Session 26: Parashat Chukat

"Solitude of Self", Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1892

Parashat Chukat chronicles a particularly rough stretch of wandering through the wilderness. Miriam dies and is buried early in the portion, creating a gap in leadership and presenting the community with new challenges. Through the rabbinic literature that fills narrative gaps in the text of the Torah, we know that Miriam’s contribution to the safety and welfare of the Israelites’ was invaluable.

In her resignation address as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1892 at age 77, Elizabeth Cady Stanton made the case for suffrage and women’s rights by invoking the right of every person to actualize their potential, and by bemoaning the opportunity cost paid by communities that fail to do this, particularly on the basis of sex.

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