Miryam's Space

Machla Noa, Hogla, Milkah and Tirtzah

I love these names, they are five of my biblical heroines.  Welcome to Parashat Pinchas!

Numbers, chapters 26-7 is genealogy almost entirely in the male.  Interestingly also repeated are those who have died, and who don’t leave descendants. Link to Source Page

Korach’s death is mentioned but his sons live; Nadav and Avihu’s deaths are mentioned again- though they didn’t leave descendants, their names live on. Tzelophechad, like Tevya had 5 daughters, and they had no property rights at all, because no women did, and their names had no way to persist into the future

How is that so  important, that a name lives on? Well in one practical way, each name by tribe is also how promised land will pass through the generations. Remember, they haven’t gotten there yet, but unlike many of the cranky Israelites, they believe in the promise – that we’re going home. Beyond the practical, to tell our stories can be life itself.  Our stories make meaning of who we are and share that essence, weaving the fragments of our life into a single container. With our story  according to Marc Margolius, we “fix the brokenness of our reality” into a whole. To tell your story, your pain and your joys is profound, a way to find common ground, connect to values, ideals and to know your life matters. The oppressed, the powerless are voiceless, and as a shy person as a child, I came only slowly to find my voice

Vatikrovna ,they drew near, and Va-amodna  they stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the princes, and the whole assembly, at the  opening of the Tent of Meeting, and they said, Our father died in the wilderness. He was not one of the gang of Korah’s witnesses, who banded together against G!d, but died for his own sin; and sons – he had none. (4) Why should the name of our father be lost from the midst of his family just because he had no son? Give us a holding among our father’s brothers.”.

How do these five sisters, in a society where women are disenfranchised find the courage to challenge Moses, the Torah, the status quo?  Ohr haChayim explains,  they joined together with one another, and consulted with their clan, that they both came near, and stood up means they shed their veil of timidity and stood with  sufficient self-assurance to face Moses directly. And they won an amendment to the Torah! (5) Moses brought their law before the G!d. (6) And the G!d said to Moses, (7) “Yes, The words of Zelophehad’s daughters are true: you must surely give to them a hereditary holding among their father’s brothers; transfer their father’s share to them. (8) “And speak to the Israelite people saying: ‘If a man dies without a son, you shall transfer his property to his daughter Rashi explains -God really said: Exactly so is this chapter written before me on High (Sifrei Bamidbar 134:1). This tells us that their eye saw what Moses’ eye did not see. (They had a finer perception of what was just in the law of inheritance than Moses had.) So they are heroes because they wrote themselves into the story,

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story…   ~LM Miranda

And when you’re gone, who remembers your name?
Who keeps your flame? 
Who tells your story?  (Machlah, Noa, Hogla, Mika and Tirtza)

We put ourselves back in the narrative  
We stop wasting time on tears
(Machlah, Noa, Hogla, Mika and Tirtza) (They tell our story)         

In their eyes I see us, the disenfranchised of today.