?” But here's the Sage's clue: Read the very first verse of the Mekoshesh story.

Ari: Yeah, he fits the bill perfectly. It starts off: וַיִּהְיוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמִּדְבָּר - The Israelites were in the wilderness. As if we didn't know where they were, but all of a sudden, it's like...right.

Rabbi Fohrman: Here's this little story tucked away in literally a book whose name is Bamidbar (lit. In The Wilderness), right, that people are in the wilderness. And it comes along and tells me the people were in the wilderness, and they found a guy who is gathering kindling on Shabbos.

Very strange, but that should strike you cold, וַיִּהְיוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמִּדְבָּר, because that's the same language and the same question mark that I have with Tzelafchad. The same way we asked, אָבִינוּ מֵת בַּמִּדְבָּר - our father died in the desert. Well, obviously he died in the desert. Everybody died in the desert. You can ask that same question on the Mekoshesh: וַיִּהְיוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמִּדְבָּר - the people were in the desert and they found this guy collecting wood. Well, where else would you expect them to be? Like, South Africa? Cape Town? Like where else are they going to be? So it's as if the Torah considers this notion that they were in the desert to be this very important part of the Mekoshesh story and the Tzelafchad story.

So let me just read the rest of that baraita in Masechta Shabbos for you. So the Gemara goes and says: תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן מְקוֹשֵׁשׁ זֶה צְלָפְחָד - The Mekoshesh, that was Tzelafchad. How do you know? וְכֵן הוּא אוֹמֵר - As it says, וַיִּהְיוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמִּדְבָּר וַיִּמְצְאוּ אִישׁ - when Israel was in the desert, they found this person who was collecting wood, וּלְהַלָּן - And later on in the same book, Bamidbar, the text says, אָבִינוּ מֵת בַּמִּדְבָּר. We have that strange idea that our father died in the desert. מַה לְּהַלָּן צְלָפְחָד, אַף כָּאן צְלָפְחָד - Just as the latter person was Tzelafchad, so the first Bamidbar person was also Tzelafchad. And that is Rabbi Akiva's argument.

Ari: And to add to that, too, you know, from looking at the people who died in the wilderness, only two I can think of died because of their own personal sin. Most of them were part of these big group projects where many people messed up and many people were killed. But to find an individual who died because of their own sins, well, that is also pretty rare. And then add that to this connection, this random detail that they were in the wilderness, which is like a totally unnecessary detail.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah. I’ll just finished the baraita for you, but Rabbi Yehuda ben Bateira, who is a contemporary Rabbi Akiva, then jumps in and says: עֲקִיבָא, בֵּין כָּךְ וּבֵין כָּךְ - Whether you’re right or whether you’re wrong, אַתָּה עָתִיד לִיתֵּן אֶת הַדִּין - Heaven itself is going to prosecute you for even suggesting the Mekoshesh was Tzelafchad. You are going to have to justify your position, ultimately, before the Throne of God in Heaven. אִם כִּדְבָרֶיךָ - If, in fact, you're right that Tzelafchad was the Mekoshesh, but the Torah kept the identity of the Mekoshesh anonymous, and you have dared to reveal it...well, הַתּוֹרָה כִּיסַּתּוּ - the Torah covered this up, וְאַתָּה מְגַלֶּה אוֹתוֹ, and you are very happy broadcasting this to the world? So maybe that wasn't such a good idea. וְאִם לָאו - And if you're wrong, think of what you're doing. אַתָּה מוֹצִיא לַעַז עַל אוֹתוֹ צַדִּיק - Then Tzelafchad was a great guy, and here you are, and you've tarred and feathered him. Either way, you're going to have to pay for this, right? 

Ari: Oh man, he's got a great point.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. A very chilling notion. But look, Rabbi Akiva said it. We're not saying it. All we're doing is trying to figure out Rabbi Akiva's position. 

Now, when the Gemara does something like this, this is classically what we would call...if this was a halachic issue (which it's not, this is sort of a matter of historical curiosity, “Was Tzelafchad the Mekoshesh?”), we would call this a gezeira shavah, right? A gezeira shavah is basically this idea that occasionally when the Torah uses similar terminology from place to place, we connect these ideas. It's a version of intertextuality that Rabbi Akiva is working with here.

Usually when something like this happens in a non-halachic context, as here, there's more to the picture that meets the eye. In other words, he's telling you a little piece, but it is the tip of an iceberg. And the truth is, Ari, we've already begun to discover the rest of the iceberg. 

In other words, if you were just reading Masechta Shabbos without actually going back into the text, you might be puzzled. You might say, all right, so it says the word “bamidbar’”here, it says the word “midbar” here.” The word “midbar” appears often, right? So you can't just connect these two “midbars” and just say that Tzelafchad is the Mekoshesh. But it's more than that, right?

