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By Rabbi Tuvia Bolton, Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim

This week’s reading contains the strange story of five daughters of Tzlofchad.

Tzlofchad was one of the millions of Jews that died in the desert in the forty years of wandering. What made him worthy of note was that he had no sons to inherit his portion in Israel (given to every male Jew that left Egypt) only five daughters and it was unclear if females could inherit.

They complained bitterly to Moses “Our father died of his own sin…why should we not inherit?!” (27:3,4)” So Moses, who didn’t know, asked G-d and G-d replied. “… if a man has no sons his wealth goes to his daughters (27:8)”

In other words, if it wasn’t for their complaint, some laws (of inheritance) would be ‘missing’ from the Torah!

Does this make sense?

Why didn’t G-d tell Moses the laws of inheritance on Mt Sinai? Why did these women have to demand it? And what did they mean by ‘Our father died of his own sin?

To understand this. here is a story.

Some one hundred years ago in Poland lived a very holy Jew called the Rebbe of Sanz. His erudition and prophetic vision were renowned as was his charity. People in need would often line up at his door and miraculously he would find the funds to cover their needs.

Our story begins as one of his followers, who we will call Yosef, needed five hundred guilders; a virtual fortune to marry off one of his daughters and he had nothing.

Yosef approached the Rebbe, hoping that his financial problems would soon be over and explained his problem. The Rebbe gave him a few coins for travel expenses, wrote an address on a piece of paper and said, “Go here and he will give you what you need…. five hundred guilder and not a penny less.

Poor Yosef was a bit disappointed as he went home, told his wife what happened, packed a suitcase and two days later was knocking at the door of a large two-story house.

The door opened. A well-dressed, religious Jew opened, let him in and invited him to sit down.

“A donation?’ The Jew exclaimed with a smile, “For your daughter’s wedding? Why of course!” He opened his wallet and held out two ten-guilder notes with a smile of contentment as though to say ‘I bet you never dreamed of getting so much, right?’

But Yosef didn’t take the money. He shook his head ‘no’, and solemnly handed him the Rebbe’s paper and explained that the Rebbe of Sanz said you should give me five hundred guilders.

The rich Jew’s mouth fell open in shock! Was this man serious? Why, five hundred guilder is ten years wages!! That’s a fortune of charity!!

‘Just one moment. I have to talk this over with my wife.’ he said and, trying to keep calm, went to call his down-to-earth, no-nonsense, tight-fisted wife.

Moments later he returned with his wife and introduced him to the visitor, certain that she would talk him down or at least make some sort of payment plan.

But when she saw the signature of the Rebbe of Sanz she turned to her husband and told him to give him all that he asked for.

Her husband’s eyes widened like saucers but with no choice he dutifully went to the next room and returned with a large stack of bills… the entire sum.

“Now,” she said after the money had been counted, “I’d like you both to sit down and I will tell you why I am so happy to give this money.”  They sat and she explained.

“When I was a young girl, almost twenty years ago my mother and I went to a wedding of a distant relative. We arrived late but to our surprise the wedding had not yet begun and the room, although filled with people, was unusually somber and quiet.

“In one corner, the bride was seated, weeping on her mother’s shoulder surrounded by her family who were trying to comfort her. We asked what happened and the answer was that the Rabbi has questions.

It seems that parents of the groom didn’t arrive at the wedding. So the Rabbi sent for them but when they weren’t to be found he suspected something was wrong. Perhaps the groom’s mother wasn’t Jewish or they were hiding something else. In any case he refused to begin the marriage ceremony until it was cleared up.

“Someone suggested that the Rebbe of Sanz lived not far away and perhaps he could be convinced to save the day. Maybe he could clear everything up. The Rabbi fully agreed. He stood and announced that if the Sanz’er Rebbe would give the okay he would do the ceremony.

“So they ran to bring him and minutes later he arrived. He was so holy and splendid … like a king! He stood there examining the crowd for a while in silence. He glanced at the groom, then turned to the parents of the bride and asked them to come speak with him in a side room.

“When they were alone, he asked. Please tell me, how many children do you have?

‘Seven’ they answered.

‘Did you have any children that died?”

‘Well’ the mother replied. ‘Yes. One died in childbirth, one passed away from smallpox at one year old and …. ” She became choked up and stopped,

So her husband continued. ‘We had an eight-year-old son called Saul that drowned. It was ten years ago. He was a beautiful boy but wild. I don’t know how he made it to eight years old; he even almost got killed a few times.  Had a big scar on his leg from when he tried to jump from some high fence. His friends came to us one day and said he dived into the river to show off and …. There was a terrible current and ….. well he just never came up. The whole village searched for days.  Must be that his body was washed up far from here and, well maybe the animals in the forest found it. Nothing was ever found, not a trace.”

“The Rebbe of Sanz left the small room, went over to the groom who was sitting alone in the corner reading psalms, took him off to a side, asked him to pull up his pant leg turned around asked for everyone’s attention and announced that ……. Saul was alive!

The father broke out in tears of joy and fell to his knees, the mother almost fainted and everyone was screaming and hugging each other not knowing what to do.

It seems that when he disappeared in the river ten years earlier, he lost consciousness and got washed up on a shore unconscious many miles away.

Days later he woke up, forgot who he was and wandered in the woods for many more days until a couple who had no children of their own. found him and took him home. Then, because he didn’t remember anything, and they didn’t hear anything about a lost boy, they told him he was their son.

Now they didn’t attend the wedding for fear that people might ask them questions they can’t answer. They figured they would just stay home. But in fact, they have no idea who he is and certainly don’t know that the bride is his sister.

“Then the Rebbe held up his hand, everyone fell silent and he announced that anyone who would donate money to pay for the brother and sister so they could find mates and marry would be blessed a hundred-fold.

“Everyone stood in line to give but when it came my mother’s turn the Rebbe refused to take our donation! “The time will come” He said with a smile, ‘That I will send someone to collect it.’

And that is why when I saw the Rebbe’s signature, I knew that that time had come!’

This answers our questions about the daughters of Tzlofchad.

Sometimes things don’t go as easily as we would like them to. But it’s always for the best.

That is the purpose of a Rebbe; to show us how obstacles can be overcome and even transformed to miracles as we saw in our story. And that is what happened to the Five Daughters. They wanted challenges but needed help from above.

The Jews at first refused to enter the Land of Israel; there were too many obstacles! In the desert they had no worries, G-d provided their sustenance and protection but in Israel they would have to work the land and fight enemies ‘on their own’. And they were afraid.

But the daughters of Tzlofchad were different. Indeed, they were a paradigm of devotion to transforming obstacles to the point that they even convinced G-d to clarify the laws of inheritance for them, and add another chapter to the Torah so they could meet the challenges of The Holy Land.

This is what they meant when they said ‘Our father died of his own sin“. Namely; he wasn’t one of those that refused to enter Israel rather he died from a different sin and we want to do his part in meeting the challenges of the land.

Just as the Rebbe in our story clarified who Saul really was and helped him to meet future challenges.

This is very meaningful in our generation which the Lubavitcher Rebbe called “The generation of Moshiach”.

Moshiach will be a great Jewish leader that will inspire all the Jews to ignore and even transform the difficulties of life to joy, meaning, blessing and gratitude to the Creator.

But it will begin with by Moshiach gathering ALL the Jews to ISRAEL the starting point for the transformation of all challenges into blessings.  As the 5 daughters realized.

It all depends on us. We must learn from the daughters of Tzlofchad and do ALL we can to change ourselves and the world around us in a positive way; even one more positive deed, word or thought can bring ….

Moshiach NOW!!

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