Imu Shalev: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha… diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, I’m Imu Shalev. The stories in Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers, can sometimes be hard to read. So many times the Israelite people seem to come to Moses with complaints. They ask for things they shouldn’t have, they lose faith in God, they criticize the food that God gives them… They even say they should go back to Egypt! And just as hard as seeing our ancestors make those mistakes is seeing the punishments that follow… like plagues and terrifying fires that devastate the people. It sometimes feels as if the bond between God and the Israelites might be fraying beyond repair.

Well, in this week’s parsha you get another seeming “complaint” story, only it ends really differently from the ones that came before it. God tells Moses the laws of inheritance – how the land of Israel will be divided up among the different tribes. And these five women, the daughters of Zelophehad – they come to Moses to say that their family will be hurt by these inheritance laws. But they don’t get swallowed by the earth or smitten in a plague. This time, the story has a happy ending. God pronounces judgment and declares: “The daughters of Zelophehad are correct!” And then God not only grants their request, but tells Moses to adjust the law for future generations.

It’s a fascinating story that Rabbi Fohrman and Daniel Loewenstein are going to delve into. All right, now let’s hear from Rabbi Fohrman and Daniel.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Daniel, why don’t you kick this off.

Daniel Loewenstein: Thank you so much. The parasha we're going to be discussing today is Parshat Pinchas, and one of the stories in Parshat Pinchas is the story of b’not Tzelafchad.

The five daughters of this man, Zelophehad, who died in the desert and his daughters were worried about being sort of disenfranchised and not being able to inherit land. Because at that point in the Torah, it's implied that the laws are that only male children can inherit land. And therefore, since Zelophehad did not have any male heirs, the land would go to some sort of distant relative.

Rabbi Fohrman: In other words, just so we understand, the issue of the b’not Tzelafchad actually wasn't just that these young women felt that they weren't going to get any inheritance, because that's really no different from any woman at the time. Their particular position is that they are the sole children of their father. So their father doesn't have a male heir. That means, essentially, that their entire household is sort of disappearing from the map, at least in terms of inheritance in the Land of Israel. That's really the claim that they're going to press.

Daniel: Exactly. Now, they take this claim to Moses and they ask him to do something about it. Let me ask you a question. Based on the track record of the children of Israel so far in the desert, when they press claims or when they make requests, how does God usually respond?

Rabbi Fohrman: This feels like a trick question.

Daniel: Specifically in the Book of Numbers.

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, in the Book of Numbers typically most claims come across as somehow illegitimate and are denied, although some are accepted. But certainly you don't have a great record of people making legitimate claims and being listened to.

Daniel: Right. There's a lot in the Book of Numbers about people making requests that, as you said, seem to be illegitimate. And God very often gets angry. There are lots of punishments – fires and plagues and what have you. And how about here, in the story of the daughters of Zelophehad? How does God respond?

Rabbi Fohrman: This seems to be one of the bright exceptions, right? This is a case where God actually almost joyfully accepts their request. Moses comes and puts this request to God and God comes back with כֵּן בְּנוֹת צְלָפְחָד דֹּבְרֹת – “the daughters of Zelophehad are speaking correctly” (Numbers 27:7). You shall surely give to them what it is that they're asking for. So, a ringing affirmation of the claim.

Daniel: Right, and fascinatingly, not only is this a localized acceptance, but actually their claim is then codified into law.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yup. They become the basis for this halachic principle which gets ensconced forevermore, that land can pass to a daughter. Sons get precedence, but there is no such thing as getting disinherited if you have daughters.

Daniel: Now, I think there's actually one other time in the Book of Numbers where we have sort of a similar ringing endorsement from God, where a request even actually ends up getting codified into law. Any idea what it is?

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh Daniel, you're playing our favorite game with us again, “where have we heard these words before?” I do, and I think it's not just the generalities, but it's the particularities of the language too. It really, really seems like a double story, or two stories that are supposed to overlay on each other. The other example of this is the story of Pesach Sheni, the second Pesach. Daniel, why don't you tell our listeners about it?

Daniel: Sure. So back in Numbers chapter 9, we have the story about the bringing of the korban Pesach, the Passover offering, and how there was a small group of people who were  ritually impure and were thus unable to bring that offering. They went to Moses and, just like bnot Zelophehad, they said: Hey, you know, we're going to be left out of this. We don't want to be left out. Can you help us work something out?

