Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 28:52, Women’s Rights

Jeremy Rosen | Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 28:52, Women’s Rights

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- So welcome, everybody, and let’s get going. That was a a little piece of Schubert playing. And although officially our text is going to be chapter 17 this week, I just want to refer a little earlier to what we did last week. And last week, we dealt with a list of the tribes. And all of this was in preparation for the invasion of the land of Canaan. So that this, shall we say, boring list of who was who, which is repeated all the time, is very important in the sequence of the chapters that we are going through. And we noticed, for example, how numbers seem very strange. They’re a guide, but they’re not a literal guide, because every number, every tribal site census ended up with a round number. But also what we mentioned was that there were a couple of women who were mentioned, not enough of them indeed. But for example, there was Jochebed, who was the mother of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

There was Miriam himself. There was Sereh bat Asher, the daughter of Asher. In other words, there were important women, very important women. Even though, of course, there’s no question that then and maybe still now, this is a male-dominated society in most parts of the world, however much we are trying to balance things out here in the west. So this week we are starting with an interesting family, the daughters of Zelophehad. And the issue here, the very important issue, is a tribal one. If tribes are dominated by men and headed by men, when we come to the land of Canaan, we’re going to divide up the territory according to tribes. And if we divide the territory according to tribes, then that’s going to be a totally male-dominated situation. What happens if there is a family in which there are no men, only women? And that is the issue that we are going to deal with today.

So chapter 27, verse 1 starts off like this. “The daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead the son of Machir the son of Manasseh.” So Manasseh of course was one of the original family. And so here we are, and interestingly enough, we are almost several hundred years after the death of Manasseh. Because remember, Manasseh was one of the sons of Joseph. Joseph is down in Egypt. They were in Egypt supposedly for 400 years. But it seems, if you up the numbers, it was nearer to 300 years. But nevertheless, does that mean that each one of these lived for a hundred years? Because we are now at the end of 40 years as we’re about to invade the land of Canaan. But either way, . These are the names of the daughters of Zelophehad. So the daughters need a mention, and they get a mention, and here’s their name. Their names are Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, Tirzah. Some of those names are still very common in Israel and in Jewish families today.

Noah particularly, Tirzah even Milcah . Mahlah, which unfortunately sounds about , something sick, is not that popular. Which is not fair because that’s really, in a sense, the term is somebody who is forgiving and kind and considerate. But anyway, these daughters come and appear before Moses. And the word is . The word , to come close. That is not reflected in most of the translations, whether it’s “forward” or “stood up” or whatever it was. means to come close. It implies a certain familiarity that these daughters, first of all, were not shy in coming forward to push their suit and to make their claim, but also that they had a good relationship and they were familiar and comfortable. In verse 2 it says , “And they stood.”

They stood in front of Moses. And he had Eleazar, who is now the high priest, who has represented the families, and he has succeeded ‘cause Aaron is now dead. They appear before the , the presidents. In the entrance to the communal courthouse, the public arena, to make their presentation. Which means that in those days people could, no matter who they were, come and stand before the authorities and make a claim. And they make this claim. They say, , “Our father died in the wilderness.” So he’s died before this moment. He was not one of those of that community, of that congregation, , who congregated against God, , with the community of Korah. He died for whatever his own sin was, for whatever reason, but not because of them. And he had no sons. It’s very interesting this phrase, “He died for his own sin,” which is another way of saying, “He’s responsible for his life but he didn’t do anything particularly wrong. And if we are punished, we are punished for what we do, not for what we don’t do.”

And so it’s not as though he has any odium, it’s not as though he has a bad reputation. By any means, he has a very good reputation, and he certainly wasn’t a rebel like some of those other people who were killed. So if it would be somebody who had been killed because of a rebellion, you wouldn’t expect anybody to treat their requests favourably. But here in this particular situation, we think it’s only fair. And so they appear. Now it’s interesting, rabbis like to look at this and they like to interpret it. And this is what Midrash is. Midrash is this constant reinterpretation and reevaluation of the original biblical text. And so standing there, they look at this situation and say, “What was his sin?” So , “He died for his own sin,” which is a nice literary way of saying, “He’s responsible for what he did, but not responsible for anybody else in the sense of being guilty.” But they say, they specify here his sin. What was his sin? What possible sin could he have that we think is not so terrible that he should be punished for?

