The Names Everyone Should Know: Mitzi’s Bat Mitzvah Shiur
Mitzi and her parents on the day she celebrated becoming Bat Mitzvah.
27 July 2024 Parshat Pinchas
In the beginning, when Rabbi Ariel and I started learning together we didn’t know when I’d be celebrating my bat mitzvah. That also means we didn’t know what the Torah portion for this week would be. As I started learning Torah stories it was empowering to think of our ancestors telling these stories and writing them down because they imagined that someday there would be someone like me to read them. Now, I'm sure they didn’t exactly imagine me when recording these tales. I mean, how could they. But they had to have imagined that someday someone would read them.
Rabbi Ariel had me look at art, interpreting each story we studied together, but after a while we started to only read the text from the Torah because my interests were more focused on cooking. The fifth story we studied really grabbed my attention because it’s about five women: Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirza changing history, and Judaism, for the better. I wouldn’t say that learning about them created some deep spiritual connection to my ancestors, but it did make me think about things in new ways.
Months later, my mom figured out when the best day would be for us to celebrate, not paying attention to what the Torah portion would be, and it turns out this is the week of that same story, so here it is.
At the beginning of Parshat Pinchas there are many men and they all have sons and their sons have sons. The first men named in this Torah portion had all been part of the community that escaped Egypt, and all of their sons and sons’ sons were born in the desert wilderness. All of them except Zelophechad who had no sons. Zelophechad only had daughters: Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirza.
After listing all of these men, and mentioning these five daughters, the Torah portion goes on to have God tell Moses that the leaders of each clan or ancestral tribe get an allotment of the land. The bigger the clan, the more land they get. But all of the leaders, and all of the people the land is apportioned to are men. gross.
Now, In the midst of learning about all of the men, we suddenly get a mention of Moses’s mother Jocheved and his sister Miriam. By name. In the same verse, we also meet his brother Aaron, his father Amram, and his grandfather Levi.
This is really important because back when this story took place and later, when it was written down, women weren’t highly esteemed, so mentioning jocheved and miriam for seemingly no reason, especially along with such important men, is practically unheard of.
In this Torah portion, we don’t get their whole story, just this one mention. But we did get their whole story many chapters ago and during Passover - the holiday when we remember the Jewish exodus from Egypt. I think we need to remember their story for a minute because whoever wrote down the story of Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirza put their names here for a reason.
Jocheved, pregnant with the baby who will be Moses, has an older daughter named Miriam. Two women, Shifra and Puah, midwives, get called to the palace. Now, before we continue, I just want to say that my Hebrew name is Shirifa, so do with that what you will. Anyway, Pharaoh had previously ordered them to kill every Jewish baby boy, but they didn’t do it, saying something along the lines of jewish women give birth too fast. Pharaoh is not pleased with this so he says that everyone must throw all Jewish boys into the Nile River to die.
Jocheved and Miriam somehow hear about this conversation and it seems like Pharaoh’s daughter, Batya, has also heard of it because what happens next really makes it seem like the three of them are working together.
Something cool I learned is that some rabbis even say Shifra and Puah and Jocheved and Miriam are the same people - Jocheved being Shifra and Miriam being Puah.
Jocheved had her baby - Moses - and when he got too big to keep hiding, she and Miriam put him in a waterproof basket and set him on the Nile just upstream from the palace.
Batya, a princess, who has perfectly nice places to take baths inside the palace, comes down to the Nile to bathe . . . where there are crocodiles . . . where only the poorest people in Egypt bathe. And personally, I find this quite odd. As she is bathing in the river, Batya sees the baby and takes him out of the basket. Miriam, an Israelite slave, comes out of the reeds and basically says to the Princess of Egypt, “You probably need someone to nurse that baby, right?” Batya Princess of Egypt is like, “Yeah, I do.” So Miriam gets Jocheved, who seems to also be conveniently nearby, and Batya, Princess of Egypt, goes over to Jocheved, one of her father’s slaves, and Pays her to nurse him.
Ordinary circumstances make all of this seem unlikely to say the least. It seems unlikely that Jocheved and Miriam would overlook that the basket would float past the palace, arguably the most dangerous place in Egypt for this baby. It also seems unlikely that Batya just happened to come down to the Nile at this exact moment. I mean, it seems unlikely that Batya would come to the Nile to bathe at all. But it’s a good thing she did, because that kid would one day play a major part in the jewish exodus from egypt.
I think this is all a big conspiracy. The good kind. I think these women - Jocheved, Miriam, and Batya - organized and worked together to save this child. Which is pretty big all by itself, but even bigger when we think about how it led to the downfall of the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt.
It really seems like the authors of the Torah want us to make the connection between these three women and the daughters: Mahlah, Noa, Hogla, Milcah, and Tirza, because of what is about to happen next.
Back in Parshat Pinchas, Chapter 27 verse 1, here's what’s up: God tells Moses that all of the men of the generation who escaped Egypt will die in the wilderness, and their sons and sons’ sons will inherit the land - the land that was apportioned only to men.
