"This is what G-d has commanded concerning the daughters of Zelophehad saying: 'they may marry anyone they wish provided they marry into a family of their father's tribe. No inheritance of the children of Israel may pass from one tribe to another, for the children of Israel shall cleave everyone to the inheritance of the tribe of their fathers.' " (Numbers 36:6,7)
The Book of Numbers, and with it, this week's Torah portion of Mas'ei, concludes with a reiteration of the earlier ruling of Moses from G-d that the five daughters of Zelophehad would be able to inherit the land of their father - since there were no male heirs - but that they would have to marry within their tribe of Menashe so that their familial inheritance would not pass over to another tribe (Numbers 36:1-12).


In effect, this final Biblical decision orchestrates a bridge between women and familial rights on the one hand (after all, simply because Zelophehad had not borne male heirs should be no reason to deprive him and his future generations of ancestral land in the Land of Israel) and tribal rights on the other hand. Were the daughters to inherit their father's share and then marry men from another tribe, the other tribe would inherit the land of Zelophehad, a Menashite. In Biblical history, tribal rights were very zealously guarded (not unlike individual state's

In Biblical history, tribal rights were very zealously guarded.

 rights in early American history). Hence, this decision created a win-win solution to what had threatened to erupt into a full-blown conflict: yes, in the absence of men, the women could inherit their fathers, but the land would have to remain in the father's tribe by forbidding these female inheritors from marrying into another tribe.
The initial story concerning the five brilliant, learned and religious daughters of Zelophehad is told a few chapters earlier in the portion of Pinchas (Numbers 27:1-11). These five women went all the way up the judicial and political ladder until they stood before Moses himself, insisting upon the justice of their claim to inherit their father's land, so that Zelophehad have a portion in the future eternity of Israel through his descendants' working and living in ancestral land in Israel.


"Why should the name of our father be less than the rest of his family merely because he has no son, grant us [women] an inheritance among the brothers of our father." (Numbers 27:4) And the Almighty grants a ringing endorsement to these brave women "who spoke correctly" and were therefore "worthy of a portion of the inheritance." Indeed, they won the case for female rights to inheritance and caused an entire new addendum to be added to the previous inheritance laws of the Bible. (Numbers 27:8-11)
The Kli Yakar commentary (Rabbi Ephraim Lunshitz) finds these women so remarkable that he goes so far as to interpret the Divine command to Moses, "Send forth your men to scout out the Land of Canaan" (Number 13:1) as dripping with irony: "You, Moses, insist upon sending male scouts, and the result will be disastrous; had you listened to Me and sent female scouts like the daughters of Zelophehad, the report would be completely positive and the Land of Canaan would soon become the Land of Israel."
But who was this man Zelophehad of the tribe of Menashe who fathered such special women? The Talmud records a fascinating dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 96b, 97a):
"Our rabbis have taught: 'The one who gathered wood was Zelophehad, as it is written '...and the children of Israel were in the desert and they found a man gathering wood...' and later it is written 'our father died in the desert....' [regarding Zelophehad]; just as the second refers to Zelophehad, so does the first,' these are the words of Rabbi Akiva.


Who was this man Zelophehad of the tribe of Menashe who fathered such special women?

"Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira said to him 'Akiva, whether or not you are correct in your identification [of Zelophehad], you will eventually be punished. If it is as you say, then if the Torah saw fit to hide [the identification], why did you reveal it? And if you are mistaken, how dare you cast aspersions on such a righteous person? ...But then from where did Zelophehad come? From the group of brazen climbers (ma'apilim) atop the mountain .' "
Let us look at Zelophehad, as well as the character of his daughters, from the perspective of this Talmudic discussion. Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira sees Zelophehad as one of the ma'apilim, the brazen would-be conquerors of Israel, and this perception assumes three distinct parties of Israelites all opposed to Moses in the desert, but each with its own unique platform: the first is Datan and Aviram, who saw the fleshpots of Egypt as the real land flowing with milk and honey, and that's where they wanted to be; the second is Korach, who, like Naturei Karta, wished to remain in the religious kollel of G-d outside of Israel, so as not to become sullied by the stench and struggle of a new start-up State; and the third are the ma'apilim, the non-religious Zionists who storm the ramparts of the Land of Canaan without G-d or the Holy Ark of the Torah in their midst. This third party may have been doomed to fail, but at least their idealism regarding the land spawned the very special five daughters who never lost faith either in G-d, or in the equality of His Torah, or in the significance and centrality of Jewish conquest of the Land of Israel.
 
But why did Rabbi Akiva identify Zelophehad with the culpable gatherer of wood, a wicked Sabbath desecrater who was condemned to death? I believe that Rabbi Akiva was stressing a crucial foundation stone of Judaism: we are both a nationality and a religion. G-d entered into a national covenant with Abraham "between the pieces," in which He guaranteed the first patriarch eternal progeny and the boundaries of the Land of Israel, as well as the Divine revelation of a religious covenant at Sinai. Zelophehad certainly "lapsed" in terms of his religious obligations by desecrating the Sabbath; however, this dare not distract from his national status as a member of Klal Yisrael, the Jewish nation.


His daughters learned their Zionism from him.



Remember that the basis for the claim of the daughters was that "the name of their father not be diminished" by his inability to bequeath Land in Israel if he lacked male heirs. The counter argument might have been - according to Rabbi Akiva - that 'your father doesn't deserve a heritage in the Land of Israel if he was a transgressor of the law.'


Perhaps Rabbi Akiva specifically identifies Zelophehad as the culpable wood-gatherer in order to stress that one may cut himself off from the religious covenant without removing his privileges as a member of the national covenant, the historic nation of Israel. And since his daughters learned their Zionism from him, his name is glorified throughout Jewish history through the special daughters whom he parented and inspired.