Last week my Lego tie clip had the Daughters of Zelphehad on it. As we encountered these women, they were looking to inherit their father’s land. Having no male heirs, Zelophehad, a brave and noble man, his property would have not gone to his girls. They approached Moses and he deemed their cause just, and granted them the rights of inheritance. It was a great moment for early feminism and equality and is only slightly tarnished this week when we read that the right was lessened just a bit, by requiring the women to marry within their clan, so that the property stays there. 

Unfortunately, it may be worse than that. The truth is that female inheritance was widespread in the ancient world. Granting women inheritance rights was not a novel invention. The way it was arranged makes it look like a great step forward and then a small step back, but the reality is that it was only a step back. 

We can decide whether we give Moses and the authors of the Torah a pass. What is more useful to us is the idea of taking away what we once promised. That is also, unfortunately, something that dates to antiquity. The Prophet Micah spoke on this (please allow me my prophet voice):

Ah, those who plan iniquity
And design evil on their beds;
When morning dawns, they do it,
For they have the power.
They covet fields, and seize them;
Houses, and take them away.
They defraud men of their homes,
And people of their land.
(Micah 2:1-2)

Micah is speaking to those who take from others, including those who think: I gave, but I can take it back. Seeing how calculated the theft of the rights given to the Daughters of Zelophehad was, Micah might have railed against that, too. Rights are at the heart of the Torah. Much of its mitzvot are about granting and defending rights – the right to and the right from.

The Torah is often a radically progressive document – at least for its time and sadly occasionally in our time. When the Torah tells us that we shall have one law for stranger and citizen alike, that was a departure from legal codes that penalized non-citizens. When it calls for an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and so on, much of that was in response to punishments that were disproportionate to the crimes for which they were ordered. And often when we are commanded to do things, it is in service of the rights of others. When we are told we “shall not,” it is often so there is something that others can.”

That there are people then, who use the Torah to curtail rights, or who cynically use its words to justify regressive laws and actions, is a tragedy. It is all the more so true when those rights have already been granted. “You shall not subvert the rights of an alien or an orphan” which is about protecting the most vulnerable, those who cannot defend themselves. 

When the people came to the Prophet Samuel, asking for him to crown a king, he warned them: “This will be the practice of the king who will rule over you: He will take your sons and appoint them as his charioteers and riders, and they will serve as outrunners for his chariots….or they will have to plow his fields, reap his harvest, and make his weapons and the equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters…He will seize your choice fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his courtiers…He will take a tenth part of your flocks, and you shall become his slaves.” His fear that powerful people seek to take from others, is no less real today. It is real for those who covet property and money.. And it is true for those who seek power, diminishing the rights of others to elevate their own.

The granting and expansion of rights is a good thing. That women, people of color, those without money or property, can now vote is a boon to our world. That women have autonomy. That all people have the right to attorneys. These all make us better. To take away those rights would be a sin.

The Torah is a guide to moral and just living. It is a document that was at times revolutionary. What it must always be is our inspiration and the wellspring of our care for every person. That is what the Prophets saw us failing to do, taking whatever we wanted, including the rights of others. It is what Rabbi Akiva was thinking of when he declared “love your neighbor as yourself” to be the essence of Torah. And it is what served as a foundation to the Rabbis, who over generations, refined and crafted Judaism as we know it, affected by and responding to, the excesses, and injustices of the people ruling over them. All of that urges us to fight for gaining and keeping rights. All of that echoes the injustice of the Daughters of Zelphehad.

The daughters may not have been the pioneers or the victors that we would like them to have been. But their cause was just and their work for the rights of themselves and others remains valid. It is our duty to champion human and civil rights. And the second part of the story reminds us that our duty continues after those rights are won, because there are always people looking to take them back. So, as Rabbis Lisa Edwards and Jill Berkson Zimmerman remind us “We are the inheritors of their chutzpah and their quest for equal rights.” (“The Torah: A Women’s Commentary”). And may we continue that work, in our own time.