The rabbis say this was the sin of the person who was gathering sticks on Shabbat. And the reason he was gathering sticks on Shabbat was not because he didn’t know the law said you shouldn’t be working on Shabbat, but because he wanted to make a test case to clarify what the law was for breaking Shabbat. And if you broke Shabbat intentionally or unintentionally, in the end he was punished for that. But he was punished, as the rabbis want to say, for trying to do something positive maybe in the wrong way. And certainly, according to Jewish law, you don’t sacrifice yourself to make a point in Jewish law, but this is part of the tradition of Midrash. Either way, in verse 4, “Having said there’s no reason that he should suffer simply because he has daughters and not sons, and therefore we don’t want the name of our family, the name of our father’s family, to disappear with his death.

Whereas if it would be a son, it would be perpetuated through his tribal legacy. Therefore, we as women want the right to have territory in the new land. We want to have a fair deal. We want to live amongst our brothers. We are not rebelling, we don’t want to withdraw. We just want be part and we want our families to continue the tradition.” What did Moses do? In verse 5, it says… That Moses decided to bring their case before God. So clearly, Moses did not know what the law was. He was not automatically in favour of giving them a reply, he had to consult. Which again raises an interesting issue, as often it is said that every law of the Torah was given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Here’s an example of a law, again, that Moses did not have from Sinai, or he forgot, or he misunderstood, but he went back for consultation.

So God replies to Moses in verse 7 with this lovely phrase. “This is what the daughters of Zelophehad have said,” which is another way of saying, “They have spoken well. They have every right. I support them 100%.” So here is God, in a sense, for a change supporting women’s rights. “You must give them an inheritance amongst their brothers of their father.” And that part which goes to your father, which now seems to be dissipating, should go exactly to you. So the case is supported. And not only that, but God turns this now into a general rule. Verse 8. “Speak to the children of Israel. If a man were to die…” So this is inheritance law. “And he has no son…” “You should pass his inheritance to his daughter.” “But if he gas no daughter…” “You should hand the inheritance over to his brothers.” And we have other examples of the responsibility of brothers for keeping the name of a dead brother alive.

The most famous case, of course, is what’s called the Levirate marriage. We came across this where Judah had sons who died and the next son in line had to marry the widow. And the idea of Levirate marriage is that, when a man dies without having a child, then his widow marries a brother and the child from that second marriage carries the name, if you like, and the heritage of the dead brother. So they were very, very keen in those days of keeping this alive. And the whole inheritance situation is a fascinating issue, and it’s an issue that, in many respects, we still grapple with today, technically speaking. And in many families this is the case. The firstborn gets a double portion of the estate. The rest may be divided between the women and the men. But the brother gets this money and in fact the brothers are the inheritors, but coming with it is a certain responsibility for the sisters.

The responsibility is they have to pay for them to get married a dowry, make sure they’re set up properly. But nevertheless, for many of us brought up in a more Western society, this seems quite unacceptable. And yet it still remains in Jewish law. But over time, certainly the mediaeval period, if not before, there was a feeling that this is not fair, and therefore they introduced a law which says that a dying person or somebody still alive can make a donation on the estate to the daughters in advance of death. So it’s really like making a contract beforehand. And there are several terms from this. The gift of somebody who is dying, or the gift of the father. And so this would be a way of getting round the problem of who inherits what. But at this stage, that’s not mentioned anywhere in the Torah. And the verse 11 continues this whole issue and says the following. “And if there are no brothers to the father who died…” “You go to the nearest relative from the family via and he will inherit that property.” “And this will be a law for Israel, a just law…” “As God has commanded.”

So clearly it was something left out originally and now it’s done. And from this we, in a sense, complete the initial preparation for invasion into the land of Israel. But there’s one link missing before they can go, and that is the death of Moses. And don’t worry about the lack of, if you like, chronology here. Verse 12 deals with this. God says to Moses… “Go up this mountain.” Now, is it the mountain of Abarim or is it a mountain which is over there , over there on the East Bank, not on the West Bank? “And you’ll be able to see the land of Canaan , which I’ve given to the children of Israel.” Verse 13. “You may see it…” “And you’ll be gathered to your people.” So this term is a nice way of talking about dying, and it was used, as we mentioned before, only of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Ishmael. So “gathered to your people” has different meanings. On one level, it simply means you’ll go where your forefathers went, you will die. Or everybody before you has died, and now you are going to die.

