Parashat Matot-Masei 5786: “Keep Marching,” Rabbi Oberstein’s 7/10/26 Qabbalat Shabbat Sermon
Rabbi Andrew Oberstein | Qabbalat Shabbat, July 10, 2026 | Temple Israel of Boston | Riverway Project
View the video recording of Rabbi Oberstein’s sermon
This week and every week,
for Jews around the world,
from Boston to Mumbai,
from Johannesburg to Buenos Aires,
from Budapest to Sydney to Jerusalem,
there’s a whole lot of division and disagreement.
I don’t need to tell you this.
But this week and every week,
no matter whether Reform,
Conservative,
Orthodox,
or unaffiliated,
Jews in nearly every synagogue around the world have stayed in lockstep with each other as we read the Torah together,
at the same pace,
over the course of the year.
It’s one of the most beautiful invisible moments of connection unifying our people.
And this week,
all of us are finishing the book of Numbers,
the fourth book of the Torah.
Last week,
the Jewish people read Parashat Pinchas,
which fell on the exact weekend we marked 250 years of this country.
This Shabbat,
we read Matot-Masei,
the very next portion,
which, toward the very end, reintroduces us to a set of characters we first met last week.
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In Parashat Pinchas,
we find five sisters –
Mahlah,
Noah,
Hoglah,
Milcah, and
Tirzah.
Five named women,
already a rarity in our sacred text,
who have no brothers,
and have just lost their father,
Zelophehad.
Five named women who stand before Moses and the entire Israelite community and argue for their right to inherit their father’s land,
against a system built to pass inheritance only to sons.
Moses takes their case to God –
and God unequivocally agrees with the daughters.
Not only that:
the law changes,
for everyone,
from that moment forward.
This is a genuine underdog-wins-against-the-system story.
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And to have read it on July 4th felt crucial.
On our nation’s 250th birthday,
what better story to celebrate than one of ordinary people,
outside the halls of power,
changing the law because they were right and they said so.
Out loud.
We read this story as a feminist victory because it is one.
Real laws that affect real people’s lives changed because disenfranchised people raised their voices and were heard.
It happened in the Torah last week and it has happened in every corner of our nation for the last 250 years,
from sea to shining sea.
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And then this week, we get the fine print.
In Parashat Masei,
just as the book of Numbers is coming to a close,
the clan leaders come back with some deep worry.
After all,
the victory of Zelophehad’s daughters is all well and good,
but what happens if the sisters marry outside the tribe?
Their inheritance goes with them and the tribe’s land shrinks for good.
And so,
in a move familiar to students of history,
the law changes again.
From now on,
if a father has no sons,
he can pass his land inheritance to his daughters.
But,
with a caveat that the daughters must marry within their own tribe.
The daughters are told who they can marry and they comply.
Mahlah,
Noah,
Hoglah,
Milcah,
and Tirzah play a very different role in Parashat Masei than they did last week in Parashat Pinchas.
The same women –
the ones who so bravely spoke out loud with main character energy in last week’s parasha,
this week they are the ones spoken about and told what to do.
And this is not a footnote we can skip.
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Because the win in Parashat Pinchas was real.
It was substantive.
It changed actual law for actual people,
not just for one family,
but for every Israelite who would ever find themselves in Zelophehad’s position again.
As Jewish feminist Bible scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky teaches,
because of these five sisters,
we get the Shunammite woman generations later,
dwelling on her own land,
among her own kin,
not displaced into her husband’s family’s territory.
That kind of independence was not available to a woman in the ancient Near East.
It became thinkable because Mahlah,
Noah,
Hoglah,
Milcah,
and Tirzah made it thinkable first.
Because of them,
we have a precedent,
maybe the earliest precedent in our tradition,
of women speaking their minds in the public square
and being heard and believed.
And most remarkable of all:
not only did the law change,
but the text tells us God’s own position changed in response to their argument.
That’s about as clearly as the Torah ever tells us that speaking truth can move God.
******
Nothing that happens this week in Masei erases any of that.
Masei complicates the story and exposes the structural inequality underneath the celebration, but it doesn’t invalidate the win.
******
You might be sitting there thinking,
wait,
so which is it?
Was this a victory or wasn’t it?
And I want to tell you: it’s both.
It has to be both.
If we only tell the Pinchas half of the story,
we’re being naive.
If we only tell the Masei half,
we’re being cynical.
Judaism refuses both of those postures.
It asks us to hold the whole thing.
*****
There’s always a next fight.
We don’t get to rest on our laurels.
The Torah doesn’t let us and neither does this country’s history.
*****
One week after we marked two hundred fifty years of this country, we can hear our Torah begging us:
hold both truths at the same time.
*****
I hope you took time last week to feel real gratitude for how this country has evolved,
again and again,
because ordinary people advocated for themselves and for the most vulnerable among us.
That work would be in vain if we let cynicism about what’s still broken blind us to the extraordinary good already won.
And I hope,
in that same breath,
you didn’t let the pride of the moment talk you out of the parts of this country’s story that are still unfinished.
And now,
a week later,
we get back to work.
Because the fight for a more perfect union,
like the fight for Zelophehad’s daughters,
was never a single moment.
It’s always been a relay.
Jewish theater creator Shaina Taub wrote about this in her musical,
Suffs,
based on the Suffragist movement of the early 20th century.
She wrote:
You won’t live to see the future that you fight for
Maybe no one gets to reach that perfect day
If the work is never over
Then how do you keep marching anyway?
Do you carry your banner as far as you can?
Rewriting the world with your imperfect pen?
‘Til the next stubborn girl picks it up in a picket line over and over again?
And you join in the chorus of centuries chanting to her
The path will be twisted and risky and slow
But keep marching…
The daughters of Zelophehad carried their banner as far as they could.
The story was never meant to signify triumph.
It was meant to signify a beginning.
And so,
we have no choice but to keep marching.