Parshat Ve'etchanan: Never Again?

I don't think anyone would argue that in the future, when we remember the year 2020, two nightmarish words will come to mind, namely ‘Coronavirus’ and ‘Covid19’.  One shudders to consider what could greet us from August onwards.

The year that began on 1st January should have been recalled for so many other reasons.  

·       Was it not going to be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of the Second World War?

·       Was it not going to signal the start of brand new and exciting decade?

·       Was it not going to introduce this country into a new experiment ‘sans Europe’?

After a brief start, our calendars ground to a halt on 23rd March and 'Groundhog Day' became a reality[1], to the extent that many of us forgot the date of the month, let alone which day of the week it happened to be.  Was it Monday or Wednesday, Sunday or Tuesday and did it really matter, when many of our friends were winning their respective battles to cling onto life whilst thousands of others lost theirs and when many of our loved ones were either furloughed or ended up losing their jobs?

Instead of remembering the anniversaries that we had planned to mark, which rightly did feature albeit in a greatly subdued manner, our minds were filled with history lessons that we barely recalled from school - the Influenza Pandemic which followed the ‘Great War’ (a misnomer if ever there was one) and the Black Death.  Perhaps they seemed more relevant in the overall scheme of things.

Covid aside, what lessons should we have remembered in this challenging year?

·       In the seventy-fifth year after the liberation of Auschwitz, Belsen, Treblinka, Majdanek and others, where the grotesque number of six million became eternally branded into our collective subconscious.

·       On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the genocide perpetrated against eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys - where the town of Srebenica entered our vernacular, never to leave.

What lessons should the world's population of seven-and-a-half billion human beings have learned in 2020?

Biblical critics have long enjoyed finding fault with the Bible, hence their moniker. 

An 'old chestnut' they employ is to claim that the Sefer Devarim/Deuteronomy was written many years after its predecessors, in the times of King Josiah (late seventh BCE) and that Moses was not involved in its inscription in any way.  Their rationale stems from the structure of the book which repeats much of what has appeared in the four previous books of the Torah.

Rabbi Sacks, in a fascinating essay (https://rabbisacks.org/book-covenant-devarim-5777/) debunks this theory by comparing the entire makeup of Sefer Devarim with recent Archaeological finds.  These highlight the similarities between the format of the book and contemporary regional treaties that had been drawn up by other nations during the same historical period. 

This week's Parsha of Va'etchanan contains two of the most famous readings in Jewish literature - the Ten Commandments and the first paragraph of the Shema.  We recite the latter twice a day (in full) and hear the former three times a year - in Parshat Yitro (Sefer Shemot/Exodus), on Shavuot, the historical date when the Torah was given at Mount Sinai and in this week's Parsha.

The Ten Commandments, or more accurately, the Ten Statements (Aseret Hadibrot - if you recall, I explained in my last Drasha that 'davar' from which 'dibrot' is derived means a ‘word’.  'Commandant' is the translation of 'mitzvah') sets out the basis for a society that is founded on moral principles, where there is a single Gd (as opposed to man-made idols) whose Name is never to be forsaken or misused.  A society where murder, theft (of humans or property), adultery and the basic decency between humans is to be placed at the very pinnacle of its value system.  In short, a world that each of us would like to live in…that we should be living in.

And if stating it once seemed arbitrary, repeating it in this week's Parsha underscores its significance because if you don't repeat important facts, you run the risk of these being ignored over time. 

After the Second World War, society promised to ensure that 'never again' meant 'never again'.

How many times, could the slogan 'never again' be repeated until it became ingrained into the minds of the generations that were born after 1945?

If 'never again' meant something, why did we find ourselves commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the massacres that took place between the 6th and 11th July? Why did we look in astonishment at the emaciated faces of those inmates of the Omarska camps, set up by the Bosnian Serbs to incarcerate the Bosnianks and Croats?

Where the detainees had one meal a day. 

Where many were raped, tortured and murdered. 

In one camp of many.

Not in 1945. 

In 1995.

Never again?

Deuteronomy 4 (44) This is the Law that Moses set before the Israelites:

דברים ד׳:מ״ד-מ״ה (מד) וְזֹ֖את הַתּוֹרָ֑ה אֲשֶׁר־שָׂ֣ם מֹשֶׁ֔ה לִפְנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

Every time we raise the Sefer Torah at the end of the reading, we recite Verse 44, because we acknowledge that the Torah in its entirety has been given to us so that we can internalise every single lesson it teaches us.  Once or twice or however many times it takes for us to internalise them.