In other words, the use of that word in both stories is strange, and it's screaming out at you in both stories. So what Rabbi Akiva was really saying is, there's two times when the Torah uses the same phrase, “bamidbar,” that the people were in the desert, and I have no good reason for it. It's completely inexplicable because it's just obvious. So what Rabbi Akiva really seems to be getting at is that there's something going on with this “midbar” thing. And to really understand what Rabbi Akiva is saying, we'd want to delve a little bit further and ask, like, why is the text telling me in both stories that these people were in the midbar? And that's sort of where I'd like to go with you in just a moment.

Ari: So that word, “wilderness,” it's not just the keyword that connects these two stories, but you're suggesting, it's really the key word to understanding either story.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, it's a keyword that helps us understand what's really going on in the two stories. So we're going to have to come back to that word. Before we do, I just, for those of you who are skeptical as to whether Rabbi Akiva is right, I want to show you why Rabbi Akiva was probably right, notwithstanding Rabbi Yehudah ben Bateira's objection. Rabbi Akiva wants to argue that the Mekoshesh was in fact Tzelafchad.

Comparing the Two Stories

So what I'd like to challenge you to do, Ari, is, if you can, open your text to both of them. I don't know if you have two Tanachs (Bibles) in front of you, but if you can, just open up one Tanach...and if you're listening to this, do not try this in the car. Pull over before you do. But take a look at the Mekoshesh story in Numbers 15; it begins in verse 32. And take a look at the Tzelafchad story in Numbers 27; it begins in verse one.

And what I'd like to challenge you to do is, I'm going to read through the Mekoshesh story for you, and as we do, tell me if there's anything about it that reminds you of the Tzelafchad story besides what we've picked up, which is this strange idea about “bamidbar.” Okay, so let's read it and see. 

Ari: I'm already starting to see things, so...

Rabbi Fohrman: Alright, let's read. Alright, 32: וַיִּהְיוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמִּדְבָּר - So the Children of Israel were in the desert. וַיִּמְצְאוּ אִישׁ מְקֹשֵׁשׁ עֵצִים -They found this guy who was collecting wood, בְּיוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת - on the Sabbath day. So what did they do? וַיַּקְרִיבוּ אֹתוֹ הַמֹּצְאִים אֹתוֹ מְקֹשֵׁשׁ עֵצִים אֶל־מֹשֶׁה - So they brought close...yes, Ari, go ahead. You're standing on top of your chair and waving. What's going on?

Ari: Yeah, “they brought him close to Moshe,” that same language which I pointed out when we read the story of B’not (daughters of) Tzelafchad, that they bring themselves close to Moshe and then Moshe brings their case close to God.

Rabbi Fohrman: Isn't that fascinating? Let's keep on reading: וַיַּקְרִיבוּ אֹתוֹ הַמֹּצְאִים אֹתוֹ מְקֹשֵׁשׁ עֵצִים אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וְאֶל־אַהֲרֹן וְאֶל כׇּל־הָעֵדָה - But they brought him also to Aaron. Notice that, in the story of Tzelafchad, they also brought their case to Moses, but also the child of Aaron, Elazar HaKohen. And in both cases, nobody knows what to do. וַיַּנִּיחוּ אֹתוֹ בַּמִּשְׁמָר כִּי לֹא פֹרַשׁ...

Ari: Wait before you, before you get there. They don't just bring him to Moses and Aaron, but they also bring him אֶל כׇּל־הָעֵדָה - to the entire congregation.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. And finally, just as no one knows what to do with the Mekoshesh, no one knows what to do with the daughters of Tzelafchad. With the Mekoshesh: וַיַּנִּיחוּ אֹתוֹ בַּמִּשְׁמָר - They placed him in a “watch,” כִּי לֹא פֹרַשׁ מַה־יֵּעָשֶׂה לוֹ - because nobody had explained what to do with him. The way the Gemara explains that, even though they knew that violating the Sabbath was a capital crime, they didn't know how to carry out the execution; the details, nobody knew. And similarly, the daughters of Tzelafchad: וַיַּקְרֵב מֹשֶׁה אֶת־מִשְׁפָּטָן לִפְנֵי יְקוָה - They bring this mishpat before God. Nobody knows what to do with them, either.

So it sounds like Rabbi Akiva knew what he was talking about when he said that the Mekoshesh was Tzelafchad. In a way, the story of Tzelafchad seems like this sort of mirror image of the Mekoshesh story, where in one story a person dies and another story that person, despite the fact that he dies, gets a legacy in the land of Israel.

Another Connected Story

So if I can, let's see if we can focus now on this other question which Rabbi Akiva's analysis raises for us: What in the world is “bamidbar” doing here? Why was it important that the Mekoshesh was gathering wood in the desert? Why was it important that, according to the daughters of Tzelafchad, אָבִינוּ מֵת בַּמִּדְבָּר - our father died in the desert. The people were in the desert at the time. What's this notion of the desert and why is it so important?

