Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Torah portion of Pinchas is telling.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Us a story about the family of a man called Slafkad.
He was traveling from Egypt and he was traveling through the desert for almost the entirety of the 40 years. And then he passed away, like all the Jews of that generation.
And he only had daughters. He didn't have any sons.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: According to how God instructed Moishe to.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Divide up the land, the land of.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Israel, among the tribes, each family would get a lot.
And each family was determined by the head of the household who was a male.
So the family of Tzlaf had not end up getting any land.
Now, these daughters were probably either already married at the time or would get married eventually. So they would not be homeless, but their family would not have their family estate.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So they came to Moishe Rabbein, to Moses with a complaint.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Now, generally just for us to understand, according to the Jewish law as it.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Was at that moment at least, all.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: The land portions and inheritance also would be transferred only through the male side.
Sons would be getting their parents inheritance and daughters would not. Why is that? It's not because Torah is chauvinistic and it's standing against women. It's not because the Torah is against women. It is simply because each tribe had.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Its own section of the land.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: It was like a state.
Today we have the United States of America. It's not a new concept. In Israel, the Jewish state, in times of the Temple, and before the Temple, they were United States of Israel. There were 12 states. Each tribe was a state by itself. It had its own prince, its own head of the tribe.
And they had a very loose federal government that would unite all of the 12 states.
There was a system of judges that would rule on top of these 12 states. But otherwise there was much more independence for each state than even we have.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Now in the US So each family.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Would belong to a state.
Each family would belong to a tribe. You see, today I move from New York to Baltimore.
I used to live in the state of New York. Now I live in the state of Maryland.
And there's nothing attaching me to New York anymore. I said, goodbye, your taxes are too high and you have too much crime. Here in Baltimore county is much better. And that's where I'm settling. I'm severing my ties with that state. I'm now in a new state. I'm a citizen of a new state.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: It didn't work like this.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: In the land of Israel, a person live in a state because that's where his family estate would be.
So now, if there are two people who are getting married, if they're from two different tribes, what is going to happen?
A person from this tribe is going to have an estate in a different state.
Where would they live? The land would be sitting empty, or they would have two homes, or. And then their kids get married. It's going to be four homes, and then their kids get married. It will create a whole mess.
You cannot do it like this.
So this is why there was a law that each family has only one estate. And this goes according to the father.
So it was all good and fine. But these daughters of Tzlafkad ended up being without their family lot.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: They were very upset.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Now again, they would not be homeless because they would be able to live wherever their husbands or their other family members live. But they wanted to have their own family land. They come to Moshe, they come to Moses.
What does Moses say? Moses say, one second, I need to ask the higher ups, who are the higher ups? Moses has only one higher up God.
He confers with the higher authority. And the higher authority says, they're actually right.
Daughters in this case should inherit the land of their father.
So that means that even though Slavchad has only daughters, it's going to be a portion of land that is going to be called Tzlavkad's family. And they're going to have their own estate.
Now how it's going to happen with their marriage? Actually, it says that there was a promise that was taken from them to marry only into their own state, only into their own tribe, because otherwise it would create a big mess.
So they had to marry only into their own tribe.
So now we understand what happened with.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: The daughters of Slavchan. I want to ask you a question.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: If God wanted the law to be that women should also inherit, why did he have to make a region to the law that only men inherit?
And then Slavchat had to have daughters who would not be happy with the law. And they would come complaining to Moses.
And Moses had to go back to God. God said, oh yeah, actually I changed my mind. God's supposed to know everything. God knows what's going to be. God knows that the daughters of Slavchat would not be happy and would come complaining. So make a law like this already from the beginning. Why did God have to make this whole complicated plot?
So this is the story. Who was this guy Slavchad, who was.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: The father of these daughters?
[00:05:48] Speaker A: We see a very interesting description of him when his daughters come to Moesha To Moses complaining, they present the whole story. What do they say? Our father died in the desert and he died from his own sin.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: That's a weird description.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Why do they need to tell Moses that he died from a sin and from his own sin? And what sin was it?
What are they talking about?
[00:06:16] Speaker B: So here it is.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Here's the background story.
We all know that just before that, we read in the Torah about the rebellion of Korach.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Korach was a man from the tribe.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Of Levi who started a revolution against Moses, against Moshe. He went up against him. He wanted to depose him. And he had a whole army of 250 people who were supporting him. And they wanted to make a new rule.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: And what happened was that a miracle.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Happened and the earth has opened up. And all of these people died. They got swallowed up by the earth.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: And the daughters of Slavchad wanted to.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Impress that their father was not one of these people.
He died by his own sin, not Korah's sin. That's what they were implying, that Moishe should not think that. That he died because he was part of the rebellion.
This rebellion just happened. People come to Moshe saying, oh, our father died. Moshe's like, whoa, one second. Which list was he on? Are you coming here to me now and complaining that your father died because your father rebelled against God?
So just to preempt such a thought, they say that our father died with his own sin, not sin of Korach.
Okay, so far so good. But my ask, what was this sin? If that's the case, what was the sin? I want to know. Well, check the New York Times headlines or cnn. It's going to say everything.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: When Moishe Rabbeinu, when Moses told the Jews that they will be stuck in the desert for 40 years, what happened?
