by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Five sisters in Parashat Pinchas--Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah (also known as Zelophehad's daughters)--challenge the tradition that bestows their deceased father's land to male relatives (Numbers 27:1-11). Boldly approaching the leaders of the community they issue a demand: "Give us a holding among our father's kinsmen!" (27:4). When Moses brings "their case" (mishpatan, literally, "their judgment") to God, God supports their claim and extends it as a law for all similar cases (27:8-11).

The story is important for several reasons: First, it establishes inheritance rights for daughters when there are no sons, thus securing their social and economic welfare. Second, it shows that a biblical law can emerge not only from the top (from God to humankind), but also when persons identify a human need and initiate a process to address it. God is responsive to human initiative. Third, in so far as this law was initiated by five women, it establishes their teaching or law as "Torah from Sinai," a teaching that was created first and foremost by daughters.

These three aspects make this story a revolutionary moment in the biblical tradition. But the story goes further to model a constructive and necessary approach to social problems. Introduced as "daughters"--typically, the least powerful members of an ancient society--these five sisters do not passively abide by inherited tradition but are ready to change it. They do not merely complain as victimized persons but also offer--insist on--a solution. Furthermore, their story begins as the personal dilemma of a single family, but it shows that standing up against personal injustice, and doing so in a public and effective way, has consequences that extend beyond the personal. In daring to resist injustice to them, the five sisters also altered the circumstances of all other women in a similar position.

Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi is professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and editor of the award-winning (National Jewish Book Award of the Year) volume, The Torah: A Women's Commentary (with Andrea Weiss [New York: URJ Press, 2008]).

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