Pinchas
Numbers 25:10–30:1
by Jen Smith
Sometimes the Jewish calendar creates unexpected harmonies. Events separated by centuries suddenly begin speaking to one another. This week is one of those weeks.
As we read this week’s Torah portion, Pinchas, we also enter the Fast of the 17th of Tammuz, a day that marks the beginning of the three weeks of mourning leading up to Tisha B’Av. Among the many tragedies remembered on this day, perhaps none is more iconic than Moses descending Mount Sinai, seeing the Golden Calf, and shattering the first set of tablets containing the 10 commandments.
And, at nearly the same time, we remember the yahrzeit of Theodor Herzl, whose impossible dream eventually became the modern State of Israel.
And tucked quietly into this week’s Torah portion is one of my favorite stories in all of Torah: the five daughters of Zelophehad.
At first glance, these seem like unrelated moments. But I wonder if they are all asking the very same question: What do we do when something sacred has been broken?
This question is essential, because as we all come to learn in life, brokenness is unavoidable. Dreams break, communities crumble, families disappoint one another, nations suffer, and our hearts break open in ways we never imagined. The thing is, the Torah never promises otherwise.
So, what comes next?
The 17th of Tammuz commemorates Moses smashing the tablets. Growing up, I always imagined this scene an act of unbridled anger. But our ancient rabbis saw something more complicated.
Sometimes preserving a relationship requires acknowledging that something fundamental has already been broken. Thus, the Talmud teaches that God ultimately affirmed Moses’ decision to break them.
The broken tablets were not discarded.
According to the Talmud, when the Israelites wandered through the wilderness, they carried both the whole tablets, and the shattered pieces of the original tablets, inside the Ark.
Our beautiful, most holy ark, did not only contain perfection; it also carried brokenness.
Our collective Jewish memory has never asked us to pretend the fractures never happened. Instead, we are to sanctify them.
The Kotzker Rebbe[1] famously taught that there is nothing so whole as a broken heart.
Not because brokenness is something to seek, but because the cracks in our hearts often become the places where God’s light can enter. And that brings us to the daughters of Zelophehad: Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.
When their father dies in the wilderness, the future appears broken before it has even begun. As the law does not offer the ladies any inheritance of their father’s “estate,” it’s easy to assume they would descend into despair. Instead, the five women courageously walk directly to Moses together.
They ask a question no one had yet dared to ask: What about us?
And remarkably, God answers: They are right.
The law itself expands because five women refused to believe that a broken system had to remain broken forever.
The mystics teach that every soul contains a unique spark that no other soul can reveal, and maybe that is why these sisters could see a future no one else imagined.
The world changes when ordinary people ask holy questions. More than three thousand years later, another Jew discovered a broken reality. As Europe was becoming increasingly hostile, and antisemitism was no longer hiding, the dream of Jewish sovereignty seemed to be just that: a fairytale dream. Most people dismissed Theodor Herzl as naïve, others said his ideas were dangerous, and still others thought he was just crazy.
But Herzl refused to accept that exile was Judaism’s permanent condition, famously writing: If you will it, it is no dream.
That sentence is often reduced to a motivational slogan, but I think it represents something deeply, well, Jewish. It is an act of covenantal imagination; a moment of communal manifestation.
Herzl looked at what existed and insisted that the story of the Jewish people was hardly limited to history. And whether one agrees with every aspect of political Zionism or not, it’s impossible to deny the audacity of his hope.
Like the daughters of Zelophehad, Theodor Herzl saw what the rest of the Jewish people accepted as their fixed reality and asked: What if this is not the final chapter?
The Zohar teaches that creation itself began with a kind of divine contraction, making room for something new to emerge. Later, Rabbi Isaac Luria[2] deepened this teaching using the imagery of shattered vessels. He taught that Divine light overflowed the original containers, scattering holy sparks throughout creation. Our task is not to create perfection; instead, our sacred task is tikkun – to repair reality by gathering those sparks and using them to mend a broken world.
Whether or not one reads this astrologically, spiritually, or poetically, it offers a profound truth: God does not wait for perfect conditions before unveiling redemption. And neither should we.
Holiness often begins exactly where something has fallen apart, which is maybe why this week’s Torah portion also contains another transition.
God tells Moses that he will soon die, and his faithful understudy, Joshua, is appointed to lead the Israelites into the next chapter of Peoplehood.
Leadership must pass from one generation to the next, and even Moses, God’s most beloved servant, cannot prevent this change. But Torah endures. And just like God’s covenant with the Israelites, hope also continues.
As the three weeks leading to Tisha B’Av begin, it can be tempting to focus only on loss. There is certainly enough to mourn: The broken tablets, destroyed Temples, the pain and suffering littered across Jewish history, and the myriad wounds still carried by Israel and the Jewish people today. But our tradition refuses to let mourning have the last word.
We carry the broken tablets alongside the whole ones; we remember destruction while planting vineyards; we grieve while still blessing our children, and we still tell the stories of our exile while facing Jerusalem together.
For me, this always stands out as Judaism’s most special spiritual gift. Rather than denying what has shattered, we believe that what is shattered will become sacred in its own new way.
This week, may we have the wisdom to recognize what needs repairing, and the courage of the daughters of Zelophehad to become part of that repair. May we be inspired by Herzl’s imagination to envision a future beyond today’s brokenness, remembering that even shattered vessels remain uniquely holy. And may we become a People driven by tikkun, gathering divine sparks wherever we find them, trusting that God is still writing the next chapter of our story.
Shabbat Shalom.
[1] Menachem Mendel Morgensztern of Kotzk (1787–1859)
[2] Isaac ben Solomon Ashkenazi Luria (1534-1572)