Rabbi Fohrman: In both cases the request is presented to God, and in both cases God is affirmative. We talked about that great affirmation in the case of bnot Zelophehad. In the case of the Pesach Sheni, again you have this new law that's promulgated for generations. אִישׁ אִישׁ כִּי-יִהְיֶה-טָמֵא לָנֶפֶשׁ – if a person finds himself impure, unable to offer the Passover offering when they're supposed to have, which is in the month of Nissan, then thirty days later, in the second month, they're able to offer that offering basically exactly a month later and they do it according to the same laws (Numbers 9:10-13).

Here, too, even if you weren't aware that in general these things were connected, there's a particular word which is so striking. There's the לָמָּה יִגָּרַע or the לָמָּה נִגָּרַע question. This is really what both of these claimants ask for. In the words of the daughters of Zelophehad, לָמָּה יִגָּרַע שֵׁם-אָבִינוּ מִתּוֹךְ מִשְׁפַּחְתּוֹ – why should the name of our father be lessened, sort of be depleted (Numbers 27:4). It's a very unusual Hebrew language.

Daniel: Right, and you find the exact same term in the story in Numbers 9, where the people who were impure say: אֲנַחְנוּ טְמֵאִים לְנֶפֶשׁ אָדָם לָמָּה נִגָּרַע – we are impure, we’ve touched a dead body. לָמָּה נִגָּרַע לְבִלְתִּי הַקְרִיב אֶת-קָרְבַּן יְקוָה – why should we be lessened or left out and be unable to bring this offering to God (Numbers 9:7).

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. In both cases, that's the opening gambit of the claimant, of those making this request. So you’ve got the לָמָּה נִגָּרַע language. Why should we lose out? So the setup and the structure of both of these stories is the same, and the language in important ways is the same.

Daniel: Great. So if we have these linguistic similarities and these structural similarities, so the Torah seems to be suggesting that there's an important theme or commonality between these two stories.

Rabbi Fohrman: And yet at face value, these stories couldn't be more different. What would the story of Pesach Sheni, this seemingly abstruse law regarding offerings, have to do with the laws of inheriting the land? But, Daniel, one thing comes to mind, and I'll just throw it off your direction. Which is that, before the people come into the Land in the Book of Joshua, to inherit their land collectively, what do they all stop and do? The first thing they do is –

Daniel: Bris Milah.

Rabbi Fohrman: They do milah, circumcision, but then immediately after that, dot-dot-dot, drumroll, please. They all offer the…

Daniel: The korban Pesach.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yup. They offer the korban Pesach, and it's the first time they're actually in the land. They're eating from the produce of the land, they're offering the korban Pesach, and they're about to conquer Jericho. They're on the outskirts of Jericho, which is going to be the beginning, so to speak, of the collective inheritance of the land. So there seems to be something about inheriting the land and offering korban Pesach that seems to be fundamentally connected to one another. So these two stories are starting to converge a little bit.

Daniel: It sounds like you have an idea about why these two things would be connected.

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, I'm just kind of thinking out loud. That's the beginning of an idea. The only thing I would say is that perhaps we're talking about sort of two entrance tickets into nationhood over here. Back in the day we did a wonderful series on the laws of tzara'at. Tzara'at is always one of these things – leprosy – that seems so far removed from our understanding. Yet, if you look carefully at the language, the language also echoes the language of Pesach and of korban Pesach.

I basically developed some theories there – and you can go back to those videos and watch them along with their epilogues, so feel free to go take a look, all you listeners out there. But the theory, if I recall, that emerged from there is that the Pesach offering seems to be a very unusual thing. It seems to have an unusual function within the rubric of halacha. It seems to be literally an entrance ticket into nationhood.

And the argument, I think, I made there was that we all sort of have two parts to our persona. One of those parts is – we feel more viscerally, maybe, in this world, and that is our individual selves. Right? America is great for its celebration of rugged individualism. But individualism taken too far can lead to the triumph of the ego. And the ego, when it triumphs, doesn't make us feel good, if all we are is individuals. It makes us feel lonely. It makes us feel cut off. We can celebrate our triumphs, the triumph of rugged individualism. 

But there's something about communal celebration. There's something about not doing this alone, about doing this with others and having others there, that is just a very important part of the joy and the experience, and you want your friends around you.

Daniel: So Rabbi Fohrman, how does this link back up to inheritance and the korban Pesach?

Rabbi Fohrman: Daniel, I'm glad you brought that up. What I'm driving at here is that there's another part of our personas, which is our communal selves. Which is to say, and this is a very subtle point, but it's not just that there's this thing called community and I'm a part of it. It's different. It's that there's these two parts of me. There's me as an individual, and then there's another version of me, a sort of a communal me, without ego boundaries, just part of a nation.

