Of children who merit when fathers do not

Before Parshat Pinchas buries itself in the sacrificial order for each holiday (what becomes the Maftir reading for those days), we hear the story of Tzlafchad’s daughters. Without rehashing old ideas that have been addressed in this space before, suffice it to say Tzlafchad’s personal story is unclear.

His daughters claim that “he was not part of the Korach group.” Of all things to say, isn’t that obvious? The worst offenders in the wilderness were from the tribes of Reuven (Datan and Aviram crowd) and Shimon (Zimri crowd), as well as the followers of Korach, who may have been from different tribes (though this is not delineated) or from the greater family of Yitzhar, Korach’s father — in other words, frustrated Levites.

It is these episodes that provoked the Rabbis to proclaim, “Oy larasha oy lishcheino” (woe is to the wicked one and woe is to his neighbor). (Bamidbar Rabba 18:5) But Tzlafchad was from the tribe of Menashe, safely ensconced between Ephraim and Binyamin, somewhat away from the revolutionaries. Moreover, at the beginning of the chapter preceding the Tzlafchad tale, we are given a rundown of the major families of every tribe and a summary of who was part of the Korach group (26:9-11) as well as an out-of-place shout-out to Tzlafchad and his daughters when the family of Chefer, Tzlafchad’s father, is mentioned (26:32-34). There is no correlation and no connection, so why mention it?

The Talmud (Baba Batra 118b) notes that the terminology utilized by Tzlafchad’s daughters actually refers to three groups — the “eidah” refers to the spies, “who protested against G-d” refers to the complainers of the Korach story, and “the Korach group is self-explanatory” (those who challenged Moshe). The Talmud notes that these groups all lost their merits to owning property in the land, which is why the daughters wanted to rule out any argument that their family was undeserving.

Which is fine — things work out relatively well for Tzlafchad’s daughters — despite their ending up having a limited pool of potential suitors. (See Bamidbar 36)