Deuteronomy 4

(45) these are the decrees, laws, and rules that Moses addressed to the people of Israel, after they had left Egypt,

To which Rashi explains:

“Those are the very same testimonies which he spoke when they came forth from Egypt; and he again repeated it (this law) to them in the plains of Moab.”

Rashi is informing us all that 'never again' doesn't just apply to the Holocaust.  It is relevant for time immemorial.  Just as the laws that were given at Sinai were identical to those repeated by the eastern banks of the River Jordan, so the lessons that we learned in the past are just as valid today.

First it was Auschwitz in 1945, then Srebrenica in 1995 and now we are witnessing the stomach churning and chilling aerial shots of the transportation on trains and incarceration in camps of blindfolded Muslim Uighur people in China. 

According to a report by Byrahima Mahmut, a Uighur lady who now lives in London (sourced from last week’s The Jewish Chronicle), possibly three million of her brothers and sisters are being held in camps where they are being tortured on a daily basis and crowded into tiny cells.  A recent report stated that there was a programme of forced sterilisation of 'at least 80% of Uighur women of childbearing age.  Those who refuse are threatened with incarceration in concentration camps.’

Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Education Trust (HET) wrote the following in an article below Byrahima's piece:

"According to the US Holocaust Museum and Memorial, between one and three million Uighurs out a population of twelve million are currently in some form of detention and those who are not still face rapidly tightening control restricting their ability to express who they are...."

Not in 1945 or 1995.  Now, in 2020.

Never again?

We have a duty to do our best to protect those, like our relatives and parents' friends who were persecuted because of their ethnicity.  If the powerful slogan of 'never again' didn't manage to transmit the message across the generations, we must be resolute to hold accountable those who think that they can repeat the 'projects' that led to the attempted genocide of our people three-quarters-of-a-century ago.

Today I am Jewish. 

I am Bosniak.

I am Tutsi.

I am Darfuri.

I am Uighur.

And I will not be silent whilst my people are being persecuted. 

Saying 'never again' is not enough to save my people.

The Torah, in repeating the Ten Commandments (and many other Laws) teaches us that, for 'never again' to mean something substantial, it must be accompanied by action.  Let's make 2020 a year in which, Covid notwithstanding, we averted another genocide.

Please play your part in rescuing the Uighur people by writing to your MP and placing their plight at the top of the political agenda.  We owe both to them and ourselves.

There is still enough time to make this year worth remembering – for the right reasons.

Shabbat Shalom.

---

[1] I’m referring to the 1993 film “Groundhog Day” where a television weathercaster relives the same day over and over again.

 

Parshat Devarim: Why Words Matter

It had begun seven years earlier in 1955 in the Saint-Maurice studios in Joinville, a picturesque town in North-Eastern France. The interviewer was a young man in his early twenties, who was about to embark on a directorial career that would eventually crown him as arguably the finest exponent of his craft from amongst his peers. The man he was meeting was a world-famous film director whose very name now represents a classic genre in its own right. So was born the professional and productive relationship between François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock and it would last until the death of ‘The Master’ a quarter-of-a-century later.

In 1962, following 'To Catch a Thief', 'Vertigo', 'North by Northwest' and Psycho, not forgetting his iconic television series, Alfred Hitchcock was putting the final touches to his upcoming film, 'The Birds'.

Loved by the public, mocked by the critics, and ignored by the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, Hitchcock was never awarded an Oscar for any of his films, even though five were nominated. He was eventually awarded the ‘Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for 'Services to Motion Pictures' in 1968. His famous acceptance speech consisted of two words which were “thank you”.

Truffaut had directed three critically and commercially successful films. As a former film critic himself, he was a huge fan of his interviewee's oeuvre. Whilst in New York promoting his latest film, Truffaut has been disturbed by the dismissive attitude presented to him by American critics who couldn't understand why their French counterparts held 'The Master' in such high esteem. Upon returning to France, he felt that it was his duty to rescue Hitchcock's reputation through a series of interviews where (with his permission) the two would discuss every single film that Hitchcock had made - director to director. Hitchcock agreed and with the presence of Truffaut's confidante, the Francophile interpreter Helen Scott (Truffaut spoke no English), they initiated a series of interviews that began on 13th August, Hitchcock’s birthday.