And I mentioned when we talked earlier about the phrase of death, it said there, talking about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob . Sorry, , “He became a body,” “and he dies, goes down to the god Mot, under the world, the underworld,” , “and then he is gathered to his people.” And the suggestion was, in terms of what Assyria was in those days, that the process of dying was you became a body, a corpse, and that corpse will then decay, and as it decays, it goes down into the ground either to Sheol, the grave, or to Mot. And then when the body is completely removed from anything of flesh and only bones, the bones are then gathered and put in an ossuary, or in a cave, or somewhere like that. And that is what is meant by “gathering to your people.” So it could be a very physical thing, it could be a spiritual thing meaning something where the soul goes and meets with other souls that have passed on.

But anyway, it just says here not this moment, because he hasn’t died yet. He’s just saying, “You are going to die as your brother Aaron died on the mountaintop.” And the reason why you are going to die is in verse 14. “Because you rebelled against me in the wilderness of Zin over the battle of the congregation over water, and you did not sanctify me in their eyes. And these were the rebellious waters of Kadesh in in the wilderness of Zin.” So we are bringing back the reason why Moses was not allowed to go into the land of Canaan, and this was because of what happened there. And if you remember when we discussed it, it wasn’t clear what the rebellion was. Was it the language? Was it his temper? Was it that he and Aaron claimed that they were responsible for producing the water? It’s debated to this very day as to what the real reason was. We just know God thought he rebelled and he wasn’t very happy. Verse 15. So God accepts this, he’s not arguing about it, but he’s now looking to the future.

And he says, “Somebody’s got to carry on after me.” Verse 16. “May God appoint.” “God of the spirits of all human beings…” “Somebody to run the community.” So, “I need you to appoint somebody. I know I’m going to die, but it’s very important to find somebody.” Now, what kind of person does Moses suggests to God that he should look for? So 17. This is a man who should go out to be with them and come. Go out and come in with them. He should be a man of the people. Somebody who can go when things are bad, be there when things are good, but he’s got to be a man of the people. He’s got to be able to relate to them. “And he will take them out and bring them in to the land of Israel. Because if not…” “I don’t want the congregation of God to be like a flock of sheep where there’s no shepherd. Somebody’s got to guide them. You can’t let them go loose without somebody there.”

Which is very important because, as you know, the great Chabad Lubavitch movement did not appoint a successor to Menachem Schneerson, the last of the Lubavitch rabbis. Wasn’t the first one to do. The grandson of the founder of Hasidism, Nachman of Breslov, when he died as a relatively young man, they never appointed a successor but his Hasidim continued to this very day. And Breslov Hasidim used to call them the Toten, the dead Hasidim, because their rabbi was dead. And there was a whole argument, and there is still, was the rabbi right or was the rabbi wrong not to appoint a successor? And actually you can argue that, in one sense, he was right if there was nobody appropriate. What he set up was a system, and a system of almost franchise but headed by a committee in one sense was an improvement and a step forward. And in fact, we have seen how under that system, the Chabad movement has expanded in so many different ways all around the world, that with hindsight it seems that he was right. But in terms of what Moses was saying, he wasn’t right.

Moses left behind text, the Torah. And similarly, the Lubavitch rabbi has left behind all his texts, which his followers treat as Torah to this day. But anyway, this is the request of Moses, and it indicates who he thought should be the leader. And so God says to Moses, , “I want you to take Joshua, the son of Nun.” It doesn’t mean to say he was illegitimate or he wasn’t born to a father, but Nun also can mean , a Hebrew word means somebody significant or something important. Now, we know Joshua has been with Moses right from the very start. When they came out of Egypt and they had to fight against Amalek, it was Joshua who was appointed to lead the army. We also know that Joshua was the assistant to Moses when he went up the mountain to receive the 10 Commandments. And we also know that Joshua was very zealous for Moses, and when he thought that Eldad and Medad, these two people who were prophesying that were in a sense challenging Moses’ authority, he wanted to kill them, and Moses says, “No you can’t.”