So I want to suggest something to you here. There are a number of interconnected texts, almost like a weave of interconnected texts here. So far, we've identified the Mekoshesh and Tzelafchad as interconnected text, but the truth is that the Tzelafchad text and Mekoshesh text are connected to one other very important text, and I'll try to give you a hint of what it is.

Ari: Is it the Mekallel (Blasphemer)? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, also true. but that would take us too long to unpack, so we'll save that for a future epilogue.

Let me suggest one other piece here, which I think is important. The word "mekoshesh," it's a very unusual word. Nobody even really knows what it means. Does it mean he was bundling wood? Does it mean he was gathering wood? The Torah does not use any sort of the standard Hebrew words that we use for bundling or for gathering. It uses a very unusual word that, frankly, no one would know what it means if not for context. We sort of guess what it means. Why is the Torah using this really unusual word, "mekoshesh"? And I'm going to play a little game with you, which is, where else do we have a similar word? It turns out that the Torah is quoting, seemingly, from an earlier narrative. And let me ask you, Ari, does that remind you of any earlier story, the word "mekoshesh"? It's not the Yosef story. Good guess with me, though.

Ari: But it's always the Yosef story!

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. I'll give you a hint. The hint is there's only one other story in the entire Five Books of Moses where "koshesh" is used as a verb. What is the other story where "l'koshesh” is used as a verb? I'll give you a hint: The person who is mekoshesh was doing so on the Sabbath day. It turns out that the only other story where “l'koshesh” is used as a verb has to do with a kind of Sabbath as well. Indeed, it has to do with the first time that a human being uses the word “Sabbath” in the entire Torah.

By the way, remember how they come before Moses and Aaron? Turns out, the other story involves both Moses and Aaron, as well. And we're talking about, if you can turn back to all the way back in the Book of Exodus, this is the very first confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh in Exodus, chapter five. It's the story of Pharaoh insisting that the people gather straw incessantly, chapter five, verse 12. The word for gathering straw is וַיָּפֶץ הָעָם בְּכׇל־אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם לְקֹשֵׁשׁ קַשׁ לַתֶּבֶן - they went out, gathering their straw all throughout Egypt, however much they could gather. 

Now, this is also the story where the idea of Sabbath first comes into the human lexicon. Despite the fact that God kept the Sabbath way back in Genesis, God never let any humans in on that. We, the readers of the Torah, know about that because God tells us that in Genesis one, but God never tells Adam and Eve about the Sabbath. Humans, all the way throughout Genesis into Exodus, are unaware of this idea of the Sabbath. The very first hint to it comes in this story involving Moses and Pharaoh. This is Moses' first audience with Pharaoh, and basically God comes to him and says, “Here's how you're going to begin with Pharaoh. You're going to ask for three days off.” And it's a strange thing, right? Like, here's God, and he says, “Let my people go,” not the way it happens dramatically in the movies. It's like, “Let my people go for only three days.” Like, don't worry about that.

Ari: “Give us a vacation.” 

Rabbi Fohrman: All He's asking for is a long July 4th weekend. Throughout the whole Exodus is this little fight over the three days. Why are they fighting over the three days? And by the way, in that context, listen to Pharaoh in his denial of the three days: וַיֹּאמֶר פַּרְעֹה - Pharaoh says to Moshe, הֵן־רַבִּים עַתָּה עַם הָאָרֶץ - I've got myself a lot of slaves. I'm quoting from chapter five, verse five, in Exodus. וְהִשְׁבַּתֶּם אֹתָם מִסִּבְלֹתָם - And you're going to give them time off from their work? What's going to happen with my GNP? What's going to happen with my productivity? Now there's that word, as a verb: וְהִשְׁבַּתֶּם אֹתָם מִסִּבְלֹתָם - You're going to give them a Shabbos from my work?

Ari: For Pharaoh, the idea of giving a slave any kind of rest is preposterous. So much so that he puts up this crazy fight and is willing to weather nine of the first 10 plagues, all to stop them from getting a rest.

Rabbi Fohrman: In his mind, the idea of slavery, and this is really part of the evil of Pharaoh, is that it wasn't actually the Nazis who came up with slavery as a work-to-death policy. It was Pharaoh. Pharaoh's notion of slaves...even though, you know, in a rational world, you could imagine giving your slaves a little bit of rest and relaxation, giving them enough calories to eat, all of this stuff would be good for you and your GNP, but it violates Pharaoh's sense of justice. It violates the way slaves are supposed to work. For Pharaoh, a slave is a worker. You work a worker incessantly until he stops working. 

Ari: He's more than just a tool or something that you can, you know, you can get work out of. And then, you know, what's a few days that you'll let them off? They'll probably come back better rested anyway. This seems to kind of go to the core of his sense of justice in the world, or maybe even his personal identity as being the master of these slaves. If you give slaves time off, well then, you know, what are you? You're not the Master of Masters anymore.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, and you'll note something rather chilling, also, that this episode ends up shaking Moses' confidence to the core, because this story does not go well. You know, here you are, you're Moses. You're coming back from the Burning Bush. You're riding high. You just hung out with God for a while. He says, “You're going to be the hero, you're going to get these people out of slavery. I’m going to be behind you all the way.” And what happens? You go to Pharaoh, and God sort of warned you, “Hey, Pharaoh's a recalcitrant guy. He's probably going to say no,” but then it actually happens. Pharaoh just says no and completely shuts down Moses.

