Inheritance - Parshat Pinchas D’var Torah 2025/5785

I want to talk, for a moment, about what we inherit, and what we pass on to future generations. 

My grandmother, who is still alive thank God, has been downsizing and wanted to give away some of her candleholders. They’re beautiful, opaque glass, and create this candelabra effect when they’re positioned right. They can hold 6 candles - two each for me and my two siblings to light shabbat candles together. Now, to be clear, she would never have considered these candleholders to be used for bringing in Shabbat. Leave it to the cantor of the family to think of that.

More importantly, I remember the candle holder adorning the side table in the kitchen while we sat down for dinners at her home. It’s not the candle holders that I think of when I light them, but the way they make me think of…my grandpa’s humor. My grandma’s kindness. Their patience as they taught me to play the card game Bridge, or how to swim.

Let me ask - Is there something in your home that you inherited, which holds a memory of a loved one?

This week marks the death of two figures who have each changed the way in which we understand inheritance.

In this week’s Torah portion, we encounter a man named Tzelophechad, who had five daughters, no sons. Each daughter, one could imagine, more fierce than the last. Each daughter was single, without a husband, and in their time, that meant that there was no one to inherit the property of their father Tzelophechad.

It states:

וַתַּֽעֲמֹ֜דְנָה לִפְנֵ֣י משֶׁ֗ה וְלִפְנֵי֙ אֶלְעָזָ֣ר הַכֹּהֵ֔ן וְלִפְנֵ֥י הַנְּשִׂיאִ֖ם וְכָל־הָֽעֵדָ֑ה פֶּ֥תַח אֹֽהֶל־מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר:

And the women stood before Moses and before Elazar the priest and before the princes and the whole camp at the entrance to the tent of meeting, saying, our father died in the wilderness…why should our father’s name be eliminated from his family because he had no son? Give us an estate along with our father’s brothers.

And, over the course of a short court proceedings with God, they succeed and set the precedent for any Israelite household without men in it to pass the estate onto the women of the household. The great commentator Rashi goes so far as to say that the law which they had overturned in the desert was in fact written this way in the heavens! That their eyes could perceive that which Moses’s eyes could not.

Of course, their ability to inherit the land is important. But even more crucially, as I see it, is the precedence that they set for the women who inherited after them. The land isn’t simply about land. It’s a reminder to every woman that inherits land that her ancestors fought and won for her rights.

Now, that could be a drash unto itself. But early this week marked the death of someone named Andrea Gibson. Andrea was a local poet, based in Boulder, whose poetry changed the way we understand inheritance as well.

Allow me to read a bit from their poetry:

____________________________

The winter I told you I think icicles are magic,
you stole an enormous icicle from a neighbors shingle
and gave it to me as a gift
I kept it in my freezer for seven months
until the day I hurt my foot
and needed something to reduce the swelling
Love isn’t always magic
sometimes it’s just melting
or it’s black and blue
where it hurts the most

What I know about living is

That the pain is never just ours.

Every time I hurt I know the would is an echo, so I keep

listening for the moment the 

Grief becomes a window, when I

can see what I couldn’t see

Before.

__________________________

Throughout their poetry, Gibson is dripping with nostalgia. Not for things, but for experiences and growth and stories.

In a public obituary, their wife, Megan, wrote that on the day of their death, Andrea didn’t lose anything. She wrote, “if you had been here in our home during the three days of their dying - if you’d seen dozens of friends drift in to help, to say goodbye, to say thank you, to kiss their perfect face, if you’d felt the love that floored every hospice nurse-you would have agreed. Andrea Won.

This is an inheritance too. Perhaps, the most powerful type of inheritance, when maintained well, are stories that help us understand who we are.

Things fade with time. Andrea Gibson’s icicles melt. Land is sold or goes into disarray. My grandmother’s candle holders may break or get lost one day. But Gibson’s poetry reminds us that memories of those things are passed down from generation to generation to generation. And even when we forget the stories, we carry them in our bodies.

The Torah knew this, and our ancient rabbis knew this as well. That’s why Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Ancestors, begins with a story of lineage: Moses received the Torah from Mt. Sinai, and transmitted it to Joshua. Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the great assembly. 

That’s why in our High Holiday liturgy, we chant:

Adonai, Adonai, El Rachum v’Chanun. Erech Apayim v’rav chesed v’emet, notzeir chesed la’alafim.

Adonai Adonai, God of compassion and grace. Who is slow to anger and abounding in kindness and truth. Extending kindness to the thousandth generation.

True for Andrea Gibson, for the rabbis, and for the daughters of Tzelophechad. Everything that we receive from previous generations, and everything we pass on to future generations, is a love letter and a map to understanding our selves. May we honor the previous and future generations with many love letters.

Shabbat shalom.