So in a sense, Moses also taught him not to be like Pinhas and go and kill, but rather to be more disciplined and considerate. So it says, “Take Joshua , a man who has spirit.” And spirit obviously is the connection between him and God. There is this spiritual relationship. “And you should place your hands upon him.” And this , placing hands, has been, if you like, the way one passes on leadership ever since. Throughout the rabbinic, the post-exile establishment in Babylon, of leadership of what were called the Soferim scribes, who then transformed into the rabbis, leadership was passed on through semikhah, through laying down of hands. And this process of semikhah, of laying on hands, continued throughout, or almost throughout, the Talmudic period. It was almost wiped out by the Romans when they killed the last great man, Baba ben Buta, but before he died he was able to pass on to some of his pupils.

But that semikhah died with the Talmud. It does not exist anymore. And yet within the Orthodox world, when you appoint a rabbi, he is given semikhah. And semikhah is, if you like, given authority. And this is usually granted by whoever that person’s rabbi or was, or the head of the institution in which he studied. And there are different kinds of semikhah. There are minimalist and maximalist . There are that apply to, shall we say, everyday ritual in Jewish law, and then there are that are given for specialties, whether it is contractual or whether it is in some area of specialisation that you need to be a specialist in. Or for example in the judge. And so the main text of the semikhah, which is passed down is this phrase in the middle that goes, “Yoreh, yoreh. Let him teach, let him teach,” “Yadim, yadim. Let him judge, let him judge.”

And some have both, some have only one, and some have what are called , that is qualifications. Like, “I’m giving you this, but I’m not giving him the authority to make laws or to give legal decisions.” And then there are some various units and denominations in the Jewish world that have a different kind of semikhah, it’s rather more a general graduation ceremony. So there are all kinds of and nowadays is like a degree. It depends where the degree comes from. There’s probably a difference or there was a difference once upon a time about a degree from ivory colleges or from Oxbridge. But also you can get a degree by post from somewhere or you can get a degree from the University of Florida in water skiing. I don’t know if that’s true or if that’s just an urban myth. But nevertheless, you need to look at where the semikhah comes from, not either what it appears to be on paper.

So this idea of semikhah comes from Joshua having the hands placed upon him. And then… “You should then stand him in front of the to make sure that he has the relationship with the priesthood.” So he’s going to be the political leader, but then there’s going to be the religious leader, who is going to be . But as Moses, Moses will be the primary, the final resort. “You place him before the command of the community and you will command him. You will instruct him in public and declare what his role is. You’ll read out if you write the constitution and remember that any leader, including a king later on, always had to have the Torah there with him all the time so that he was not beyond the law or above the law.” And in verse 20, “I want you to give, bestow some of your charisma to him…” “So that the children of Israel will listen to him.” “And he will stand in front of Eleazar the priest.”

Now, remember we spoke earlier about the vestments of the priest, of the high priest. And included in the vestments of the high priest, his hat and his clothes and his garments was this breastplate, the choshen . The breastplate which hang in front of him, chain around the top. And it was in a form of a flap, and either in the flap or in the jewels, 12 jewels for 12 tribes in that choshen , was the way of divining, the oracle of divining the will of God when you weren’t certain what to do. And how this worked, we discussed the various options. Did the stones light up? Did they reflect on a piece of paper or something in the middle between the flaps? But this was something which existed during the early period of the Israelites, and it disappeared during the first temple already when at various times the temple was sacked. And there was no choshen in the second temple, so the idea of having the oracle was no longer considered an absolute necessity, and therefore everything fell to the constitution. And so from that moment onwards, Judaism became constitutional in a manner of speaking.