A few day after this proclamation, Zelopechad died, and because his daughters weren’t men, they weren’t allowed to own the land. Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirza talked with their neighbors about this injustice, then local judges, then the next level of judges, then the next, until they came before Moses. And when they brought their case to Moses, all of the people they talked to before were there too, judges and all.
They explain that their father, Zelphechad, died without any sons. They argue that they should get a portion of the land rather than having it just be lost to their family and clan.
Remember, Moses is the guy whose mother and sister and adoptive mother, Jocheved, Miriam and Batya - all really smart and remarkable women - worked together and saved his life. As soon as the women finish speaking, the Torah says, “Moses brought their case before God'' right away God says, “The plea of Zelophechad’s daughters is just: you should give them a hereditary holding among their father’s kinsmen; transfer their father’s share to them.”
I learned that according to our tradition when their father died the daughters knew they weren’t going to be taught Torah because they weren’t boys. They wouldn’t be included in discussions about laws and other important topics. So the daughters took it upon themselves to study. The oldest, Mahlah, would listen outside of the tents where the boys were being taught, and memorize everything so she could go back to her sisters and teach them what she had learned.
I think it matters that she learned all of this stuff because it made everyone respect them and respect their intelligence. It’s part of their culture and tradition that learning these things is important and so they took it on themselves to learn all of those things.
When the Sages were writing down this story in the Talmud telling about the daughters learning Torah, they must have thought it was important that we know - all these generations later - that these women learned Torah . . . and that at least one of them was teaching it. For me this being one of the stories that I learned about this year is important because there is still gender inequality today, and if people could do something about that back then - the daughters and also whoever wrote the story down centuries later and also all of the people who told this story about these women working together and changing things for the better - then someone can for sure do something about it now.
For me this is a big part of what it means to be Jewish. Torah is connected to me being Jewish because the stories and lessons in the Torah can be applied to almost any situation. These are the foundational stories of our people. They have all played a role in creating our culture and our community, so learning them means having a deeper understanding of Judaism.
These stories helped me realize how systems change. one thing happens and then the next, until you’ve changed history. The acts of rebellion in these stories are purposeful and have meaning. People who don’t have much power stand up for what they believe in and do what they believe in even though they might not technically be able to do much. So even if it seems like there isn’t anything big you can do, there is something you can do.
I think about things like how inaccessible and expensive healthcare is, and about physical accessibility - like how my school has no way to get around if you are a wheelchair user. I think about accessibility to knowledge, all of the LGBTQ rights, anti-trans bills, abortion care and reproductive health care. I mean, Miriam and Jocheved couldn't end slavery or save all of the babies, but they could do something about this ONE baby. Batya couldn’t save everyone, but working with Jocheved and Miriam she could save this ONE kid. She could pay this ONE slave. She could talk with this ONE girl. Maybe at the time she didn’t think it would get so big, but she did it. Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirza couldn’t change every law, but they could talk with the local leaders first about their specific problem and then bring it to the next level and the next. And even if we can’t fix the whole problem we can make it easier for other people to do something about it in the future.
One of the things I thought a lot about this year is what does it mean to me that I’m Jewish, right now, and as I become an adult. But the thing is I still don’t really know. Which is fine. I think maybe part of what it means is understanding more about what has happened to the Jewish community. Also being able to do something for or in the community. I think about how my Jewish community is my family and I think about us doing things together like cooking for a seder. I feel like Rabbi Ariel is part of my Jewish community now because of the Jewish learning I’ve done with her. At camp we do stuff like we sing HaTikvah and do Jewish blessings. We learn about Israel and their dances and food. I’m thinking about being a CIT there next year when I can start working with younger kids. I’m also considering helping out with younger Jewish kids with Rabbi Ariel.
To me preparing to celebrate becoming bat mitzvah also meant learning about and learning to make Jewish foods. Which is what I’m going to show you next. The foods I made came from family recipes, my camp, recipes from Jewish communities all over the world, and from a special book called In Memory’s Kitchen.
I need to tell you about this book because it’s a compilation of recipes shared by Jewish women in a concentration camp - Theresienstadt (Tear-ease-en-stat), also sometimes called Terezin. When they were hungry and starving, these women “cooked with their mouths” by telling each other their recipes. They were written down by a woman named Mina. Before she died in 1944 she gave them to a friend and asked her to give them to her daughter, Anny. Anny finally received the recipes in 1969 and they were published as In Memory’s Kitchen in 1996. 1996 was 15 years before I was born. 28 years before today.
Maybe the Torah stories mattered to those women, too. Maybe they grew up with them, and maybe they helped them persevere.
Maybe my great grandmas, and the women whose recipes are in In Memory’s Kitchen, and maybe all of our ancestors thought that someday there would be a Jewish kid becoming a young adult who would remember them and make their recipes.
Or maybe it’s a surprise.
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If you’d like to learn about the recipes Mitzi made, you can check out her presentation here!
You could even try making some of them yourself!