My argument was that in the laws of metzora, one of those parts of you die, the communal self dies, so to speak, while the individual self continues to live. And the challenge of tzara’at is to resuscitate the communal self, and you do it through a re-enactment of korban Pesach. The korban Pesach seems to be that entrance ticket into our communal selves, so maybe inheritance is something like that.

In other words, these girls, right, what they're asking for, really, is for their family to be part of this perhaps communal self. We normally think of nachalah, we normally think of inheritance, as a triumph of the rugged individual ego: This is mine, this thing, and here's my land. It seems like a triumph of the individual, but I wonder, Daniel, if what we're seeing, possibly, is that nachalah is more important for the communal self than it is for the individual self. Inasmuch as nachalah in the Land of Israel is a communal thing, when you have an inheritance you're part of a nation that has nachalah. It's not so significant that you as an individual get to plant your flag in this place and say, here was Daniel Loewenstein. What's important is that your family gets to be part of something so much larger.

You know, if you think about land, land outlasts us. You're going to die and you're going to get buried in the land. It's bigger than you. It holds you. So land is the thing that laughs at our individual selves, and when we think we're owning it and claiming it for ourselves as an individual, we're really becoming part of something so much larger than us. Right? We're part of the land, part of our people, part of our – 

Daniel: And also part of our families, and maybe that's why the daughters of Zelophehad place so much of an emphasis not on wanting a piece of land, but rather on wanting to make sure that the name of their father isn't diminished.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. Look at that language. לָמָּה יִגָּרַע שֵׁם-אָבִינוּ מִתּוֹךְ מִשְׁפַּחְתּוֹ – why should the name of our father be diminished from among his larger family? You know, look at that language. It's not just so much, why doesn't our father's name live on in perpetuity as an individual? It's that, how come he can't be a part of something larger in perpetuity, part of the family that has its stake as part of the nation? Maybe this is a celebration of the individual lasting through its connection with community in both cases, in Pesach and in here. So those are – 

Daniel: It's fascinating. So it sounds like what you're suggesting is that the reason, possibly, for God's ringing endorsement of the requests – both to be able to participate in the korban Pesach and to be able to participate in inheritance of land – is because of their special significance as signifiers of participation in nationhood.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah. It's a willingness of the personal ego to lay itself down and say, I am only meaningful if I'm part of something larger. It's really interesting that you bring that up, that notion of God's ringing endorsement, that these would be the things that God would endorse, and maybe it says something about Divine values. It seems to me that, you know, maybe – I mentioned to you this world before, and I said that our ego boundaries are here in this world.

Daniel: Yeah, what did you mean by that?

Rabbi Fohrman: What I meant by that cryptic comment was the following. It feels to me – now, I can't tell you, because nobody's been there and back, but one of the great mysteries is – 

Daniel: Except for Bilbo Baggins.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. Wasn't that the name of his book, There and Back? There and Back Again. Bilbo, for you Lord of the Rings fans. But nobody's really been there and back. Nobody's been to the next world and come back, so we really don't know what it's like. But if I had to guess what the next world is really like, how it's different from this world, I would suppose that it's a world where oneness predominates. This world is a one where separateness predominates; that world is a world where oneness predominates.

Let me explain what I mean by that. This world is a world where we kind of do things and build things, and in that kind of world, things need to be tidy and they need to be ordered and they need to be separate and distinct from each other. One of the deepest aspects of that order is the existence of our individual selves felt as individual selves. The notion that you are just you, Daniel Loewenstein, and you're circumscribed in time and space, and you only exist where you exist. You only exist when you exist.

Daniel: I wouldn't be able to know who I was if I couldn't tell myself apart from you.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, and so your whole identity is built upon this fragmentation, this sense that you are cut off and fragmented and fundamentally alone. God actually looks at the very first humankind in this world and nebech, tragically says לֹא-טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָאָדָם לְבַדּוֹ – it's not good to be so alone (Genesis 2:18). But that was the very first person, with an individual set of boundaries.

Somehow it seems to me that that's not the way things really are. That's a construction for this world, an artificial world. There's another world that pre-exists this world. It's God's domain. In God's domain there's another rule, and the rule is the rule of God, Hashem echad, God is one. In that world, oneness predominates rather than separation predominating.

