Hello everyone and welcome once again to the Temple Institute Parsha class. My name is
Gedalia Meyer and I am podcasting from Maale Adumim in Israel. The idea of ownership is
fundamental to human society. It is hard to imagine how life would work if we didn t have
it. Would everyone simply take whatever they wanted at any time without any regard to who
had it before? What would stop another person from taking whatever the first person took
to begin with? Human society would quickly devolve into chaos, with the strongest or
the most cunning winning everything and everybody else left to survive on whatever is left.
It would be totally unworkable and would not last long. This is so obvious that it hardly
needs to be stated.
Of course, claims have been made that this is exactly what human society has been since
anyone has been keeping track of such things. The strong get what they want and the weak
hope for the best. It was like this in ancient times with armies coming in and rampaging
through another nation or tribe. It was like this in medieval times with lords and kings
taking whatever they wanted. And it is still like this with corporations and governments
grabbing the lion s share of everything and leaving whatever falls off for the gleanings
of the lower classes. Whether this is true or not is a matter of perspective and one
s outlook on politics and economics.
But we all can agree that there has to be some sense of property ownership and possession.
There have to be certain rights to one s property and some legal system for enforcing those
rights. Animals, in general, either have no such system or rights, and thus everything
is up for grabs, or they have a primitive version of what we have. Our rights of ownership
seem to be a universal feature of human life. It is almost as if it got hardwired into the
human brain.
It could, of course, be asked, why we assume such rights? Who created these rights to begin
with? The answer to that is that it was human societies who created them because there would
be no way to survive without them. They were a practical necessity of social existence
and nobody would dream of getting rid of them.
Among these rules and rights is the important principle of inheritance. That a person s
possessions should automatically pass to their heirs is a firm fixture of any legal system.
It couldn t be any other way. What if the government or anybody who got there first
could just grab whatever somebody owned the minute they die and the heirs were left high
and dry? This would be deemed the height of injustice. It is simply a God-given right
that a person can transfer ownership of their property to whomever they choose.
Was it always this way? We don t really know but it seems to be the case with very few
exceptions. Inheritance, or passing on ownership, is part and parcel of the right to one s property.
Ancient societies had such laws, and they remained throughout history pretty much everywhere.
They are a firm feature of ancient law codes and they were only rarely seriously challenged.
The Bible is one of the earlier sources for this fundamental law. When Abraham dies he
passes on his possessions to Isaac, with the exception of certain gifts which he gives
to his other sons. With others it is basically the same thing. The firstborn had the right
to a double portion, but this was just a detail of the law of inheritance. Even something
as permanent as a graveyard was deemed a hereditary possession. There are virtually no exceptions
to this in the entire Bible.
This week s Parsha gets into some of the basics about these laws. The Parsha is called Pinchas,
another of the handful of Parshas that are named after a person. In this case it is Pinchas,
the hero of the drama that took place at the end of last week s Parsha. The story there
was that after some sort of moral collapse among the Isrealites involving seduction by
the Midianite and Moabite women. A plague ensued which ultimately killed 24,000 people.
This was a catastrophe of major proportions. In the middle of the several verses describing
all this a certain high-ranking Israelite man grabs a Midianite woman right in front
of the Tent which housed the Ark of the Covenant, before the eyes of everyone. This is where
Pinchas enters the story.
He grabs a spear and stabs the two of them in front of everyone. He didn t ask Moshe
or anyone else what he should do. He just did it. Because of this, he has become the
classic example of someone who takes matters into his own hands without waiting for someone
else to tell him what to do. The plague ended when he executed his action, thus proving
that he did the right thing.
This week s Parsha, which is named after him, begins with his reward. He was a descendant
of Aaron, the High Priest, but he wasn t a Kohen who could officiate in the Mishkan because
he was not born in Egypt. This detail was rectified as a result of his action here,
when he was made a full Kohen with full hereditary status as such. It s not just anyone who gets
a Parsha named after them, but Pinchas was one of the select few and his reward would
last as long as Jews retained the classification of Kohen within Judaism.
Most of the rest of the Parsha deals with matters of a census and laws of inheritance
of property in the Land of Israel. The census is the second in this book, which is why the
Latinized name for it is Numbers. All the tribes are enumerated according to their sub-families.
The numbers are approximately the same as the first census, which took place 40 years
earlier. Why this should be so is a bit of a mystery.
Before the Levites are counted there is a short paragraph about how to divide the Land
of Israel among the tribes and among families. Essentially the rule is that the amount of
land one group would get is determined by how large or small that group is. But there
was also some sort of lottery system that was used for deciding who gets what. The Torah
doesn t describe how the lottery system worked, or even what its function really was, but
its presence is right there in the Parsha.
After the Levites, there is an unexpected section dealing with a small protest over
this system of dividing up the land. This protest came from a group of five sisters,
who are forever known as the Daughters of Tzelaphchad . It seems that their father died
without leaving any sons. His rights to a piece of land in Israel, according to the
laws just mentioned, were to give his land to other families of his tribe and leave nothing
to his daughters, who were his only remaining potential heirs. His daughters were not happy
campers with this arrangement, and let Moshe and everybody else know that this wasn t right.
Our father died in the desert. He was not among the members of the group who made themselves
known against God with the assembly of Korach, for he died of his own sin without leaving
any sons. Why should our father s name be slighted from the members of his family simply
because he had no sons. Grant us a possession among the brother s of our father. Moshe brought
their case before Hashem .
The result of this was that Hashem spoke to Moshe instructing him on the Torah laws of
inheritance. The initial statement says it all, The daughters of Tzelaphchad are right,
give them an inherited possession among the brothers of their father, and let their father
s inheritance pass to them . The next few verses detail further laws of inheritance
if there are neither sons or daughters. The inheritance then passes to various relatives
such as an uncle or someone further down the line. It is unclear if a wife is included
in all this. Perhaps surprisingly, a wife inheriting from her husband was not a given
in Biblical times.
That s essentially the end of this subject. The rest of the Parsha deals with God informing
Moshe of his impending death and the need to appoint a successor. This successor is
Joshua, who had been his most devoted servant up to then. The final section of the Parsha
gets into a long description of the various animal sacrifices that were to be offered
either daily or at specific times of the year.
But this section of the Daughters of Tzelaphchad is quite fascinating. This is where the Torah
laws of inheritance come from. If these women had not brought up this whole issue, it is
entirely possible that none of this would have been Torah law. By protesting what they
considered to be an injustice, they managed to get a whole series of laws written into
the books. Inheritance was there before these daughters opened their mouths, but it didn
t include anyone but sons. Daughters were left out and it was unclear what would happen
if a man died without any sons.
One of the more interesting things about this little section is that Moshe himself did not
know what to do about the problem. He brought the matter before Hashem. He received, in
some prophetic manner, the details of what the laws of inheritance were to be. One could
ask, what was God waiting for in not advancing these inheritance laws before any of this.
Did God just think these things up right now? This seems impossible but it appears to have
been the case. But how could that be?
The answer perhaps, is that even a divinely inspired law or idea, may only come about
through the influence or insistence of a human being. These daughters pushed their case,
and the divine law resulted. Without them, God wouldn t have given these laws, however
just they may have been. It took the intervention of some people to influence the divine power
of God to produce these laws. It can happen that we only gain what is by right ours and
what God deems is ours, when we open our mouths and demand it.
Inheritance is about as basic a thing as there is in human society. It seems to have an almost
God-given quality to it. The Torah certainly supports this perception of things. But that
divinely ordained law is based on the needs and the choices of human beings, who were
to be its recipients. Without their input and insistence, even God may be powerless
to act. Shabbat Shalom!