After a week of talking and schmoozing, eating, drinking and smoking cigars, Truffaut had his manuscript 'in the can'. Helen Scott then started transcribing the recordings and, along with Truffaut, wrote the resulting tome ‘Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock’ which was published in 1966. The book was then translated into English and released as ‘Hitchcock by Truffaut’. A documentary film about both the interviews and the book came out in 2015. I had the pleasure of reading the book recently, as well as seeing the film. Both are thoroughly absorbing, particularly because Hitchcock is possibly my favourite director and I really love his films.

However, behind the laudable aim espoused by Truffaut, the project was somewhat flawed due to the language barrier emanating from Truffaut being unable to speak English, a language of which the brilliant and witty Hitchcock used to great effect.

As a result, Helen Scott's translation of the original tapes was not wholly accurate. The documentary pointed this out and in fact Hitchcock, who did understand French, was unhappy with the manuscript. Understandably, he withheld his reservations from Truffaut, granted the latter's efforts to engage him. When the English version of the book was finally published, it was a translation of a translation of the original tapes and the book was understandably very different to the transcripts it purported to convey. Its subsequent reputation has not been helped by the availability of the entire set original recordings on YouTube, which prove the point. In fact, I listened to one of these with the book in hand and there were glaring inaccuracies.

Despite this, the book is still regarded by critics as being one of the finest ever written about the process of filmmaking and was successful in convincing critics to re-evaluate their view of the director. Forty years after his death, he is now universally regarded as being one of the medium's greatest exponents.

However, as far as Hitchcock was concerned, his words mattered - that was the point of the interviews, was it not?

Moses, the man who described himself in Shemot/Exodus (Chapter 4.10) as not being “a man of words” was but few weeks away from his one-hundred-and-twentieth birthday – it would also be the day he died.

He had overseen many highs and sadly too many lows in his directorship of the Bnei Yisrael. The Torah has described many scenes that could have appeared in Hitchcock movies:

• Moses being the archetypal 'man on the run' from Pharaoh after trying to protect his fellow Israelite, resulting in his killing of the Egyptian taskmaster.

• The suspense felt by the people as they waited for Moses to descend from Sinai.

• The drama of the rebellion initiated by Korach and his cronies and

• The constant pressure faced by Moses as a leader in his attempts to lead six hundred thousand leaders!

As far as Moses was concerned, the words he was about to deliver before the people were paramount (pun intended) to the effect that they would have. He needed to choose them very carefully as his audience would outlive him and would indeed be the generation that conquered the land to the west of this location. His reputation rested on the three speeches he was about to undertake.

The Torah introduces its fifth book (and the name of this week's Parsha) with the following verse:

Deuteronomy 1:

(1) These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.—Through the wilderness, in the Arabah near Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab,

דברים א׳:א׳

(א) אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶל־כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּעֵ֖בֶר הַיַּרְדֵּ֑ן בַּמִּדְבָּ֡ר בָּֽעֲרָבָה֩ מ֨וֹל ס֜וּף בֵּֽין־פָּארָ֧ן וּבֵֽין־תֹּ֛פֶל וְלָבָ֥ן וַחֲצֵרֹ֖ת וְדִ֥י זָהָֽב׃

Our sages take great care to understand the meaning of the phrase, “These are the words that Moses addressed to Israel...through the wilderness, in the Arabah....” because, the immediate verses that follow this, don't actually mention the said words. In the subsequent verses, we are given a history of the Israelites' journey through the desert from Horeb (aka Sinai).

It is only when we reach Verse 9, that he says:

(9) Thereupon I said to you, “I cannot bear the burden of you by myself.”

which is a strong statement. It is as though he is saying that he is not fit to judge and lead them effectively (as per Rashi's commentary).

He adds:

(11) “May the LORD, the God of your fathers, increase your numbers a thousand-fold and bless you as He promised you.”

Moses, in these two verses, demonstrates why he is rightly regarded as the greatest leader our nation has ever had. On the one hand, he admonishes the people, whilst with the other, he gives them hope. He gives them the cheshek - the will - to continue from this location, to conquer the land, to bring the lessons that the Torah has taught them into the land where they, as a nation, will be allowed to flourish and grow.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidism, wrote in his book, Sichot HaRan the following commentary on the phrase: “these are the words”:

Sichot HaRan 290:1

I heard in his name, that the Rebbe said, “The words spoken by a great tzaddik contain the needs of all Israel. They include what is needed by every single Jew. It is written, “These are the words that Moshe spoke to all Israel” (Deuteronomy 1:1). The words spoken by Moshe were 'for all Israel’. They contained what every single Jew would ever need.”

You can be the greatest director in the world and you might even have a fan who himself is recognised as a 'master' in his own right but if your words are mistranslated and then misunderstood, even with the best intention, your words are as false as the accusations levelled against you.

The Hebrew for a word is 'davar'.

‘Davar’ is used to denote a 'thing' or a 'matter' because words are important, indeed, we are told by our Sages that Gd Himself created the universe through words (And Gd said, "Let there be light and there was light.”)

Words are 'things' that construct sentences, which themselves are used to create speeches.

A speech without words is nothing. It is silence.

Moses' carefully considered words, which we value to this day, had to impact each and every person who was privileged to hear them. They had to be recorded exactly as he had spoken them. They had to be transmitted in a way that they would convey their message and meaning in an identical manner that they had been uttered. It wasn't good enough to have a person who didn't speak the same language writing them down. Our Rabbis state (Tractate Sanhedrin 110a), “Moses and his Torah are true.” Every word he spoke was completely without falsehood because he knew that his words could be misinterpreted and the result could be catastrophic for future generations. “These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel” - for eternity.

We are currently in the period of the Nine Days which precedes our saddest annual day, Tisha B'Av, the Ninth day of the month of Av. Our Rabbis tell us that the Second Beit Hamikdash was destroyed because of Sinat Chinam, baseless hatred, caused by the inappropriate use of words, through gossip and malice, anger and arrogance. On Yom Kippur, the majority of the ‘Al Cheit’(‘for our sins’) prayers focus on our misuse of words.

For Truffaut and Hitchcock, Moses and his students, we, the Jewish people, words matter because our success and reputation is built on how we choose to use the letters we learn to create the words we construct, to ultimately convey the messages that we wish to share with the rest of the world.

Words really do matter.

Shabbat Shalom.

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Parshat Pinchas: Equal Opportunities (c. 1300 BCE)

I don't think it would be a generalization to say that many Jews have an abiding interest in history.  This is not to suggest that people who aren't of the faith don't share this interest, but due to the rhythm of the Jewish year and its focus on history, we find ourselves delving into our past more frequently than we probably realise.

From dipping our greens into the saltwater of the Passover tears and breaking our teeth on matzah, to remembering the Maccabees' victory through munching our way through too many donuts, to remembering to forget to remember the evil Haman via his Hamantaschen (which symbolise his ears/hat/pockets - delete as per your own understanding).  Judaism does history in a grand style and, even if you don't partake of the above too often, we don't need to journey too far to bring us to the delicious weekly Challah which reminds us of the extra portion of Manna that our ancestors received because of Shabbat.

In short, we 'get' history.

History, by its very nature lends itself to the concept of anniversaries.  Each year seems to bring with it an anniversary of some sort or another.  I guarantee that within the next few months, both the Jews and the general population at large will be reminded of something or other that took place, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50....100 years ago.  To be honest, without anniversaries, life would be rather dull and understanding the significance of certain significant anniversaries helps to ground us and remind us that, despite all this as going on, we have experienced other very difficult times too.

This year of 2020 will itself go down in history as a year that I guarantee no-one who is alive and old enough to understand its significance, will ever forget.  It is also the 75th anniversary of both the liberation of the Concentration Camps and the end of the Second World War (I'm including both VE and VJ days).  It's also the fortieth anniversary of the killing of John Lennon and the 30th of the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam which led to the first Gulf War to name a few of the many red-letter days that we will be recalling over the next half-year.

On a personal basis, it is the 30th anniversary of two seminal events that shaped my life.

Back in June 1990, on Monday the 25th, I passed my driving test - first time noch!  Being able to drive has impacted my life in a way that few other skills could achieve.  It has allowed me to take on jobs that I would not have been able to undertake had I not owned a car and visit places that would have been too difficult to reach by other means.  Passing my driving test thirty years ago literally changed my life.

In October of the same year, I entered University for the first time and it helped to shape the person that I am today.  This is not to suggest that University is suited to everyone because each of us carves out our own path in the world.  I can only speak for myself and having reflected on where I started and where I am today, I know that, in hindsight, it was one of the most significant stages in my life.

Although I loved being a student, if the truth be told, the topics I studied didn't exactly fire me up with a great deal of enthusiasm.  I opted for a Degree in Business Studies which meant that I had to study a wide variety of subjects ranging from micro and macroeconomics to statistics and organizational psychology.  That being said, my favourite subject was Business Law, which, though it was the most challenging of all the courses I took in my first year, also proved to be the most rewarding.

I don't remember many of the essays I had to write throughout the duration of my three-year programme of study, but one that does stay in mind was learning about the Equal Pay Act (1970) in terms of its effectiveness in addressing the imbalance of equality in the way that men and women were rewarded for carrying out the same work.

I hope you will forgive me for not being able to recall the exact context on how I used the information I gleaned from the Act, but I do recall how much its subject-matter bothered me.  As someone with an innate sense of fairness, I couldn't comprehend why men and women were being treated so differently when it came to the contents of their respective pay-packets.  That I recall such detail after all these years reminds me of how much that knowledge affected me.  In the years before Google made life so simple, one had to read through an Act (or if you were lucky, your lecturer might have given you a handout with a summary, if it wasn't already referenced in your text book).

Alongside this Act, we also had to learn about the contents of the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) and the Race Relations Act (1976). In 1990, these three Acts were the only Legislation in place to address Equality.

With the passage of time, The Equalities Act (2010) served to bring these Acts (as well as numerous others that were passed in the following years) under one umbrella. So, in terms of this discussion, this year marks both the 50th year of the passing of the Equal Pay Act and the 10th since its replacement was enacted.

One would have thought that, with all these Acts, women and men would be treated equally when it came to both their salaries and their positions in the workplace.  Unfortunately, this is still not the case.  In January of this year, the BBC news presenter Samira Ahmed won an employment tribunal she brought against the BBC where she claimed that she had been paid £700,000 less for the same kind of work being undertaken by Jeremy Vine.