Not only does he shut down Moses, he doubles the workload, remember? He says, “The people are lazy because they've asked for this time off. If they have time to think about time off, it means I haven't been working them hard enough. I’m going to have to double their work. I’m going to have to no longer give them the straw. In the past, I had given them the straw for bricks. All they had to do was make their quota of bricks. Now, I'm not even going to give them the straw. They're going to have to go gather the straw.”

And that is the context for chapter five, verse 12. וַיָּפֶץ הָעָם בְּכׇל־אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם - And the people scattered out throughout Egypt, לְקֹשֵׁשׁ קַשׁ לַתֶּבֶן - to go gather straw, wherever they could find. And all of a sudden, a frenzied hunt for this life-giving straw was on, because you would be beaten within an inch of your life if you came back without enough straw. It was the straw that kept you alive. And you would go searching and searching and searching for straw, hoarding straw. 

And this really is almost like the collapse of the social fabric. What Pharaoh is engineering is a world in which people are unable to really keep up with these terrible quotas, and Pharaoh, being irrationally recalcitrant and not taking them away, has set up a society which is a dog-eat-dog society, in which people can do nothing other than compete with one another. And the strong win out over the weak, over the precious, scarce resource of the most useless thing in the world, which is just this little straw. And that becomes the origin of this word, "l'koshesh", and the origin of the idea of Sabbath in the Torah. 

Manna And The Gift of Shabbat

Now, in that context, Ari, I would ask you: It's not coincidental when Israel first hears about the Sabbath from God. What is the narrative in which Israel is first introduced to the Sabbath?

Ari: It's in the manna. When God says, “I'm going to give you this bread,” and I think you've talked about this before, how it's introduced in the exact opposite context as Pharaoh. Pharaoh is talking about what he's going to work the Israelites for and what he's trying to extract from them. God introduces it in the context of, “Here's what I'm going to give for you.” And then he says, “The six days, you're going to go collect. But on the sixth day, I'm going to give you double, because on the Sabbath you're not going to go collect manna anymore. You're just going to eat double from the previous day.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. So here's this manna story where, eerily, God is reprising the story of the Israelites gathering in the fields. Once again, the Israelites are going to be gathering in the fields.

By the way, even the word “manna,” even though it's a desert, it's fascinating that God uses the word “field,” even though they're not in the field when he describes what's happening with manna. He says, “When it comes to the Sabbath, הַיּוֹם לֹא תִמְצָאֻהוּ בַּשָּׂדֶה - Today, you will not find it in the fields” (Exodus 16:25). It's not in the fields. But God understands the PTSD that these guys have, right? That they've been spending the whole time traumatically collecting this straw in this frenzied hoarding orgy to try to stave off Pharaoh's henchmen. And now, once again, there's this Lawgiver King, but this time in Heaven, who's making us again go collect in the fields.

But God is showing that he's not the narcissistic evil Pharaoh, but he’s the Benevolent God, who's actually their Father in Heaven, who's saying, “Look, I too am going to have you go and collect in the fields, but I'm giving you something. I'm not taking something. I'm not taking bricks from you. I'm giving you food from Heaven.”

“And I'm not the one who says, ‘There's no such thing as time off.’ I'm taking you as My servants because I'm expecting you to keep My laws. But you know what My number one law is? It's something called the Sabbath. It's the idea that time off is a thing, and I demand it so that you can't create a hoarding society. You can't just overcollect and hoard all of this manna. There's enough for you. You can't collect too much, you can't leave it for tomorrow. You can't collect more than you need. Everything's going to be fine.”

And God is sort of saying, “Isn't it a better society when you don't hoard? Isn't it better when you have a King who actually provides for you and things are just going to be okay?” And God is sort of weaning them away from this terrible work trap, which was Pharaoh's work-to-death policy.

Ari: So God sets Pharaoh up as the ultimate malevolent dictator and God as the ultimate Benevolent Master, and it's this profound effect that the Benevolent Master has on his quote-unquote “servants.” And that, you know, transforms not just His relationship to them, but their relationship to themselves and how they go about the world.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, absolutely. It's a transformative law which is there to create a better society. Lyndon Johnson's “great society;” this is God's Great Society.

