top
logo

This week's services:     Friday evening @ 7:30PM  -  Saturday morning @ 9:00AM  -  Slichot: Sunday @ 1:00AM (le'chaim @ 12:30AM)

Photo Gallery


The Daughters of Tselafchad PDF Print E-mail
Written by Yitschak Meir Kagan   
Tuesday, 29 June 2010 17:00
The Torah relates at length in the Parshah of Pinchas how the five daughters of Tselafchad (an Israelite who had died in the desert) saw that they would not receive a portion of the Holy Land according to the way the Torah-law then stood.  In distress, they entreated Moses for an inheritance in Israel.  Unable to answer them, Moses presented their case to G-d, and the Almighty then gave the law enabling the sisters to receive their rightful share of the Land.

Why did G-d wait for complaints to arise before teaching the law in this case?  The law of inheritance affecting Tselafchad's daughters could have been taught to Moses on Mount Sinai together with the rest of the Torah.

But the sequence was deliberate.  Until the daughters of Tselafchad came forward, G-d did not alter the "status quo"; He did not remove the seemingly "impossible" obstacle to the sisters receiving a portion of the Holy Land.  But when the Almighty saw, by the actions of the five sisters, that Jewish women sincerely and truly desired an inheritance in the Holy Land, then -- He wrote a special chapter in the Torah through which Divine power was granted from that time on (and forever) enabling them to come to the "true peace and inheritance" of our Torah and our Land.

The question is often raised:  If G-d wants us to fulfill His Torah and its precepts, why is the path to fulfillment obstructed by so many hindrances and difficulties?  How is it even possible to be an observant Jew in today's environment?

The Almighty demands of us that we be a "Holy Nation," that we observe the Shabbat, eat Kosher and, in general, conduct our lives according to the guidelines of the Code of Torah Law.  Yet, at the same time, G-d created and organized the universe in such a way that compels us to devote much of our day to preoccupation with material things.  We must work for a living; we must sow in order to reap.  As a result, the man finds it extremely difficult to find free time to study Torah properly; the married woman feels she does not have enough time to devote to bringing up her children in the ways of the Torah; the single girl feels she cannot adequately prepare herself for the momentous task that lies ahead of establishing a Jewish home.

To these entreaties for help, these bitter complaints that "we are excluded from taking our rightful share of our Torah inheritance," G-d responds as He did to Tselafchad's daughters.  For the Almighty desires that Torah and its precepts should be precious and dear to the individual, and when one cries out with an anguished heart that he wants to fulfill G-d's laws -- then G-d changes the existing difficulties, He "changes the world," enabling the person to participate in that precept from which he previously felt excluded due to "impossible" hindrances.
 

Polls

What do you think of the Photo Gallery
 

Kiddush Club

Date: Sep 9 '10
Sponsor: Joan Melnick
In honour of mother Lina Shanfield
 
Date: Sep 18 '10
Sponsor: Rega Novak
In honour of Harold Eisenberg, my dear friend, who used to sponsor this Yom Kippur break-fast kiddush
 
Date: Sep 18 '10
Sponsor: Rachel Eisenberg
In honour of my late husband, Harold Eisenberg, and the Yom Kippur Break-Fast Kiddush that he traditionally sponsored
 
Date: Sep 18 '10
Sponsor: Jack Eisenberg
To help keep the tradition of my family's sponsorship of the Yom Kippur Break-Fast kiddush alive
 
Date: Feb 12 '11
Sponsor: Rega Novak
Commemorating the yahrzeit of my late husband, Morris (Moshe) Novak
 
Date: Dec 31 '19
Sponsor: Volf Leshchynsky & Ninel Nyestyerova
Date and Reason TBD
 

Upcoming Events

Use the Kiddush Club Request Form (see menu on far left of screen) to publicize your upcoming simcha or yahrzeit by sponsoring a Shabbat kiddush.

bottom

Copyright © 2010 Congregation Shaarey Zedek Windsor. All Rights Reserved.