There were people who said, no, we are still going to go to Israel.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: There was a story of Miraglim, of.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: The spies that went ahead of the Jews to scout the land of Israel.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: And when they came back, they said.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: That land of Israel is bad and.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: We won't be able to conquer it. And Jews started crying to Moshe, we.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Don'T want to go there. We want to stay in the desert.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: And Moshe got upset at them. And then God said, you know what? They want to stay in the desert. They will stay in the desert. Only their kids will come to the land of Israel. And they are going to be now.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Wandering for 40 years in the desert.
There was a group of people who got very upset, and they realized that they messed up and they said, we.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Are going to go now, conquer the land of Israel. Still Moishe was telling them, don't go now. The road is closed.
God is telling you now to stay for 40 years in the desert. But they realized that they made a mistake. And they said, we're gonna fix it by still going to Israel.
Against Moses's wishes. They were thinking that maybe God is just testing them. How strong do they go? Do they want to go to Israel or something?
[00:09:12] Speaker B: You know what happened? And they made a whole journey to Israel, and they were killed by the nations, by their tribes, the non Jewish tribes that were living there.
They were all murdered.
And Slavchad was among them.
So he was one of the people who died with his own sin, not sin of Korach. He died because he wanted to go to the land of Israel.
So now we understand the whole backstory, and we understand why the events had to happen this way.
Why did Slavchad die?
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Tlavkhad died because he wanted to go.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: To Israel because of his passion for.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: The land of Israel.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: He didn't get there. He died.
Now his daughters in the next generation are coming up, and they're saying, we want to have our portion in the land of Israel. We are not supposed to get a portion. We want to have it. And Moisha speaks to God, says, okay, fine, you will have it. You see a very powerful scene over here. If you really work on something and.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: You put yourself entirely to it, you know what?
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Sometimes you will not get it, but your children will.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: The daughters of Slavchat, they had their father's passion for the land of Israel. They had their passion, they had their father's love for the land of Israel. They inherited it from him. That's how he raised them.
So now they're not fighting for their.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Own piece of land because they wanted.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Just to have some real estate. They would have had their husband's real estate. That wasn't the issue.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: The issue is they wanted to have their family estate. They wanted to have their family name on a piece of land. Why?
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Because of their passion for Israel, because of their love for this land.
They had to change the rules that to, if you could say it this way, force God's hand to change the.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Rules because of their love for Israel.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: And God purposely, obviously orchestrated this way to show Tuslavkhad, who was looking at his daughters from up there, and to tell him, you see, you wanted to go to the land of Israel.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: You didn't get there.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Why? Because you went there. When Moisha told you not to go.
It was your own sin.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: It's fine.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: But we see that your daughters were able to accomplish something that you weren't able to accomplish.
You went to fight for the land of Israel when God told you not to.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: And obviously you perished.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Your ideals were correct, your actions were wrong, but your goals were noble.
Your daughters are accomplishing what you wanted the right way.
They went to Moshe Rabbeinu to complain. They went to God to complain.
And now Moshe Rabbeinu was able to have God change his mind.
And they accomplished what their father didn't.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: So God wanted to demonstrate that first.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Of all, if you really, really desire.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Something, you might not get there, but your children will. That's number one. Number two, if you are doing it.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: If you have very noble causes, but you're doing it the wrong way, you won't get it. But then your children, when they are fighting for it the right way, they'll get there.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: And I'll tell you a story.
Rabbi Kaplan, who is the senior chabad rabbi here, he had a grandfather who lived in Belarusia somewhere. It was still in the Tsar's times.
And at one point he decided to make aliyah to go to Israel.
And he made all the plans. And he sold his estate wherever he lived over there, as he was traveling, he was in some little Jewish tettle in the area of Romania. He was traveling. He was going to the Black Sea.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: And from the Black Sea, he would.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Take a ship to Israel. That was the standard route.
He was moving south.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: And he was somewhere near, I think today's Maldavia.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Back then, it was Romania somewhere over there.
And in the shtetl in this Jewish town, he's going in the morning to mikvah as a Hasidic customers.
And, you know, all men, according to Khazid custom, just go to mikvah. And in this mikvah, there's their town, meshuguna.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: You know, every town had a meshuguna. Every town had some crazy guy who was just a piece of furniture. Everybody knew him crazy. But sometimes these crazy guys, they were crazy. But they were not just crazy sometimes. And I met it also. I met crazy people who are really crazy. They were like.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: I'm sure they could be, you know.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Diagnosed medically with something. But together with that, they would tell people their future, or they would tell what would happen, or they would tell. They would look at the person, say.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Something that he has done in the past or something like that. And I've seen it. I've seen people like this.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: They're usually crazy.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Normal people don't do that.
So this guy that he meets in Mikvah and no other places, he meets him and he says, oh, what are you doing here?
[00:14:12] Speaker A: There's a new face in town in this small shtetl. Everybody knows everyone. A new Jew here says, who are you?
[00:14:18] Speaker B: He says, I'm traveling from Belarusia and I'm on my way to Israel. This guy looks at me and says, you won't get to Israel, but your children will, and walks away. That's it.
There was a calamity after calamity and he never ended up going to Israel. Never.
Every one of his children, which is Rabbi Kaplan's father, one of them went to Israel, end up in Israel.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: So if you work on something very.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Very hard, you might not get it, but your children will. You just have to make sure to work hard on it.