And by the way, look at the very end of the story of the manna. I refer you now to Exodus 16, it's verse 33. Moshe tells Aaron to take a little bit of the  manna, an omer's worth, and to put it inside the Ark as a testimony for what God did to Israel. And that testimony would be timeless. even though, ironically, the manna would rot just a day later. You couldn't even keep it for a day, but this little bit of manna, it would be preserved for centuries. Pay attention to the language. I just noticed this yesterday. He says: וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־אַהֲרֹן קַח צִנְצֶנֶת אַחַת -Take a little vial of this manna, וְתֶן־שָׁמָּה מְלֹא־הָעֹמֶר - and put just one person's worth of manna, וְהַנַּח אֹתוֹ לִפְנֵי יְקוָה לְמִשְׁמֶרֶת לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶם - and place it as a מִשְׁמֶרֶת, as a watching over for centuries; and they do that. Next verse: וַיַּנִּיחֵהוּ אַהֲרֹן לִפְנֵי הָעֵדֻת לְמִשְׁמָרֶת - And Aharon in fact places it before the עֵדֻת, before the Ark of Testimony, לְמִשְׁמֶרֶת, as a watching over. And Ari, what does that language, וַיַּנִּיחֵהוּ אַהֲרֹן לִפְנֵי הָעֵדֻת לְמִשְׁמָרֶת, what does that remind you of perhaps in the story of our Mekoshesh?

Ari: Yeah. So not just, is this Mekoshesh, the one who was gathering the sticks, brought before the entire עֵדָה, before the congregation, but he's also thrown in a מִּשְׁמָר, which means a prison, but it's the same word. It's a place, it's a safekeeping, in the same way that the mann (manna) was put in a safekeeping.

Rabbi Fohrman: Literally, in the space of a single verse, four different connections between the manna and the Mekoshesh story. Verse 34: Just as God commanded Moshe, וַיַּנִּיחֵהוּ, that's one. אַהֲרֹן, two. לִפְנֵי הָעֵדֻת, three. לְמִשְׁמֶרֶת, four. Aharon places it before the עֵדֻת as a מִשְׁמֶרֶת. 

עֵדֻת, I believe, is going to become a play on words in the Mekoshesh story. עֵדֻת, in the context of the manna, is the Ark of Testimony. But Ari, what else does עֵדֻת mean? ע-ד-ת, aside from “testimony?”

Ari: The congregation.

Rabbi Fohrman: The congregation, the עֵדָה, right? Remember, where did Moses bring the Mekoshesh in front of? He brought it in front of Aaron and all of the עֵדָה, right? And now, back in the story of the manna, Moses is telling Aaron to take this little vial of manna and to place it לְמִשְׁמָרֶת in front of the עֵדֻת. And now the Mekoshesh, וַיַּנִּיחוּ, same verb, is being placed בַּמִּשְׁמָר, in a safe place in front of the entire עֵדָה by Aaron. It's almost like he's being placed in the same place of where the manna was, in some crazy kind of way.

Starting to Put It All Together

Ari: So, Rabbi Fohrman, we started with the story of the Daughters of Tzelafchad, which we then identified Tzelafchad as this Mekoshesh eitzim, the one who was gathering these sticks, which then reminded us both of the story of the manna and its counterpart of the evil Pharaoh who wouldn't let the Israelites rest. Can you help me put this back together?

Rabbi Fohrman: Sure. We've taken Humpty Dumpty apart, let's put him back together again. We've got a lot of connections, a sort of dizzying myriad of connections with the Mekoshesh going forward in the Torah. The Mekoshesh seems to be the person who died in the מִּדְבָּר, just like Tzelafchad who died in the מִּדְבָּר. He seems to be Tzelafchad, going backwards in the Torah. You've got him connected all the way to the very beginning of the Sabbath narrative. Pharaoh's denial of the Sabbath, his evil decree that we have to be קֹשֵׁשׁ קַשׁ לַתֶּבֶן, he seems to be connected to that, the Mekoshesh. He seems to be connected to the redemption of that narrative with the giving of manna by God. All of this intertextual language: הַנַּח, לְמִשְׁמֶרֶת, אַהֲרֹן, עֵדֻת, all of that. And so, how is it that we make sense of that all?

I think the key, Ari, lies in the ultimate answer to this question of what אָבִינוּ מֵת בַּמִּדְבָּר really means. “Our father died in the desert,” and we asked, why is that such a big deal? Our father died in the desert. I think now we have the information to answer that.

Let me ask you this question, Ari: This little story of the Mekoshesh, it seems to drop out of nowhere, right smack in the middle of the Book of Numbers, but its placement is not an accident. It appears in Parshat Shlach. Give me some sort of orientation of what's happening. Where am I holding, so to speak, in the Book of Numbers in chapter 15, verse 32? What major story has happened and what major story has not quite yet happened? 

Ari: So if we're thinking about major stories, we just had the sin of the Spies where God had just decreed that this generation is going to die out in the מִּדְבָּר, the wilderness.

Rabbi Fohrman: Ah, isn't that interesting? We just had the story of the Spies, and God's great decree of the story of the Spies is that everyone should die. And not only should everyone die, where should they die?

Ari: In the wilderness, in the מִּדְבָּר.

Rabbi Fohrman: In this מִּדְבָּר, that's where your corpses will be.