So he will then be the person, it’s not the priest, it’s Joshua who will go and ask what this oracle means and act upon it, because he would use it to decide to go to war or not. This was very important. You had at that stage to get the approval of the Urim and the Thummim to go to war. And Urim and Thummim were supposed to be, if you like, a symbol of supernatural wisdom as well as human wisdom. And given that that became the symbol of Yale University, which has not behaved according to either of those criteria, I think it’s a shame and they should change their motto. Anyway, we now go down to verse 22. “And Moses did as God commanded him.” And this is typical of the narrative of the Torah repeating something. First of all, you give the command, then you carry it out, and then you see that it is fulfilled. “And he took Joshua… stood him in front of Eleazar and the whole community. He put his hands on him and he commanded him, as God told him exactly he had to do. So that now deals with the final stage of historical development in preparation for the last book of the Torah, which we will come to shortly.

And the last book of the Torah, essentially, is a repetition of everything that’s gone on so far since the Exodus, and some final messages before Moses dies and they go into the land of Canaan. But there are still what we would call some loose ends. And in verse 20, chapter 28, we have some loose ends. And what are these loose ends? These loose ends consists of the ritual of the tabernacle, and how the sacrifices for the tabernacle were supposed to be made and have made open for everybody in order to participate as well as just to look at. So we don’t need to go through the different sacrifices for the festivals, but here we have the specific documentation of what should be sacrificed for each festival. And this is the part of the Torah that we read in the synagogue whenever a new moon, Ros Hodes, or a festival, and it mentions of course Shabbat as the primary of all of these. And Shabbat in those day had its sacrifices as well.

So Shabbat, Ros Hodes, and the main festivals that go right through. So I am going to skip down through chapter 28 and through chapter 29 until we get to the end of this list of sacrifices, which if you are fascinated with and if they do interest you, you can always look up in these two chapters here that we’re going through. And so now we come to chapter 30, and chapter 30 is now going to describe what the tribal territory is going to be in the land of Canaan. And I would say in advance, if you look on, if you go onto the internet, whether it’s through Wikipedia or elsewhere, you’ll be able to find diagrams of exactly how the land was divided. And there are lots of inconsistencies. Some tribes seem to have two different locations. Some seem to be moving away from the original designation. But that’s a different area and it’s an area of specialisation. And so if you don’t mind, I’m not going to go to great detail, but we’ll point out by saying we are still in the issue of tribal authority. And to reinforce that authority, unfortunately we have a law which is a problematic one, but was very important in those days to do with vows. And the question is how important is a vow and what are the limitations of a vow?

Because a vow to God normally was to donate something to the temple. And some people as nowadays before they die donate their wealth to a trust or donate their wealth to charity. And the question is therefore, who in the family can commit the family to a vow? We don’t take vows that seriously nowadays, but in those days they did. And of course, as I’ve mentioned before, we are supposed to take a vow when we appear in a court that we’re going to tell the truth. But in fact we don’t and we tell bare-face lies as it suits us, as we see all the time in courts today. So verse 2. God says to the heads of the tribes and saying, "I’m commanding you this new law.” We haven’t mentioned this law before. “When a person makes a vow to God…” So is a vow, is an oath. There are lots of different variations of a and a and an oath. And if you remember, on Yom Kippur, on Kol Nidre night, when we say Kol Nidre, we list all the different kinds of vows that it is possible to make.

All these vows and the different terms, and what is a vow, financial, social, personal, obligatory. If you take it upon yourself to do something, you must do what you say you are going to do. But there’s a way out. A vow sometimes can be annulled nowadays. And so the service on Yom Kippur has a preamble in which you gather three people together to kind of , and you ask that any vows you may have made should be annulled. So you can annul certain types of vows. That doesn’t mean to say you can steal or betray or do it in such a way that you are not committed morally. But here we have this obligation of a . Verse 4. “When a woman makes a vow…” “Makes an obligation to do something while she’s still in her father’s house…” “And the father hears this vow, and her commitment…” “If the father objects for whatever reason…” Sorry, got that wrong. “If the father , to be silent.” “If the father ignores what she said, doesn’t make any objection, then her vow remains in force.” “But if,” in verse 6, , “the father does not agree, he objects beyond on the day when he hears whatever vows she may have made, then God will not think she is bound, he will forgive her and cancel the oath.”

