Reader Response: Reflections on the Suffering of Rayna Batya and the Success of the Daughters of Zelophehad

Reader Response: REFLECTIONS ON THE SUFFERING OF RAYNA BATYA ANDTHESUCCESSOF THE DAUGHTERS OF ZELOPHEHAD* Brenda Socachevsky Bacon Upon reading the article by Don Seeman and Rebecca Kobrin in the last issue of Nashim,1 on the gendered aspects of R. Baruch Halevy Epstein's monumental autobiographical work, Mekor Barukh, I was reminded of a passage from another of Epstein's works, his now-classic compilation and commentary on the Pentateuch, Torah temimah. In the second part of the article, Seeman and Kobrin describe how Epstein, during his conversations with his aunt, Rayna Batya, when he was a young student in her husband's yeshiva, became aware of the pain with which she experienced the lowly status of women in Judaism. It became apparent to me that these early conversations must have influenced Epstein's commentary on the claim of the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27:1. These two disparate stories about women who lived three thousand years apart have one element in common: the sense of injustice that their main characters experienced as women. Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah, the daughters of Zelophehad, complained that their family had been disenfranchised by the division of the land of Israel among men only and demanded that they inherit the landholding designated for their father, who had no son. The learned Rayna Batya, granddaughter of R. Hayyim of Volozhin, who founded the famous Lithuanian yeshiva of Volozhin, and wife of the "Netziv," Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, who headed the yeshiva in the latter half of the nineteenth century, complained of: the pain of the bitter fate and narrow portion of women in this life, because the fulfillment of positive, time-bound commandments ... had been deprived them. ... Even more than this was she disturbed and Nashim:A Journal ofJewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues, no. 3. © 2000249 Brenda Socachevsky Bacon pained by the desecration of women's honor, and by their lowly position , inasmuch as it is forbidden to teach them Torah. (Mekor Barukh, p. 1950) In Torah temimah, R. Epstein cites the midrash that explains the theological basis for the demand of Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah: "Then drew near the daughters of Zelophehad" [Num. 27:1]: When the daughters of Zelophehad heard that the Land was about to be divided among the tribes - but only for males, not for females - they gathered to take counsel. They said that the mercy of flesh and blood is not like the mercy of God. Flesh and blood is apt to be more merciful to males than to females. But He who spoke and the world came into being is different: His mercy is for males and females; His mercy is for all, as it is written, "The Lord is good for all and His mercy is over all His works" [Ps. 145:9]. (Sifrei, 133) The injustice that the women experienced is not part of God's plan, for God has mercy over all His creatures. The injustice was man-made, the result of the "solidarity of men against women."2 In effect, the decisionmakers , Moses, Eleazar and the chieftains, were not acting according to the command ofimitatio dei3 in their distribution ofthe land. In his commentary, R. Baruch Epstein asks the following seemingly obvious question: It is not explained from where [the daughters of Zelophehad] learned that flesh and blood are apt to have mercy more for males rather than for females, and what the reason is for this state of affairs. One might think that the daughters of Zelophehad had learned this by their observation of the way of the world. R. Epstein answers his own question, however, by looking at traditional Jewish sources: Perhaps it is for the reason given in Horayot 13b, that a man has precedence over a woman in keeping [him] alive [that is, in saving them when they are in danger], because the man is more holy in that he is 250 Reflections on the Suffering ofRayna Batya obligated to perform all the commandments, and also because of the additional merit that men have in settling the world. As it is written in Baba batra 16b, "Happy is he whose children are male...