Cantor's Blog

D'var Torah, 7/10/2020

On the eve of our Independence Day Weekend, Disney+ gave our increasingly divided and troubled country a gift: The early release of the Hamilton movie, featuring a recorded performance from the hit musical’s legendary original cast.

Hamilton has been lauded for it’s revolutionary (pun intended) ability to depict a story that is more than 200 years old through contemporary musical idioms and colorblind casting. American history has been refreshed and made accessible for a whole new generation, as has the overall art form of musical theater.

One of the most moving aspects of Hamilton is its significant depiction of the women in Alexander’s life, including stories we don’t often hear about in our history books.

The Schuyler Sisters were the daughters of Philip Schuyler, a wealthy general and socialite. Lin-Manuel Miranda had to fudge some of the details of the Schuyler Sisters’ story because he had little factual information with which to go on. This in itself is somewhat problematic, but it’s a good lesson for us as we continue to increase the presence of underrepresented communities in popular culture. We can also think of it as the Broadway equivalent of midrash: Filling in the unknowns in the story.

We do know that the oldest daughter, Angelica, was extremely well-read and intelligent. Angelica is aware of her societal stature and acknowledges that she’s “a girl in a world in which my only job is to marry rich. My father has no sons so I’m the one who has to social climb for one.” Although she falls head over heels in love with Alexander Hamilton, she ignores her feelings for him and introduces him to her sister, Eliza. She does this because Alexander is not of an equivalent social status, and she places her expectation to please her father above her own romantic interests. She may be progressive in some of her behavior, but in her actions she defers to societal norms of her day.

Eliza is more demure and on the surface seems more typical of the women of her time period. To account for the lack of historical records regarding Eliza and Alexander’s relationship, Miranda creatively inserts an explanation by having Eliza burn all correspondence with her husband after he has an affair with another woman. She sings:

“I’m erasing myself from the narrative. Let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted when you broke her heart.”

After Alexander’s death, Eliza becomes the keeper of her husband’s legacy, thereby “putting herself back in the narrative.” She becomes a philanthropist and opens the first orphanage in New York City. She interviews every solider who fought by her husband’s side and tries to make sense of his thousands of pages of writing, knowing that he could have made a huge difference if he only had more time on this earth.

The Schuyler Sisters have a counterpoint sisterly crew in this week’s Torah portion, Pinchas. The five Daughters of Zelophehad – Mahalah, Tirzah, Milcha, Hogla, and Noa – are determined to maintain their father’s legacy and land upon his death. Despite the fact that they generate major changes in the laws regarding land ownership, their story is often overlooked.

In Ancient Israel, the privilege of land ownership only applied to men. Upon Zelophehad’s dealth, his daughters vowed to keep their father’s memory alive by looking after his land, his flocks, and his home. But this was no easy task, given societal norms. The family belonged to the tribe of Menashe, who would claim the land for its own. So the daughters took a risk: they appealed to Moses and the chieftains of the land to bravely ask that an exception be made to the rule.

“Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of those who gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korach; but died in his own sin, and had no sons. Why should the name of our father be taken away from among his family because he had no sons? Give to us therefore a possession among the brothers of our father.”

The young women were smart to emphasize that their father was not one of the many Israelites to rebelled against Korach. He was an honorable man, who deserved to have his legacy carried on by the next generation – and he should not be penalized simply because he did not have any sons.

Moses refers the question to God, who responds positively – but with a catch:

“The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: You shall surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their fathers brothers; and you shall cause the inheritance of their father to pass to them.”

That’s the good part. And we could just end the story here, and call it a huge victory for female empowerment. However, it’s the events of next week’s Torah portion that are cause for concern. In the final chapter of numbers, the tribal leaders of Menashe issue a counter-protest. Approaching Moses, they accuse him of cheating them of their tribal lands. Since each tribe will receive a portion of land according to its size and that land will be passed from father to son, the area of the tribal land will remain the same. However, if the daughters of Zelophehad are given their father’s land and marry out of the tribe of Menasseh, that land will pass from father to son into another tribe. “Our allotted portion will be diminished,” the tribal heads tell Moses.

According to the Torah, God informs Moses that the leaders of the counterprotest have a just cause. To solve the dilemma, the daughters of Zelophehad are told they can marry only within their tribe, and the people of Israel are informed that “no inheritance of the Israelites may pass over from one tribe to another… every daughter…who inherits a share must marry someone from a clan of her father’s tribe…” While women win the right to inherit land, it is still subservient to the higher principle of preserving the size and border of tribal lands. In addition, Their success was only circumstantial – had their been any sons of Zelophehad, the daughter’s pleas would have been moot. Progress was made, but not enough.

This leaves us with a choice: We can celebrate their successes, criticize their failures, or ignore them all together. In this case, they have largely been ignored – just like many of the underrepresented minorities in American history. This is precisely what Hamilton tries to correct in its sophisticated, multi-faceted narrative.

“Miranda is reclaiming the American story that got told – and still gets told, on currency, in statues, and in textbooks – for the people whom history habitually forgets,” writes Michael Schulman in The New Yorker.

In this vein, Hamilton is not only a musical about history. It is a story about how we tell and remember history. As such, we can’t erase history, even if we don’t like what it says. Instead, we can focus on accentuating the positive while acknowledging the negative so that we can continue to learn from our mistakes. Let us celebrate the legacy of the Daughters of Zelophehad and the Schuyler Sisters, who each began important work and paved the way for subsequent generations. After all, the most important thing remains our ability to live in peace and freedom.

In the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda…

Raise a glass to freedom, something they can never take away.

No matter what they tell you…