Daniel: So I think, if I'm understanding where you're going with this, the reason God was so happy to facilitate these requests is because they were actually moving in the direction away from individuality and towards a greater sense of oneness with other.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, denial of ego, which is that, you know, you’ve got to be a separate self in this world to get things done, but it does have its drawbacks. When the human being can lay down their individuality and stand for something larger than themselves, that is partaking a little bit of the deliciousness of God's own world, God's own values. Therefore, God is all too happy to say: Hey, you want to be part of the nation? That's so important to you, you feel so terrible you missed it? Absolutely. Let's make a way for that to happen. Hey, you feel bad that you don't have the land, but not because it's a triumph of your individual selves, but it's because your father, you want him to be part of something larger forever? That's amazing. Let's find a way for that to happen. 

When people can collaborate with God to do that, God is, like, okay, let's do this. We'll promulgate laws forever in order to be able to do this. 

Daniel: Rabbi Fohrman, that's a really, really fascinating theory to explain this connection. I had a different theory. I don't actually think that they're incompatible. 

What struck me as fascinating was the placements of our two stories. Again, just to remind all our listeners, we had the one story about the korban Pesach and the people who were unable to participate and requested to be able to participate in some way, back in Numbers chapter 9. Then all the way in chapter 27, we have the request of the daughters of Zelophehad to be able to inherit their father's land in the land of Israel.

So what I find fascinating about the placement of these stories, if you think about it, is: They sort of form bookends to the quote-unquote dark times in Bamidbar. Two chapters later from the story of korban Pesach in chapter 11, you have the story of the mit'onenim, the complainers, and from there things go downhill, with the people who request the meats, and then there's the plague, and then the spies and Korach and – 

Rabbi Fohrman: Disaster upon disaster upon disaster.

Daniel:  – disaster upon disaster, sort of wrapping up with the daughters of Moab and Midian and the plague that is stopped by Pinchas. And then, just about right after that happens in chapter 27, we have this lovely story of people requesting land.

Rabbi Fohrman: So what you're suggesting is that there's a kind of sandwich, these terrible things in the middle, but there are these two bookends, these bright stories, and the bright stories both have these common themes. The Pesach Sheni story and this bnot Zelophehad story of people venturing a request tentatively to God. A request that's granted, that gives them what it is that they're seeking.

Daniel: Right, and what struck me about these stories which we called attention to is that word נִגָּרַע or  יִגָּרַע – why should we be diminished or, in a certain sense, why should we be left out? What I mean to say is: The people who were impure – they seem to be saying, this korban Pesach thing, it's really cool. We love the idea of celebrating our redemption and we wish we were a part of it. And the daughters of Zelophehad, similarly, seem to be saying, we value the Land of Israel and we want to be a part of it. The requests seem to be coming from a really good place. Like you were saying before, they're sort of legitimate requests.

I think maybe the Book of Numbers might be telling us that whatever sort of slip and fall the nation of Israel had in the desert, where they started relating to God in this very petty way – asking Him for different requests they had, testing Him and testing Him there – originally, they were better than that. Originally, when there were opportunities to be close with Him and to fulfill His commandments, then if you were left out of that, you wanted to be a part of it. Then the thing happened in the middle, but finally they got back to where they were supposed to be. They got back to that good place, where if they were left out of something then they wanted to be a part of it for the right reasons. We want to be a part of Your nation fully. We want to execute Your vision in the right way. 

Maybe what it's showing is, number one, this contrast of making requests of God for selfish reasons versus for selfless reasons, and number two, sort of as the story arc of saying the nation of Israel was doing okay, and then they started going through the wilderness, and disaster struck. Then, finally, at the end of that 40-year period when they're about to go into the land of Israel, they finally have made it back again.

Rabbi Fohrman: There and back again one more time.

Daniel: One more time.

Rabbi Fohrman: One more time, Bilbo Baggins. It's an interesting theory. So what you're suggesting is, take the ideas of which we were talking about before and give them historical context by seeing them as bookends for some other requests that were darker. And if you think about those darker requests, you're right to point out that in those disastrous stories they really all have to do with requests, or most of them do. The mit'onenim are people who are requesting without even knowing what they're requesting. If you look at that language, הִתְאַוּוּ תַּאֲוָה – right, which is weird. They had this desire (Numbers 11:4). Desire for what? It doesn't even say. They desired something that was nameless, that they couldn't even put their finger on.

Then there's all these other questions after that. We want meat. We don't like the manna. We want regular bread. We want spies. We want to go back to Egypt. We want to break off from the community. And you're right, Daniel, that so many of those requests, the opposite of them are really in bnot Zelophehad and in korban Pesach.

Because what's korban Pesach? We don't want to go back to Egypt. We celebrate our redemption from Egypt and we celebrate that God took us out. We're going forward and we're not going backward. And we're willing to take possession of the land. People who died in the desert died because they wanted, ultimately, to go back to Egypt. No, we want to go forward. We celebrate the ability to take possession of the Land.

