Parshat Masei

Tzlafchad’s daughters

In memory of Aharon Hakohen, who loved everyone and pursued peace between people, whose yahrzeit is this Shabbos, the first day of Av.

Issue of August 1, 2008

Part of the story of Tzlafchad’s daughters is crazy. I speak not of their efforts to assure they have a place to live in the impending settling of the land. If their father’s death was not on account of the Korach incident (16:26), and he was otherwise entitled to property, they should certainly inherit it without brothers in the picture.

Rashi (27:3) has three interpretations of what Tzlafchad’s sins may have been: an unknown sin (though not the spies or Korach’s group), the wood gatherer (Bamidbar 15:32-36), or one of the Ma’apilim (14:44-5). Some commentators literally read the conclusion of 27:3, “In his sin he died and he did not have sons,” to mean his sin was somehow related to his not having sons.

Whatever it was, after they are granted his entitled inheritance, the rest of the story is odd. People from their tribe complain that once the daughters marry whomever they want, their property, as per Biblical law, would transfer to the hands of their husbands, potentially causing legitimately owned Tribe-of-Menashe to “fall into” the hands of a different tribe, depending on the tribes of those the five sisters would marry.

What happens next is one of the rare instances when God actually limits the scope of potential shidduchim: “The daughters of Tzlafchad will marry the best prospects in their eyes. However, they must marry within the tribe of their father” (36:6) to keep the property within the tribe

This limiting rule was repealed shortly thereafter on the 15th of Av, as it was only meant to be exercised in that one generation. (Talmud Taanit 30b) Yet the question is still puzzling: what are we to take from this prescribed method of matchmaking? Due to a somewhat internal concern that the daughters of Tzlafchad might find suitable husbands from other tribes, they ultimately married their cousins (36:12).

There is no word on how these marriages played out, and there is no given reason to suspect that this compromise, needing to look within a limited scope of potential mates, posed too much of a challenge to Tzlafchad’s daughters. To be fair, potential suitors may have been attracted to the inheritance they knew came with the marriage, but the “Tzlafchad Girls” ultimately decided whether to agree to marry.

Limited to their own tribe, on the one hand, it is possible their dreams of finding “true love” may have been shattered forever. On the other hand, it also meant they couldn’t go out on thousands of dates until lightning struck. Somehow they managed to bend a little, to look at things from a different perspective and see that a marriage to (in their case) first, second or third cousins wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

It probably helped that they grew up with and knew their cousins, because they had ample opportunity to meet in normal, non pressure-filled settings and establish a relationship that looked beyond petty turn-offs. Maybe they also knew the ingredients to making a marriage work.

Bereishit Rabba 68:4 tells a tale of shidduchim. A woman came to Rabbi Yosi and said, “God created the world in only six days. How has God kept Himself occupied since then?” He answered, “He is matching men and women for marriage.” The woman scoffed, “Matching people? That is simple! I can match people.” She went and randomly paired 1,000 male servants with 1,000 female servants. In the morning, they came back with broken bones, busted eyes and other various injuries because they couldn’t get along. The woman returned to Rabbi Yosi and declared, “There is none like your God!” And he equated matching people for marriage to be as great a difficulty as altering nature to split the sea.

The midrash concludes bringing two examples of how some have to go seek a partner, while others have the partner come to them. Yaakov needed to go to Charan to find his wives. Yitzchak waited in the Negev for Rivka to come. (Obviously, Rivka traveled and Leah and Rachel waited.)

There is no written rule for men or women of who will seek and who will be sought after in our day and age. The Talmud (Yevamot 65b, and Rashi Shabbat 111a) says “It is the way of man to pursue the woman,” but we’ve all heard stories of women who knew what they wanted in sending more than subtle hints to the man who just “needed a little push.”

No one need compromise when it comes to shidduchim. But perhaps a little bending and an open-minded approach can help those who are struggling to focus on real priorities and not be so picky. To illustrate, I know people who have opted out of a second or third date for the silliest of reasons (“he didn’t call me between dates, even though he was studying for the Bar”), even though there was a mutual respect for each other (as opposed to a one-direction dislike as is more often the case).

If the strong willed and strong minded daughters of Tzlafchad can find mates and be happy with a limited “list” of potential mates, can’t we do the same?