Acting for the Sake of the Future

What a week it's been! It's almost dizzying to think about all that's transpired on the American political front since many of us gathered in a park to welcome Shabbat last Friday night. For me, it's been powerful and inspiring to think about how quickly things can shift sometimes -- a reminder that each of us has the potential to create change, and life plays out in unpredictable and unscripted ways.

This week's Torah portion, Pinchas, feels like a treasure trove, as it's ripe with topics that could be relevant to explore in a week like this. It begins, of course, with the story of Pinchas himself, Aaron's grandson who acts with zeal, killing an Israelite man and a Midianite woman, and is rewarded. Pinchas's story is a perfect jumping off point for an exploration of extremism or political violence. Later in the parasha, the story of the five daughters of Zelophehad is an inspiring tale about justice and how to amend laws that don't adequately serve a rapidly-changing society; it features teamwork and the power of sisterhood. A Dvar Torah about any of these themes would almost write itself... and if you are intrigued, I wholeheartedly encourage you to read the parasha in its entirety for yourself and let me know what catches your eye.

That said, what caught my eye the most this week were several lines of this Torah portion that I've never lingered on before. Between the interesting narrative sections about Pinchas and the daughters of Zelophehad, Numbers 26 contains a long genealogical list. This isn't particularly unusual in and of itself; in fact, the Torah is filled with these... censuses taken for different purposes at different points in the Israelites' narrative. Here, the purpose of this particular census is crystal clear:

"When the plague was over, Adonai said to Moses and to Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, “Take a census of the whole Israelite company [of fighters] from the age of twenty years up, by their ancestral houses, all Israelite males able to bear arms.” (Numbers 26:1-2).

What we would expect next would be a list of the Israelite males ages 20 and older, those deemed eligible to be part of the fighting force of their day. And for the most part, that is, in fact, what follows: how many Reubenites and what are the sub-clans of that tribe, how many Shimonites, and so on. But, in that otherwise straightforward list of men's names, three lines feature women: 

  1. "Now Zelophehad son of Hepher had no sons, only daughters. The names of Zelophehad’s daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah" (Num. 26:33).

  2. "The name of Asher’s daughter was Serah" (Num. 26:46).

  3. "The name of Amram's wife was Yocheved daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt; she bore to Amram Aaron and Moses and their sister Miriam" (Num. 26:59)

I can't say for sure what all of these women are doing here on this list. I imagine, though, that Zelophehad's daughters are mentioned in this genealogical list to contextualize who they are, just before their proto-feminist story appears in Chapter 27, and it seems likely to me that Serah and Yocheved are riding on their coattails in some manner (hurray for powerful and noteworthy women!).

I will save a full exploration of Serah bat Asher for another time. (She's been a midrashic hero of mine for many years! As Tamar Kadari explains in the JWA Encyclopedia entry on Serah: "Her history is intertwined with the story of the migration to Egypt and enslavement, and with redemption and the return to Erez Israel. She lived to an extremely old age and accordingly was blessed with much earthly wisdom and knowledge, which she used to help the people of Israel as needed...")

For this week, I want to focus in on Yocheved, the mother of Miriam, Aaron and Moses, mentioned in Numbers 26:59. Here in our parasha, she is listed as the "daughter of Levi." Levi, as you may recall, was one of the twelve sons of Jacob, who came down to Egypt for food at a time of family, when his brother Joseph had risen to be the second in command to Pharaoh, way back in the book of Bereishit/Genesis. If Yocheved really is daughter of Levi born soon after his arrival in Egypt, this would mean she lived for hundreds of years(!) -- throughout the Israelites' entire period of enslavement in Egypt and into the wilderness to earn her mention here in the book of Bamidbar. (Indeed, I discovered this week just how many midrashim exist about Yocheved... particularly about her conception and birth and the conception and birth of Moses -- you can click here to read more if you're interested.) The midrashic imagination -- hinging on this verse from our Torah portion -- turns Yocheved into quite the superhero!

Of course, Yocheved doesn't need midrashim; she's already pretty awesome, even in a pshat-level (straightforward) reading of the verses where she first appears in the Torah: Exodus 2:1-3, in the birth story of Moses. That text reads as follows:

"A certain member of the house of Levi went and took [into his household as his wife] a woman of Levi. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile." 

Although Yocheved isn't even named in the Exodus text, we can see that this woman is remarkable! She is God-like in her action: just as, in the creation story, God repeatedly "saw that it was good," here, she sees the beauty in her son and it motivates her to hide him for as long as she can. When that plan no longer works, she is forced to give the baby up, but she takes great care to do so in a way that will keep him safe and enable him to have a future. She finds just the right kind of basket and caulks it to make it watertight. She carefully places it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile, where she knows that someone else could find it. The text doesn't say this explicitly, but perhaps she knew that this was exactly the spot where Pharaoh's daughter came to bathe each day. In any case, it is clear that her deep love for her child motivates her to make a personal sacrifice, but she does so in such a way that he might be saved and even have the potential to thrive in ways that he couldn't in her own care. 

Here in our Numbers/Pinchas text, this hero does have a name: Yocheved, which means "God's glory" (the yod-vav are part of God's proper four-letter name, and the kaf-bet-dalet root of kavod means glory, honor or respect). While Yocheved's decisiveness early in Exodus was bold and full of foresight, she cannot possibly have known the degree to which her actions would matter so far into the future. We, the reader of Numbers, however, know that not only did she manage to save her baby in Egypt, but he (Moses) would grow to be the leader who would take the Israelites out of Egypt and would ultimately shepherd them through a 40-year journey in the wilderness, forging them into a people. Yocheved's act ensured the future, not just for her own family but for her entire people.

When I saw Yocheved's name in this week's Torah portion and began to think about her legacy, I couldn't help but hear echoes of her story in the news headlines about President Biden's decision to step aside and "pass the torch" in hopes of preserving American democracy. Here, we see yet another leader willing to make a personal sacrifice for the sake of the future. 

Right now we are still standing, admittedly, quite close to the beginning of this particular political story, and we will have to see how it continues to unfold. But for this week, at least, I have found it beautiful, inspiring, and validating to consider Yocheved's action of sacrifice in Moses's birth story. Motivated by a combination of desperation and selflessness, her willingness to give up her child ultimately paves the way for a positive chain reaction that leads in the direction of national redemption. 

Where will our American story go next? Of course, we can't answer that question just yet... but perhaps, Yocheved's mention in this week's Torah portion will inspire each of us to consider the ways that we have agency. Like Yocheved, each of us has the power to embrace life and possibility, enabling goodness to triumph over fear, anger and paranoia.

Indeed, life is filled with twists and turns that we cannot possibly predict. When it comes to those decisions that do lie in our hands, though, let us act boldly, for the sake of the future!

Wishing each of you a Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

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