Unscrolled: Pinchas: Releasing the Bound

In Parashat Pinchas, the orphaned daughters of Zelophehad approach Moses at the tent of meeting, distressed that they will be excluded from inheriting a portion of the land of Canaan on account of their sex. Moses takes their case to God who rules that the daughters may inherit. He then issues a decree changing the Israelite laws of inheritance on the basis of the daughters’ claim. “Speak to the Israelite people as follows: ‘If a man dies without leaving a son, you shall transfer his property to his daughter” (Numbers 27:8).

This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen God amend the Law based on the unique circumstances of a claimant. In Parashat Behaalotcha, when a number of men approach Moses concerned that ritual impurity will prevent them from offering the Pesach sacrifice, God amends the laws of Pesach. From there on out, those who are ritually unclean on Pesach or who are away on a long journey will have a second chance to sacrifice their offering on “Pesach Sheni,” or Second Pesach, a month later.

The Torah is a blend of story and law, and the way in which the two are interwoven has profound implications for our understanding of both. It would have been easy enough for the Torah to present God’s Law as an unchanging edifice, gathering its many statutes together in one section and excluding scenes of arbitration and legislation.

The Torah is a blend of story and law, and the way in which the two are interwoven has profound implications for our understanding of both.

Instead, the Torah presents Law as process, teaching us that even divine statutes must sometimes change to meet the needs of the moment.

This alone is not a terribly controversial statement. Contrary to popular belief, the denominational divide in Judaism is not about whether the Law can be changed, but rather about how, when, and for whom.

On these questions, the two above stories provide some guidance.

In both cases, the claimants are asking to be included. Their petitions for change are not challenges to the authority of God or Moses. Just the opposite: the daughters are eager to settle the promised land according to God’s will. The men are eager to remember the Exodus as commanded. Ironically, they both find themselves in the predicament of being prevented from fulfilling the Torah by the Torah itself. Their hands are tied, so to speak.

In the blessings recited by observant Jews each morning, we thank the God who “releases the bound” (“Matir Asurim”). Vocalized differently, this can be read as “Matir Isurim,” the God who permits the forbidden. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a false Jewish Messiah in Poland named Jacob Frank built a following around the radical implications of this pun. The Frankists believed that the highest Jewish value was to be found in the active transgression of the Law. Pork-eating, Shabbat bonfires, Yom Kippur feasting, and ritual orgies ensued.

Those who are more circumspect about altering the Law seem to fear that any small change will lead to Frankist mayhem, forgetting that Frank’s holy pun was also taken up by the brilliant Hassidic master, Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, who believed that students of Torah are emboldened by God to overturn prohibitions through novel readings of the text, going so far as to suggest that insects could someday be kosher to eat. To illustrate his point, he recalls how the sages wrote down the Talmud in order to save it from being forgotten, abrogating a prohibition against writing down the oral law.

Unlike Frank, however, Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen was a pious, Torah-observing Jew. No ritual orgies. No Shabbat bonfires. No insects in the cholent.

This is because Rabbi Tzadok (along with the daughters of Zelophehad) didn’t see the overturning of prohibitions as a virtue in and of itself, but rather as a means to end – abrogation of Torah for the sake of Torah.

Perhaps, then, “Matir Asurim” and “Matir Isurim” are not two alternative readings as Frank believed, but are rather two simultaneous readings, each deriving its force from the other, and lacking coherency without its counterpart.

Occasionally the Law will wind its way around us like a chain – keeping us from our sacred inheritance, barring us from holy participation, distancing us from God, and locking the gates of the palace of Torah. When this happens, we are permitted (and perhaps even obligated) to act as Moses did before the daughters of Zelophehad, permitting the forbidden in order to release the bound.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.