Dr. Sinclair questions why women didn’t protest the social order in ancient times. She comments that the 5 women are minor characters, they are identified by name instead of by relationship to a man, they break protocol twice by speaking directly with Moses, and they protest the accepted social order. Yet the actual text is powerful.
Rabbi Sacks writes of the similarities between the narrative of Elijah and of Pinchas, both classified as zealots, and both rebuked, albeit gently, by God. Scholars are ambivalent about PInchas; while his zeal was well-intended, he didn’t act within the moral parameters of Jewish law. God rebuked him by removing him to a position of mandatory peace, while Elijah was rebuked for not hearing “the still small voice”.
Jonathan L. Friedmann is the president of the Western States Jewish History Association; vice president, academic dean, and director of programs at Ezzree Institute; admissions director and associate professor at the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism; and director of the Jewish Museum of the American West. His latest book is Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West.