So here you have the first example of where you can cancel an oath. If a child makes a vow, commits you to make a donation to charity or to give away an inheritance or whatever it is, that the father has the right to cancel it. But what happens ? She’s married to somebody. What about her vows or whatever she says then, which she has obliged herself to do? They still remain force, do they not? But in verse 8. “But if the husband hears this and he doesn’t object, then her laws or her commitments remain in place.” But if on the other hand, verse 9, the husband listens and he does object, then he has the right to cancel her vows and whatever she says, and God will forgive her for having the vows cancelled. And similarly, , a widow or a divorcee, if she’s taken any commitment, they stand. They stand that law that remains binding. So what is this?

To some extent it’s dealing with a situation where a woman is not in charge of her own fate. So she is subject to her husband or to her father. And therefore, in that sense, if she’s going to commit the estate to donate her portion or to donate a vast sum of money or to donate something to the temple, in that sense, she has every right to do it, but not if she’s going to be dependent on the father and the husband to pay off her commitments. So because they are in the position of controlling the purse strings, they have the right to say, “I’m not happy about this donation, it will damage the family funds, and I don’t want to even, shall we say, take out another mortgage.” So once again we say . But if she makes a vow while she is in the household of a husband or imposes anything on it and her husband hears this and he objects, then she is forgiven and everything is fine. He annuls this and continues with a clarification of that down to verse 17, where we will stop for today.

Q&A and Comments

Now I will turn to questions. Oh, we’ve got a lot of questions today, so that’s good. So yeah, Rita likes the music.

Q: Shelly, “The daughter’s names are mentioned. Why in some cases are women’s mentioned named and in other cases, like Samson’s mother, they’re referred to as a wife?” A: Excellent question. And normally the answer is given that women are mentioned only when they have a very, very significant role. Because their sole, if you like, way to, how can I say, to remain or the legacy is through what they do. Remember the nurse of Rebecca is mentioned. Very strange. Why mention a nurse? But if they play an important part, they’re mentioned, and if they don’t play an important part, they’re not. The men are mentioned because we are dealing in a tribal male heritage world in which it’s tribes that define the community and also decide property and where that property goes. And it is passed down, as it was originally in the Bible, from tribe to tribe one’s territory. And remember also, at the end of 50 years, whatever was sold went back to the original tribal structure. Of course that couldn’t survive in the diaspora, and it didn’t, but at the time of writing the Bible, it was.

Q: Richard, “Is it the entrance of the tent of meeting outside or inside the tabernacle?” A: That’s a brilliant question, Richard. A brilliant, brilliant question. There is another reference to the role of women, women gathering earlier on at the entrance of the tabernacle. And there it says specifically the entrance, whereas here it’s leaving open. There was an area within the tabernacle itself which was, if you like, a courtyard before it, and the layperson could go there. And there’s also some discussion as to whether there was a difference between the Mishkan, the tabernacle, and the Ohel Moed, the tent of the gathering. ‘Cause if there was a tent of the gathering, that had to be open to everybody. Whereas on the other hand, the Mishkan was limited both to priests and to people who were in a state of purity, of tahara.

Q: Shelly, “Verse 4 talks about the name of the father being lost. Is this similar to the idea of Yibbum?” A: It does come from the same sort of early background of keeping the family name alive.

“Like ideas,” says Romaine, “not everything is written in stone.” You are quite right. Not everything was written in stone. And the question of course indeed was, was the Torah written in stone originally? Because it was only the 10 commandments that seemed to have been written in stone. But anyway.

Q: Shelly, “Why doesn’t God say that the daughters of a man without son can inherit, given inheritance laws, but not say the point the daughters must marry in their tribe and keep the land in their tribe?” A: Well, Shelly, first of all you’re jumping ahead, because we haven’t come to that yet. That’s going to be mentioned later on in a couple of chapters’ time. But basically this was the only inheritance. The only inheritance at that stage was going to be your tribal territory. They were agriculturalists. There’s no industry, there’s no artificial intelligence, so this is talking about inheritance.

Susan, “Remember ‘Downton Abbey,’ the land on the title only went to male descendants?” Yeah, yeah. And that still happens in many parts of the world today. In fact, I would say probably in most parts of the world today.

