Help Wanted: Courage

On the hunt

Without the anticipating fear and the compelling anxiety no finite being would be able to exist. Courage, in this view, is the readiness to take upon oneself negatives, anticipated by fear, for the sake of a fuller positivity.

Christian theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich wrote those words in 1952 in his seminal work, The Courage to Be. What he’s arguing, in essence, is that our very being is embedded with fear and anxiety. Having them reminds us that we are human. The bulwark against those feelings is courage, which Tillich argued is to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable. We find ourselves at times in life needing to muster the courage despite the implications of what is to come. Having courage means to push through knowing that what we’re doing may ruffle feathers.

What could be more courageous and feather ruffling than five women in the times of the Torah coming to demand land from Moses in front of the whole community? That’s an essential story that comes from this week’s Torah portion, Pinhas.

The daughters of Zelophehad, of Manassite family—son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh son of Joseph—came forward. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.

They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the chieftains, and the whole assembly, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and they said,

Our father died in the wilderness. He was not one of the faction, Korah’s faction, which banded together against God, but died for his own sin; and he has left no sons. Let not our father’s name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give us a holding among our father’s kinsmen!

Pretty bold, huh? They end up stumping Moses who doesn’t know how to adjudicate and ultimately God declares their cause is just, a concise and powerful statement on their righteousness. Female characters are scant in the Torah. Named and vocal female characters are even more rare. But rarest of all are named women that speak and demand fairness from Moses. Their justness is noteworthy but I am more intrigued by what gave them the the courage to do what they did?

I was struck by the two verbs that defined their approach: they came close and they stood. Both speak to a certain internal fortitude and self-belief in this moment. This wasn’t a willy-nilly approach. As the 17th century Moroccan commentator Or Ha’chaim notes:

The reason the Torah writes the additional word ותקרבנה-they got close and was not satisfied with writing ותעמדנה-they stood in verse two, is that before appearing before Moses they consulted with each other and had become convinced that they had a valid claim.

They needed to build each other up, huddle up, and remind one another that their big ask was valid. The Midrash Tanhuma, an earlier collection of teachings on the Torah also picks up on their ‘coming close’ and details their power was in fixing something that had been broken, namely men who had made poor choices that were scuttling progress for the community. In other words, they had a sense of needing to mend something that had been broken. There was an awareness and certainty despite the very real repercussions for this type of ask. That is courageous.

One more piece of this that speaks to this foundational type of courage. When God affirms their ask, God’s language is:

כֵּ֗ן בְּנ֣וֹת צְלׇפְחָד֮ דֹּבְרֹת֒-The daughters of Tzlofchad speak correctly

That first word in the Hebrew, kain is used differently here, as it is often used to describe an action and not a speech. When it’s used, it often affirms that the thing which is happening is in line with a previously established directive. In essence, what’s happening now is kosher. So what is it about this moment that required the peculiar usage and what earlier directive is it confirming?

Modern biblical commentator Carole Daman illustrated that the first 6 times the word kain is used in the Torah happens with the story of creation:

After God speaks his intention to have some aspect of Creation appear, the description is followed by the words “Vayehi-cheyn” “and it was so”.

So this kain here is saying something akin to that which they are asking is an essential element of what it means to be in this world: bold, audacious, and courageous, come what may. The world was created like that and so are we.

Tillich, the aforementioned theologian spoke about the above acceptance within the framework of a certain kind of faith:

…he who has the courage to affirm his being in spite of fate and guilt has not removed them. He remains threatened and hit by them. But he accepts his acceptance by the power of being-itself in which he participates and which gives him the courage to take the anxieties of fate and guilt upon himself.

In other words, being courageous doesn’t mean we eliminate the thing for which we need courage. In fact, they’re still there just the same. But to live life is to accept them, maybe even welcome them, fully knowing that we can face them with our courageous acceptance.

I find myself at a particular moment in life where I feel a desire for courage. In general, I feel courageous but I feel a bit depleted now. Maybe it’s a 6 month old teething and waking me…or more realistically this wild and crazy world in which we live.

Either way, I find myself boosted by these two essential pieces of wisdom. Tillich reminds us that courage is what it means to be and learning to accept whatever comes from doing hard things. The daughters of Tzlofchad’s remind us that even in the face of overwhelm, being intentional and having integrity can allow us to ride the waves of anxiety to calmer waters. With hopes that wherever you are on the courage spectrum, those messages resonate for you as well.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend!