Over the weekend, I went to see the new exhibit at the Portrait Gallery about the life of Frederick Douglass. It’s a great exhibit, with portraits not just of Douglass (though there are several of these taken throughout his life) but also of many activists who were his contemporaries, or who lived after him, but cited his life as an inspiration for their work. One of the remarkable qualities that all of these activists had in common is that they had the courage — and the vision — to work for a world they had never seen before, one characterized by what we would now call racial justice and gender equity. We still have a long way to go to build the kind of society that they envisioned, but for all that our country became more democratic as a result of their work, we owe them a great deal.
And I wondered as I looked into their determined faces: how did they do it?
The midrashic tradition wonders something similar, about five characters we meet in this week’s Torah portion (Pinchas): Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah — the daughters of Zelophehad. When the daughters were born, women in Ancient Israelite society did not have the right to inherit property. In Numbers 27, they approach Moses to protest this injustice. Moses is unsure how to respond, and so he asks God, who replies:
“The plea of the daughters of Zelophehad is just … pass their father’s [land] onto them.” (Numbers 27:7)
In its typical laconic style, the Torah does not offer us much information about the daughters’ motivation, nor what gave them the courage to challenge the status quo. (The daughters had lived through a number of recent events in which people who challenged authority were punished, and sometimes killed… a possibility Frederick Douglass and his contemporaries also had to take seriously).
And so the midrash works to fill in the gaps, imagining the daughters having a conversation: “One (daughter) said the the other: God’s compassion is not like that of [human beings]. [People] have more compassion for men than for women — but [God’s] compassion extends to all [equally].” (Sifrei Bamidbar 133)
Whether or not one believes in God, the principle that all human beings are equally important and equally deserving of a good and fulfilling life is a central ethical tenant of Jewish tradition. Jewish tradition teaches us — as so many people who have worked for justice throughout history have known in their bones — that a better world is possible, and we should be guided, not by what we’ve seen before or what we think is feasible, but by what we know is just. This week, may we dare to imagine a world more compassionate and just than anything we have yet experienced — and may we be inspired to work for it, in the footsteps of those who came before us.
Shabbat Shalom!
