TBT Blog

There’s a song my kids are obsessed with right now. They ask me to play the song and they belt out the words at the top of their lungs: “How lucky are we? Of all the fish in the sea, you get to be you, and I get to be me.” 

You might think those are lyrics from the 1972 album, “Free To Be You and Me,” but it’s actually a song the artist Corook wrote recently with their girlfriend, Olivia Burton, called “if i were a fish.” Corook posted the song on their TikTok in April in response to hateful comments posted on social media about their appearance and the fact that they identify as both gay and nonbinary. The song immediately went viral, its message resonating with millions of people. 

Last Friday, this song, its meaning, and my kids’ love for it, took on a much heavier feeling when I heard about the Supreme Court’s ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis, allowing business owners to discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade one year ago and now a Supreme Court ruling that allows for discrimination against marginalized individuals, I can’t help but feel like we are moving backwards. It’s hard not to feel completely defeated.

In this week’s Torah portion, we read the story of Zelophehad’s five daughters, who together petition God for inheritance rights that historically went only to male descendants. They approach Moses as a unified group with an articulate and personal argument, advocating for Jewish law to evolve to become more inclusive. God responded to Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, saying, “The plea of Zelophehad’s daughters is just” (Numbers 27:7). A victory for women’s rights. But the story doesn’t end there. 

At the end of the book of Numbers, there is a challenge to this ruling that expands women’s rights. Some people are worried that if Zelophehad’s daughters marry outside the tribe, then the property they inherited will eventually go to their husband’s family and be forever lost to Zelophehad’s tribe. The result is that God creates some boundaries around the original law. Women can still inherit land from their father, but they must marry someone within the same tribe. This is an attempt at compromise, but it takes the wind out of my feminist sails.

Tough as this is, my takeaway from this week’s parashah and the story of Zelophehad’s daughters, is that the sacred work of fighting for human rights for everybody is never done. When our advocacy and hard work pays off with a win, we should celebrate that victory, but we cannot take it for granted. And now, we have more work ahead of us to ensure the safety and equal rights of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Fifty years after the success of Marlo Thomas’ album, with lyrics like “you and me are free to be you and me,” it’s hard to accept a Supreme Court decision that discriminates against people for being exactly who they are. And yet, I take inspiration from Corook’s song, knowing that despite the hate and fear of difference that continues to exist in our world, there are still millions of people who celebrate that you get to be “the you-est of you” and I get to be “the me-ist of me.” 

The Mishnah teaches: “When humans stamp several coins with one seal they are all identical to each other. But the Holy One, Blessed be God, stamps every human being uniquely so that none is like another” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5). Some people are afraid of the “other.” They want to create laws to punish people who don’t fit into the narrow box they use to define “normal.” We are the keepers of a religion that rejects this notion. Judaism is a religion that upholds diversity as a reflection of the holy. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l wrote, “Difference does not diminish; it enlarges the sphere of human possibilities.” That is the world that I want my children to inherit.