Q: Marsha says, “When a daughter inherits from a father because there are no sons, what happens when she marries? Does that remain with her or is that her dowry?” A: Well, it’s very interesting. There’s no mention of this in the Torah, but by the time you get to the Talmud, to the Gemara, you have a much more sophisticated and complicated way of dealing with inheritance. So as you know, you could get married without a contract, according to the Bible. But once the rabbis came in, you had to have a ketubah. A ketubah was a marriage document which laid down laws that protected the wife and also protected her money, the money she brought into the marriage. And according to Talmudic law, the husband had the right to use her . In other words, he could benefit, if you like, from the property. So he could take rents, but the property technically remained hers. And the ketubah went beyond that. The ketubah could specify all kinds of financial security for the wife and to preserve her own property, or indeed sometimes to give her rights to her own property, so new property that came in, even during the marriage. So therefore, in a sense, the laws of inheritance that we have today do very much protect the assets of the wife, and she can decide how they’re going to be passed on.

Q: Israel asks, “Since daughters don’t have the right to inherit, Marsha my wife and I have gifted all the children an equal part of our estate that they will receive after we’ve lived 120 years. Do you think that should be changed so that we don’t have to invent a way of getting around and that only the male children inherit?” A: Well, first of all, remember that nowadays the law of the land is the law of the land, and that is going to determine a great deal. But actually I’ve done exactly the same as you have done and I have made it my will that my estate such as it will be, and it won’t be very large, will be divided up amongst my children. And I think that, in my opinion, is the right thing to do to avoid ill feeling.

Q: “What is the concept of going down to Sheol?” A: Richard asks Sheol literally actually, Sheol, is the grave. And there are different gods in the ancient world, and Sheol is one of them. Just as there are in the Greek mythology, the god that transports people across the river, the god of death, they are all different. I’m told there are about seven or eight different gods involved in mythology to do with death. And in the ancient and Middle East, you had this tri-part distinction between the body dying, then going through a stage of decay, and then finally going to its ultimate resting place. So Sheol is a Ugaritic, not only Ugaritic, but also a Canaanite God. Mot is a Canaanite God. They all played a different part in the different stages of death. We don’t have anybody taking people on a boat across the river.

Leadership today based on Torah principles, Romaine. That’s a very interesting issue. I mean, I have to say that I am so disgusted with so much rabbinic legislation and rabbinic decision-making at this moment. The last thing I would want would be a government based on them. On the other hand, if you go back to the original theological model that’s provided in the Gemara, you have two situations. You have the situation of the Sanhedrin, which was the final authority. And the Sanhedrin was mastered by rabbis. They were, if you like, the Supreme Court. But at the same time, you had a whole group of advisors, of specialists, of people who could add their voices and add their opinion, and would be brought into the legislative process. And the role of the Sanhedrin was merely to say whether this law does or does not offend the Torah. Not necessarily which one to take, but which one does not offend the Torah. And so if we are talking about a rabbinical advisory body, I would think that’s probably a very important thing. I think the attempt that was made in the early period of Israel to exclude the rabbinate from political decisions altogether led to the disaster of having political parties. I’m opposed to religion in politics, but I am in favour of a religious point of view being taken into consideration. And to some extent that does exist in Israel. To some extent that does exist. Jewish law does very often influence, but it’s only one in a series of factors. There’s still Ottoman law and still some British mandate law.

Q: “Why is a goat used for sin offering?” A: Shelly, it’s an excellent question that one. Why specifically a goat, sa'ir? Partially because it is the least important of the quadrupeds. Remember the main sacrifice is a quadrupeds, a kosher quadruped, of course. And they have a priority, and goats are, if you like, the bottom of that. And so when it comes to something like that, you don’t want to use necessarily the most magnificent bull. You’d rather use something lower down the line. But also because we know, and the Torah mentions this strange word about “don’t sacrifice to goats, to ” when it’s mentioning idol worship and it’s mentioning superstition. And so clearly, at the time, the sa'ir was a symbol of superstition. And the whole idea of taking a goat and taking it as a symbol of a sin for the community would tie into the earlier knowledge we have of what goats represented in the Canaanite culture.

Carla, thank you very much. Nice to see you back. And may you all have a very successful and happy week ahead of you. Thank you.