OzTorah

Twice in the Torah – including the end of this week’s portion – we meet the five daughters of Tzelofchad.

Their father had died without sons, and the daughters said it wasn’t fair. Why should Tzelofchad’s memory be lost just because he had no male heirs?

It’s one of the great female protests in early Israelite history. There were other female protests over the centuries, such as the question, “Since women are exempt from positive mitzvot linked to a specific time, why should we be denied the right to hear the sound of the shofar on Rosh HaShanah?”

History records that women’s advocacy was often successful. It certainly was with the daughters of Tzelofchad.

We might have thought that the text would simply report their protest as a class action – “This is the story of Tzelofchad’s daughters”. But no: their names are spelled out in detail. Not only was their argument conceded, but we know precisely who they each were.

The reason is bound up with their plea: “Why should the name of our father be eradicated?” Because they were so concerned for their father’s name, they were rewarded by having their own names recorded and honoured.

Q. Does Jewish law say I have to pay taxes?

A. Definitely. This has been affirmed many times by halachic authorities.

Since society provides you with a range of services you have to pay your share of funding them, so long as you or the group of citizens you belong to are not discriminated against by being overcharged.

There were times when regimes imposed oppressive tax rates on Jews, but today if you live in what Rabbi Moshe Feinstein called m’dinat chessed (“a moral regime”), your Jewishness has nothing to do with your responsibility to pay taxes.

If you don’t pay your share, you are stealing from your fellow-citizens: the Shulchan Aruch also says (Choshen Mishpat 369) that failing to pay your taxes to the king (or other ruler) means that you are also stealing from the king. If you think that tax rates (everybody’s) are too high, democratic means of protest are available.

The duty to pay taxes applies not only in relation to the state but within Jewish communal life too. In some places, Jewish communities had legal as well as moral power to tax their members to pay for communal services, but most modern communities rely on voluntary contributions.

One of our problems is people who use the facilities which a synagogue provides without paying a cent towards the cost. I hesitate to say it, but those who take from the synagogue and don’t give are stealing from the community.

Q. Is it a sin to give up work since the Torah says, “Six days shall you work”?

A. What is the status of the words, “Six days shall you work”?

Is this a positive mitzvah in the sense that if you don’t work you deserve to be punished?

If this were the case, then not only would a retiree have a problem, but so would anyone who is out of work. How just would it be for the Torah to penalise a person who is looking for a job but can’t find one?

Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler says in his “Michtav Me’Eliyahu” (using the approach of Moshe Chayyim Luzzatto’s “M’sillat Yesharim”), “Look at the lists of the commandments. Nowhere will you find an actual mitzvah of ‘Six days shall you work'”.

It is not that the Torah has no appreciation of the value of work. But work is not one of the 248 positive mitzvot.

The Torah authorises work but with a limitation, as if it said, “When you work, limit it to six days and leave room for Shabbat”.

One might add that whilst work is important, it is not an end in itself. Work is a means – not an end.

It enables people to support themselves and their family and to enhance the quality of civilisation and society… and is the way of enabling yourself to learn Torah.

Zealots are not easy company. They are too serious, too intense, too single-minded.

You feel they have lost all sense of humour, all capacity for self-deprecation. They are so sure they are right and everyone else is wrong. Whatever the cause they believe in so firmly, you think they might serve it better by being a bit more laid-back.

The first of the Biblical zealots was Pinchas. When he saw something intolerable, he couldn’t stand it. He had to stand up and speak up. He even took the law into his own hands and killed the people responsible for the hateful deed. Whether he became hard to live with as a result of his fanaticism, we cannot be certain.

But one thing we know. God could have rebuked him and removed his priestly status, but He recognised why Pinchas had acted as he did.

Said God, “Pinchas the son of Elazar the son of Aaron the priest has turned My anger away from the children of Israel, in that he was very zealous for My sake” (Num. 25:10-11). Pinchas the priest did not forfeit his priesthood. God understood and forgave him.

What marked Pinchas is what Ignaz Maybaum calls his “messianic impatience”. Maybaum explains, “That is the messianic impatience which is a feature of the Jewish character. The Kingdom of God may come at any moment, and those who appear to be zealots may, if God wills it, become justified as true prophets”.

To be messianically impatient does not necessarily mean storming the heavens and forcing God to send the Mashiach before He is ready. It does mean being the champion of truth, justice, peace and morality and making the world ready for the Messiah.

That was Pinchas: he saw gross immorality in the camp and knew that it would hold back the moment when Israel would become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”.

It would help our age to have a Pinchas or two, not that they should go as far as Pinchas and carry out an act of physical violence, but insisting that there is such a thing as right and wrong and not remaining silent when “each person does that which is right in their own eyes”.

A lengthy passage in the sidra deals with the laws of Shabbat, the festivals and Rosh Chodesh.

All these calendar occasions became beloved companions of the Jewish people as they moved through the year. None was more important than another; all brought richness, excitement and symbolism to Jewish life.

But Sforno points out there must have been some extra special link between the Jewish people and Rosh Chodesh, because the Torah says, “On your new moons…” (Num. 28:11), and the word “your” is not used in relation to the other festivals.

One explanation is that Jewish experience was like the moon – small in size but immense in its contribution to the world; often thought to have waned but always renewing itself; and never completely independent.