“The tribunal judgement said: “The difference in pay in this case is striking. Jeremy Vine was paid more than six times what the claimant was paid for doing the same work as her.”

~~~~~~~ 

The Israelites were residing on the Eastern banks of the River Jordan waiting to enter the Promised Land.  Gd had commanded Moses to take another census of all males over the age of twenty, with the subtext that they were to be apportioned the land, tribe by tribe and within each tribe, their individual family allotments.  The total figure was six hundred thousand, one thousand and seven hundred-and-fifty souls (a number which doesn't include women and children) This is a large number of people!

We learn the following in the next few verses (and some additional information in the Book of Devarim/Deuteronomy)

Numbers 26:52-56

(52) The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, (53) “Among these shall the land be apportioned as shares, according to the listed names: (54) with larger groups increase the share, with smaller groups reduce the share. Each is to be assigned its share according to its enrolment. (55) The land, moreover, is to be apportioned by lot; and the allotment shall be made according to the listings of their ancestral tribes. (56) Each portion shall be assigned by lot, whether for larger or smaller groups.”

Deuteronomy 21:17

(17) Instead, he must accept the first-born, the son of the unloved one, and allot to him a double portion of all he possesses; since he is the first fruit of his vigour, the birth right is his due.

In both of the above quotes, the apportionment of the land passes from the father to his sons with the firstborn son being a gifted a second parcel of land. There is no mention of any such arrangement for daughters, which makes the following episode so interesting...

Numbers 27:1-4

(1)  The daughters of Zelophehad, of Manassite family—son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh son of Joseph—came forward. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. (2) They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the chieftains, and the whole assembly, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and they said, (3) “Our father died in the wilderness. He was not one of the factions, Korah’s faction, which banded together against the LORD, but died for his own sin; and he has left no sons. (4) 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!

 

Who was Zelophehad?  Our Rabbis (Chazal) are divided as to the identity of this gentleman.

Some say that he was the man who was caught carrying sticks on Shabbat, which we read about in Parshat Shelach Lecha a few weeks ago (the episode is described in Numbers 15:32-36).  Others state that he was amongst the men who left the encampment (after Gd told the people that they would die in the desert over the forty-year period) and tried to enter the Promised Land before being massacred by the Canaanites.

His daughters are asking a fundamental question, “We are his only heirs and as women, don't we too have the right to inherit our father's land?”

If we refer back to my discussion, one can see that these five brave ladies are asking exactly the same question as Samira Ahmed.  Why should they, as women, be treated any differently to men when it comes to their entitlement to an inheritance that is due to them?

Additionally, their rationale that they too want to inherit the land of Israel (or Canaan as it was known then), demonstrates a view that is in polar opposition to the complaints that Moses' had had to endure for four decades regarding how some people want to return to Egypt. These women want to go to Israel!

Our Rabbis tell us that they came to see Moses and Elazar (Aaron's heir) in the Beit Hamidrash (study house) where Moses had been studying the laws of Yibum (the Levirite marriage where the widow of a childless man is to marry his brother to further the continuation of the family line through their son).  An Aggadaic Compilation from around the 11th Century CE, known as the Yalkut Shimoni provides a fascinating narrative:

The five women said five different things:

1.    The first one (Mahlah) said, “Our father died in the Wilderness.”

2.    The second one (Noah) said, “He was not one of the faction, Korah’s faction, which banded together against the Lord.”

3.    The third one (Hoglah) said, “But he died for his own sin - he was the one who gathered sticks.”

4.    The fourth one (Milcah) said, “And he has left no sons.”

5.    The fifth one (Tirzah) concluded saying, “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!”

The women's petition was carefully thought out.

1.    Mahlah's comment that he died in the Wilderness referred to the fact that he had left Egypt with Gd's initial promise that he would reach his destination in the land 'flowing with milk and honey'.

2.    Noah knew how Moses' felt about those who had rebelled against him (Chazal tells us that this revolt affected Moses' more than any of the others as it had emanated from his own clan) and wanted him to know their father had not been involved, which would help to further their case.

3.    Hoglah said that he had died as a result of his own sin and no-one else's and so he had already been punished without his soul being denied a place in the world to come.

4.    Milcah explained the rationale for their approaching Moses' in the first place and finally,

5.    Tirzah appealed to Moses' to let the women rightfully claim their inheritance.

Moses appreciated their plea and responded by quoting his understanding of the Law, that only sons can inherit from their fathers. They question why this is the case.  He replied, “Because you are women.”

They said (quoting the laws Yibum), “Since the male will inherit, let our mother marry our father's brother so that he may have a son who will inherit the land.”

Moses responded, “We can't enact this since your father already has children!

They said, “What is this that you are doing, Moshe Rabbenu (Moses our teacher!) that you won't let us inherit from our father as he doesn't have sons but, at the same time you won’t will let our mother marry our uncle to be able to perform Yibum? (i.e. you can’t have it both ways)”

At that moment, Moses was summoned by Gd to discuss the matter and the women left.

This discussion is fascinating as it seems so contemporary.  The women who, are highly intelligent, have asked Moses a question.  He responded in the only way he knew how to, by quoting the Torah.  They then tied his argument into a neat little knot.  This sounds awfully familiar!

Gd stepped in to provide the answer in the next few verses:

Numbers 27:5-8

(5) Moses brought their case before the LORD. (6) And the LORD said to Moses, (7) “The plea of Zelophehad’s daughters is just: you should give them a hereditary holding among their father’s kinsmen; transfer their father’s share to them. (8) Further, speak to the Israelite people as follows, “If a man dies without leaving a son, you shall transfer his property to his daughter.””

Gd expanded by detailing the different permutations of what might happen:

Numbers 27:9-11

(9) If he has no daughter, you shall assign his property to his brothers. (10) If he has no brothers, you shall assign his property to his father’s brothers. (11) If his father had no brothers, you shall assign his property to his nearest relative in his own clan, and he shall inherit it.’ This shall be the law of procedure for the Israelites, in accordance with the LORD’s command to Moses.”

All the above took place three millennia before the Suffragette movement. This was three thousand years before women were to enter University and be recognized as equal in status to their male counterparts.

Five brave women who were members of a small, fledgling nation in a vast desert challenged our greatest leader in order to establish their right to be treated equally and have the same inheritance rights as men. Yes, it took Gd to sort out the problem and these days, we don't have that luxury in such an overt way - but it shouldn't have taken this long for mankind to be able to address such a fundamental issue.

That Ms Ahmed had to take recourse to Law, despite the presence of Acts that dated back nearly half a century is extremely disappointing.  I would have thought that ensuring equal pay for all workers should have been ingrained into the fabric of every single country in our contemporary world.  Unfortunately, still today, that is not the case.

Perhaps, if our fellow citizens took more notice of the kind of society envisaged in the Torah, we wouldn't need Acts which simply describe what is patently obvious.

Shabbat Shalom.