Two Moabite sisters, both princesses, both married brothers, both were widowed young, and both of whom loved their mother-in-law, yet one became the mother of the King David and one became the mother of one of the greatest enemies of the Jewish Nation. What caused this rift? How were Rus and Orpah different? Why did things turn out so differently for both of them? And what does this mean for us?
The daughters of Tzelafchad were a group of five single sisters with a deceased father who approached Moshe Rabbeinu about inheriting their father’s land. It is because of this incident that the laws pertaining to women and inheritance were revealed to the people. But when you look at the whole story, we can see a lot of questions: why is the story mentioned? It is almost a footnote in a parsha filled with seemingly unrelated events. Who were these women? Why does the Torah make such a big deal out of the fact that we learn a law from them? Why are they are all mentioned by name? Why were they important, and what can we learn from them?
Miriam was the daughter of Yocheved, sister of Moshe, and a huge part of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. Why was Miriam, whose name means bitter, the one to bring light and optimism to the Jewish people? And what message can we learn from her?
Yocheved is most well known as the mother of Moshe Rabbeinu. But she is mentioned many other times in the Torah as well – she was Shifra, the midwife who stood up to Pharaoh by saving the Jewish babies, she was the last soul to be born as Yaakov Avinu entered Egypt with his family, she was a daughter of Levi and wife of Amram, a leader of Klal Yisrael, and she was the mother of two other very great and famous children. Who was Yocheved, really? And what lessons can she teach us about how we live our lives today?
Achashveirosh and Vashti, Haman and Zeresh, Esther and Mordechai: explore the relationships between the couples in the Purim story and what we can learn from them.
The Jewish Women Podcast 