Ari: So this guy is really...he's the first one to die as part of that generation.

Rabbi Fohrman: One might argue, and yet he doesn't die for the sin of the Spies. He dies for his own sin, right? It's a crazy thing. Now that's the story that came before. What story comes right after this?

Ari: Korach.

Rabbi Fohrman: Korach! Remember, what do the daughters of Tzelafchad say?

Ari: They say he didn't die as part of Korach’s rebellion.

Rabbi Fohrman: He died from his own sins, he didn't die as part of Korach, right? So they're actually positioning him exactly where the Mekoshesh is; almost another indication that Rabbi Akiva is right. In other words, what they're saying, the daughters of Tzelafchad, is they're actually referencing, in their words to Moses, the two great stories that sandwich the Mekoshesh. They're saying, “Don't think that he died because of the Spies and don't think that he died because of Korach. He died because of his own sin.” They're locating him as the Mekoshesh, the person sandwiched between the story of the Spies and the story of Korach. So let's delve a little bit deeper.

Interviewing the Mekoshesh Eitzim

And now Ari, I'd like to do a little bit of Biblio-drama with you. I'd like you to occupy the position of the Mekoshesh for a moment. We had questions, why he would do this. Given everything we know, let's try to put this together, and I'm going to interview you. Here you are, and imagine that I was these witnesses. And I just told you, Ari, I said…or let's call you “Sam.” We’d never suspect you, Ari, of doing something terrible like this. But we'll say, “Sam, what are you doing? You're collecting the wood on Sabbath. Don't you know that it's Sabbath?”

Ari: Yes, I know it’s Sabbath. I went to day school.

Rabbi Fohrman: Do you know that you're not supposed to be collecting wood on the Sabbath. Like, that's against the law?

Ari: Yeah, yeah, I know.

Rabbi Fohrman: Do you understand, Sam, that this is like a capital crime? Like, we are witnesses to what you're doing. You would get killed for this, Sam. Do you get that?

Ari: Oh, yeah, I know I'm going to die. I got a secret for you...we're all going to die.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right, we're all going to die! What point is this? I'd rather control my own death than have to live in this sort of limbo land. And it's like he takes these witnesses by the throat, “What do you think you're living for? You're going to die in the same lousy wilderness that I am!” It was the wilderness. Why did I embark on this journey? I embarked on this journey because there was something at the end. There was the land of Israel at the end. But you take that away, right, and then what's the whole point?

Imagine somebody realizes, God forbid, that they have some sort of terminal illness and they're going to die, and but you don't know when; six months later, a year later, and all that. You can imagine the inclination, the desire, the feeling of being so out of control that maybe the last thing I could control would be the circumstances of my own death.

And so here, this guy, in anger, is going to go out and he's going to choose to do it by collecting kindling on the Sabbath. Oh, very interesting. On the Sabbath of all things. What's he saying in his anger, in his meizid (willful transgression), in his wantonness, in his lashing out at God?

Isn't it interesting that, I mentioned to you before, that it was Moses' lowest point, back in the story of the straw? Moses thought he had failed by the way the people came to Moses. And you know what they said to him in the story of the straw? They came to Moses: וַיִּפְגְּעוּ  אֶת־מֹשֶׁה וְאֶת־אַהֲרֹן, I'm reading now from chapter five, verse 20 in the Book of Exodus - They encountered Moses and Aaron, נִצָּבִים לִקְרָאתָם בְּצֵאתָם מֵאֵת פַּרְעֹה - as they left Pharaoh's palaces, having failed to convince the king to let the people go for three days, and the king is doubling the workload.

And you know what the people say to him, the elders? יֵרֶא יְקוָה עֲלֵיכֶם וְיִשְׁפֹּט - Let God judge you. אֲשֶׁר הִבְאַשְׁתֶּם אֶת־רֵיחֵנוּ בְּעֵינֵי פַרְעֹה - You made us stink in the eyes of Pharaoh. You just gave him the sword, לָתֶת־חֶרֶב בְּיָדָם לְהׇרְגֵנוּ - You just gave him the sword to kill us. And Moses turns to God and says, “I don't know what to do. I have no idea how to answer them. I'm coming to You, You tell me how to answer them.” It's a long line of stories that go back with Moses turning to God, not knowing how to answer them.

It's the story of Tzelafchad. It's the story of the Mekoshesh . But the first of the stories was the story of the straw. Moses came to God and said, “I don't know what to say. The people think I was the one who did this. Why did You even send me?” And God answers, at the beginning of Vayera, “Relax. We're just getting started. You're going to see, I'm going to take them all the way into the Land of Israel. It's going to be fine.”

And the 10 Plagues begin, and this is the story. The 10 Plagues begin, and they were supposed to go to the Land, but then there's the sin. The sin of the Spies, right? And you're Tzelafchad, and now how are you feeling after the sin of the Spies? 

Ari: Exactly the same way that Israelites did in Egypt, which is, “Moses, you were supposed to take us into the Land of Israel. You were supposed to be our savior, but now we're just going to die here. You've failed. You haven't done what you were supposed to be doing, and you've doomed us all to death.”

And now Moshe's response...it's not that he's stumped because he forgot that part of the law where, what you do when somebody violates the Shabbos. It's that same experience that he had back in Egypt of, “The people are challenging my leadership because I've failed them.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. So Moses, of course, can't answer because the complaint is against him, the same way he couldn't answer with the straw because the complaint was against him. And he throws up his arms and says, “God, I don't know what I’m supposed to say.” That's what he says in the case of the Mekoshesh, “God, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. He thinks I failed him because I couldn't bring him all the way to the Land. What am I supposed to do? I have to kick this back to you.” 

But basically, who is the Mekoshesh? The Mekoshesh is the guy who's going to die in No Man's Land because the future has been walled off for him. So in his mind, that's the worst thing, to die in No Man's Land. Where would he rather die?

Ari: In Israel?

Rabbi Fohrman: But he can't get there. So what's his next best place? He's מְקֹשֵׁשׁ קַשׁ לַתֶּבֶן.

Ari: Oh. He's reenacting Egypt.

Rabbi Fohrman: He's an Egypt dead-ender. “Just let me collect the darn straw,” right? “Just let me do that. Better to die that way. At least I had a roof over my head when I was going to die. To go into this No Man's Land...?”

And of course, that was never the plan. God said, “Sure, I'll take you into No Man's Land for a few days,” right? We're going to go to Israel. It was just because of the sin of the Spies that the people got condemned to being in No Man's Land for an extended period of time until the next generation would come.

The Nearsightedness of the Mekoshesh Eitzim

If I could offer you any comfort, Sam, the comfort that I could really offer you is in a future beyond yourself, to look at the larger picture. It's true that this generation will die in the desert, but look at your beautiful children. They will come into the Land, right? Israel will come into the Land. The dream is alive. It's not just about you and your generation. It's about you being the stepping stone for something more.

But the Mekoshesh doesn't see that. The Mekoshesh sees just his own life as if it's this walled-off thing in time. And if I can't get there, and if our people can't get there, then there is no meaning, and we might as well have gone back to Egypt, and we might as well be gathering that stupid straw. And this idea that we have a Benevolent God who can give us off time, who can create a society that's wonderful, where we don't have to hoard, that the Sabbath is our salvation? I throw sand in the eyes of all of that. I will desecrate the Sabbath on purpose. I will be Pharaoh's loyal servant who will collect all the straw and be the work-to-death slave. I will be that if I have to. I'll at least have a roof over my head.

Ari: In one of the Israelites' complaints, they say, “It would've been better just to let us die in Egypt than to make us go through all this effort, bring us all the way into the wilderness, just to die here.” And that's exactly what he's doing; he's recreating the Egypt experience. We asked before, you know, what's he doing with these sticks? Why does he care about these sticks? He has no use for them. Well, of course he has no use for them, but he's just pretending like he is a slave back in Egypt so that He can forget the last two years and just pretend like he died in Egypt.

Rabbi Fohrman: The problem with the Mekoshesh is that he has no sense of continuity in time. He's stuck in this little thing called the present, and the present seems to make no sense to him. And now, Ari, come back to those words we had before.

The Answer to the Complainers Judgment

The very first time Moses didn't know what to do, the people said: יֵרֶא יְקוָה עֲלֵיכֶם וְיִשְׁפֹּט - Let God judge between you and me. And an interesting question is, did God ever do that? Did God ever judge between the people who were complaining, who saw the present tense madness of Pharaoh's denial of a vacation and all they would have to do is work and work and work? And they complained to Moses and said, “Let God judge between us.”

And you know, the only answer that God could possibly give is, “Guys, it's a process. It's not just a day. It's not just a year. I'm bringing you out, and however long it takes, you're going to come to the Land. It could take shorter without the sin of the Spies, it could take longer with the sin of the Spies. But one way or the other, I'm bringing you into the Land.” But it's almost like the final mishpat of יֵרֶא יְקוָה עֲלֵיכֶם וְיִשְׁפֹּט, of the people's complaint, “Let God judge between us.” The final mishpat is the judgment to B’not Tzelafchad.

Because if there was somebody who channels the frustration of the people who encounter Moses as he leaves the palace, in the terrible story of the straw, it is the Mekoshesh. And there is a final mishpat to him that, even though he dies, there are his wonderful daughters who say, “It's up to us to keep your legacy alive.”

And how do we keep your legacy alive? They respectfully come to Moses, the same Moses that the Mekoshesh was throwing sand in the eyes of, the same Moses that the people thought, “What are you doing? You're just making things worse.” They respectfully come to him with a proposal, a mishpat, a way of solving this, which is: לָמָּה יִגָּרַע שֵׁם־אָבִינוּ - Why should our father's name be lessened (Numbers 27:4)?