If you think of that הִתְאַוּוּ תַּאֲוָה – that nameless desire, I wonder if that also circles back to that ego point. It always struck me as strange, Daniel, that the beginning of the mit'onenim, the beginning of the disaster, right after Pesach Sheni – that language of הִתְאַוּוּ תַּאֲוָה – the people had this desire, and there's no direct object there. It's not clear what the desire was, and it always struck me as a nameless desire. It was desire for the sake of desire.

I think if you think deeply, Daniel, about what a nameless desire means – desire for the sake of desire, where you just say, I want something and I don't know what I want, but darn it, I'm mad – that is basically the corruption of the ego par excellence. That's me saying no, there's a me here! I don't even know what the me wants. It's not about the car that I want. It's not about the money that I want. It's the me who wants.

Daniel: It's just about the assertion that there's a me, and I want it to be recognized.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. There's a me, darn it, and you're not recognizing me. And then trying to pin it on something, that I need this, I need that – I'm a “needer.” That is the beginning of the end. Then everything else that happens is just an expression of “take care of me, take care of me!” 

I'm saying: If you can just let go of that, it's not always about you, if you can understand that and get into a little bit of ego transcendence, getting beyond yourself, then you can actually start living a happy life. Then you can actually be wonderful, and then God says, yeah, let's do that. And these two stories are the bookends to that, and maybe it really is “there and back again.”

You know, the last good thing that happened was that moment of ego transcendence when the people said, let's celebrate this offering, let's find a way to celebrate this offering. At the end of this whole thing, as they prepare to go into the land of Israel after a terrible string of failure, there's this happy note, this hopeful note with the daughters of Zelophehad that come and say, yes, we look forward to taking possession of the Land. It's not even for us. It's not even about what we can have. It's not even about our needs. It's about our father, and it's about our father being part of something larger and about our house being part of something larger. We want to be part of something larger.

Daniel: So Rabbi Fohrman, I think what we came up with was really one theory, that korban Pesach and inheriting the land are both ways of signaling that you are letting go of your own individualism and your own ego and participating in something larger than yourself. And possibly the reason that God would be so eager to accede to those requests would be because God Himself views the world as being better when people are larger than themselves and part of something greater, when everything is unified, so to speak. Which is difficult for people, because people tend to want to be individuals and assert their individualism, and part of the challenge of living is to find a way to move beyond that.

Rabbi Fohrman: And to find that balance, to realize that I am an individual for the time being. You know, it's funny, I'll just end off with this note. In Yizkor we pray that our loved ones are part of tzror hachaim, the bundle of life, the bond of life. Think of how un-individual that is – but to be part of something larger, this great celebration of life in the next world, where we think the next world is death, but that life somehow is there, and if you can just be part of it. In this world we don't experience our lives quite that way, we're much more separate, but to be able to reach beyond our separateness gives us a taste of that World to Come. 

Imu: That’s our show, but I have an announcement. Tisha B’Av morning, Aleph Beta will be hosting “Kinot Unlocked,” a live Zoom event featuring Rabbi Fohrman and some of the other scholars you’ve met on this show. 

If you’re looking for a really soulful, meditative recital of kinot… this is not for you. This is going to be completely soulless! No soul at all. No, I’m joking. But it is going to be different. Because for some of us, to experience what kinot is supposed to be, we have to slow down. We have to ask questions. And, hopefully, answer them. 

Instead of simply reciting kinot together, Rabbi Fohrman and the scholars go deep into a few select kinot, Aleph Beta style. They mine these haunting poems for midrashic and Biblical resonances. I don’t think there are any texts in the Jewish canon so in need of attention and analysis, and yet so overlooked, as kinot. Kinot aren’t just sad poems; they’re profound, layered masterpieces. They weave together voices from every stage of Jewish history, every text we hold dear, and by doing that, they capture our eternal, collective cry for God. 

Come to this year’s event Tisha B’Av morning and see for yourself. Event info is in the description. I should mention, this event is open to all Aleph Beta premium members, so if you’ve been on the fence about trying out Aleph Beta, now really is the perfect time. $18 will get you access to the event and to our entire premium library: hundreds of videos on parsha, holidays, and an incredible collection of Tisha B’Av ones. You can literally spend the whole fast day finding meaning with us. I hope you will.   

Again, event info is in the description. Thanks for listening. 

Credits

This episode was recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and Daniel Loewenstein. 

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Rivky Stern. 

Into the Verse editing was done by Sarah Penso.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. 

Our editorial director is me, Imu Shalev. 

Thank you so much for listening.