Pinchas: Five Women Who Challenged God

I'm sure you're familiar with the Fabulous Five in the Torah, aren't you? The five women named Machlah, Noa, Choglah, Milcah, and 

Tirtzah? Of course you are! Who doesn't know Talcum, Mona, Challah, Milky, and Myrtle? Wait, did I get that right? Sorry, I had to look up the names, so I might have messed up the spellings just a little... You see, the thing is, we SHOULD be familiar with them, but most of us aren't. They are some of the most proactive, fearless, equality-seeking, gutsy women in the Torah... and we rarely, if ever, talk about them. What gives?

This week, we read their story, so I thought we could talk about them for a minute. These five women are the daughters of a man named Zelophechad. The father is deceased. And the women come to Moses to complain, because all their father's holdings are now going to pass over 

to the closest MALE relative, and the five daughters will be left with nothing. This can't possibly be fair, can it? They assert: "Let not our father's name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give us a holding among our father's kinsmen!" (Numbers 27:4) They are all young and not yet married (which makes their confronting of Moses all the more impressive), but they feel justified in saying that this system is flawed. And, incredibly, when Moses brings this concern to God's attention, God responds: "The plea of Zelophechad's daughters is just: you should give them a hereditary holding among their father's kinsmen; transfer their father's share to them." (Numb. 27:7) And this then becomes the law of the land.

Now, this didn't make everything perfect. I wish I could tell you that Machlah, Noa, Choglah, Milcah, and Tirtzah paved the way for full women's rights and equal pay. These five women still had to split ONE share, and they were required to marry men from within their clan or the holding would remain with the ancestral tribe. 

So not (yet) utopia. But it sets a precedent, right? It creates a tiny crack in the male-dominated hegemony of the ancient world, and it DOES feel like a pretty major victory. So why don't we hear about it more? Well, I think we all know the answer to that. When the (male) Israelites spent 40 years in the desert complaining about, well, EVERYTHING, and acted like entitled, spoiled, self-centered children, these Fabulous Five put them all to shame with one, single request. And that might have been hard to take for the priests, prophets, rabbis, and teachers of the subsequent millennia of Jewish history.

But so what? To heck with them! You and I are here now, and there's no time like the present. Let's talk about... Noa and her sisters, 
and let's celebrate their victory as our own. Ultimately, it IS impressive that the Torah shares with us their story, and then repeats it again ten chapters later, in case you missed it the first time. The Torah is not embarrassed to highlight strong women, and we shouldn't be either. In fact, we should learn from their example to speak up when we see injustice, and to question the establishment, even when we don't think it will affect change. Surely, we tell ourselves, someone else has already asked the question. But maybe no one has. And maybe someone should. And maybe, just maybe, that someone is you.

Photos in this blog post:
1. CC image courtesy of Slowking4 on Wikimedia Commons
2. CC image courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski on Wikimedia Commons
3. CC image courtesy of Parrot of Doom on Wikimedia Commons
4. CC image of a family with five daughters, courtesy of Co9man on Wikimedia Commons