By the way, Ari, you know where that word “be lessened” appears, back in Exodus 5 and the story of Pharaoh and the straw? Listen to what Pharaoh said: “The amount of bricks that I require of the people, even when I tell them that they can't take straw, לֹא תִגְרְעוּ מִמֶּנּוּ, don't lessen the amount of those bricks. They have to come up with just the same amount of bricks.”

And now, as that story finally comes to a close, decades later, the daughters of Tzelafchad say לָמָּה יִגָּרַע שֵׁם־אָבִינוּ. “We know our father was an Egypt dead-ender. We know he was one of those guys who just wanted to collect all of the straw. But even so, why should his name be lessened and he have no legacy? Sure, he died because of his sin. He died of the sin even worse than the Meraglim (the Spies). But he died, in a way, because of the Meraglim. 

In a way, after the story of the Meraglim, the text tells us the people mourned. They mourned for themselves. And when you're in mourning, you could do all sorts of things that are not so productive. They, in desperation, try to fight the Amorites and go up the hill to fight them, and they're slaughtered, and God says, “It's not going to work.” And they don't care because they're so in grief, in mourning for this decree that they're all going to die. Indeed, even the Korach story is a fight that one could argue comes from that desperate sense of mourning that we're all going to die.

And the story that’s sandwiched between them, the Mekoshesh, is also a man in grief. The sense that I have no place to be. Just this lousy מִּדְבַּר, just this lousy desert. I'm stuck in the desert and I'm going to die, so at least I'll control how I'm going to die. And in so doing, he snuffs out any legacy he can have. And here come his daughters: לָמָּה יִגָּרַע שֵׁם־אָבִינוּ,  why should our father’s name be lessened?

And so they bring his mishpat before Moses, and as Moses did back in Exodus 5, he says, “I can't answer this. I bring it to God.” And God says, “You're right. What these daughters have done is a little act of yibbum (Levirate marriage), a little act of keeping their father's legacy alive. A man who doesn't have conventional heirs, whose legacy would be over. And God said, “These women, history will know their names. These women, who are so devoted to their father's name. You do that, your name shines throughout heaven. And finally, Tzelafchad's name is resuscitated. He has a place on the land of Israel

If you think about the tragedy of his name: Tzel Pachad (lit. shadow of fear). Here's a man who lives in the shadow of fear. He’s so spooked, right, by this death sentence to everyone, that it drives him toward a kind of suicide by law. And the redemption of that is the mishpat that his daughters propose. A different kind of law, a law of compassion that rescues his name.

Ari: You know, in a lot of ways, Tzelafchad's thought process, it’s so relevant to all of us because we're all going to die at some point, right? It's the only thing certain in life is death. And, you know, how many things that we start in life are we really able to completely finish? You know, on a personal level but certainly on a national level, the kind of broad, national projects that we're working towards, the major projects we try to accomplish.

Shadow Names

Rabbi Fohrman: And think, by the way, of the other great, broad national project that people were building. The ultimate goal wasn't just, “Come to the Land of Israel,” but it was to build a mikdash, a Temple, a House for God there. Think about the other man whose name sounds a little bit like Tzelafchad, like Tzel Pachad. Betzalel, right? It’s two people who live in the shadow. In a way, both Betzalel and Tzelafchad, Tzel Pachad, are both struggling with the same issue, which is that, here we are in a place that we don't know that we're really going to get out of, that we're here in this desert, and what do you do?

And Betzalel has a dream, this great national project: To build a House for God. But how am I supposed to build a House for God? I'm here in the desert. So what's Betzalel's answer? A Mishkan, a temporary House for God. You know what? Okay, so we're here in the desert. We can do temporary. One day, other generations will do something more permanent. We can lay the groundwork. And all of this is about the ability to not be locked into the present, to be able to see the continuation of your life in the future, which by the way, is what the daughters of Tzelafchad see. They say, “We are continuing the legacy of our fathers. Give us the land so we could keep his name alive.”

And even though there was a man who couldn't see that, his daughters could see it. And sadly, Tzel Pachad/Tzelafchad is the one who gives into the shadow of fear rather than taking refuge and saying, “You know what? I live in the Shadow of God, b'tzel El, and therefore, even though it's scary, I can allow myself to die because the work can be finished by others. I just have to start.”

Ari: You could really sum this up with the line from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) of: לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה - That it's not your job to finish the work, but you also aren't allowed to just completely excuse yourself for it. But your job on Earth is to show up and to do as much as you can and then to pass things on to the next generation to continue what you started.

Rabbi Fohrman: Amen, I will say Amen to that. I think that the story is so, so rich and poignant, at least for me. It's been an honor to be able to share it with you.

Ari: This has been so powerful, Rabbi Fohrman. Thank you for sharing this.

Rabbi Fohrman: My pleasure.

Credits

This episode was recorded by: Rabbi David Fohrman together with me, Ari Levisohn.

Editing was done by Evan Weiner.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our managing producer is Adina Blaustein.

Our senior editor is me, Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.