Zelophehad's Daughters

A moral survey of today’s journalism looks like a doomsday scenario. Content-free screeds, partisan punditry, and dubious but shrill alarmism are at an all-time high. Informed and fact-based reporting is at an all time low and groundless moral outrage is booming.

Yeah, except just kidding, I made that all up. Read More

First of all: that it’s fine to have them, that they don’t just have to be a backup plan, that work and motherhood can be compatible, and that there’s nothing wrong for a teenager to dream of having it all.

(That’s a lot of things for a “first of all,” I know, but those have all been covered a million times in a million other places. Bear with me.)

Second of all: you don’t have to become a teacher or nurse just to get flexibility. My YW program growing up did an excellent job telling me I could work outside the home, which I appreciate–and which I know is unusual for a YW program–but the examples they always showed me, whether through their own jobs or career nights, were teaching, nursing, and other traditionally female jobs. Recently, wondering if that was unique to my YW program, I read through the old manuals looking for specific examples of women with jobs. The results? Teacher, nurse, babysitter, and seamstress. (I haven’t read all of the new manuals yet, but from what I’ve seen I doubt they repeat this trend, if only because they’re so much less specific.)

Let me be very clear: there is nothing wrong with those jobs. Read More

This is an ever-so-slightly revised and edited version of a church talk I gave in 2009; I recently stumbled across it in my cluttered email inbox and felt the urge to share. Hat tip to a post at BCC (I think by Kevin Barney) that started me on this train of thought.

Let’s start with something about me: I have been a church-attending Mormon all my life. let’s calculate, for a minute, what that means, besides a closet full of skirts and a knowledge of all the verses to “I Believe in Christ”: I have taken the sacrament to renew my baptismal covenants approximately 782 times–17 years since my baptism, at 46 Sundays a year. (52, minus two Sundays for General Conference and two for stake conferences and two more for vacation Sundays or simply arriving at church late. I didn’t say I’ve been a perfectly church-attending Mormon all my life!)  That, my friends, is a lot of times to do something and still not quite understand or enjoy it.

I mean, I know all the Sunday School answers about the sacrament–I have, after all, attended Primary, seminary, and Sunday School far more than just 782 times–and I’m sure I don’t have to rehearse them for you all here: the sacrament is about remembering Jesus, taking His name, and renewing our baptismal covenants.  I know the symbolism of the bread, the symbolism of the water, the symbolism of the white cloth; I know the prayers–heck, I know them in several languages–and most of all, I know what I’m supposed to do: sit quietly and think of Christ.  Yet this whole experience, more often than not, is a mystery for me, as great as the mystery of the Atonement itself. Read More

Anthropologists have long scratched their heads at the organizational logic underpinning kashrut, the rules and regulations surrounding the proscription, prescription, and preparation of foods in Judaism, also called “kosher laws.” Why are only animals that both chew cud and have cloven hooves permissible? Why only fish that have both scales and fins, thereby eliminating species like catfish, sharks, and all shellfish? Why are locusts okay to eat while nearly every other species of insect is forbidden?

Various arguments have been put forth, one of the most common being that of basic health. At the time when the Torah was being codified, so the reasoning goes, parasites like trichinosis were very common, vaccines didn’t exist, and, in the absence of thermometers, it was difficult to determine if meat had reached the requisite temperature to be safe for consumption when cooked over an open flame. Others argue that it was about differentiation. The Law of Moses generally contains a constant proscription on types of mixing: no linen and wool should be woven together (Deut 22:11); two different crops should not be sown in the same field (Lev 19:19); a kid should not be cooked in its mother’s milk (Deut 14:21); and the Israelites should not intermingle with the Canaanites and others. Even the word “holy,” repeated many times in the first five books of Moses, is based on the Semitic root q-d-sh, whose meanings include separation, differentiation, and designation for a specific purpose (see, e.g., Lev 19:2, “…Be ye holy, for I the Lord God am holy.”) Separation and categorization, this line of thought suggests, were the driving forces behind kashrut. Read More

One of the things I like most about Mormonism is the centrality of personal revelation, the idea that anyone can go to God and get answers. You don’t have to be in some high religious position for this to happen—God is no respecter of persons, and will talk to you directly. The narrative which has become the founding story of our faith is that of Joseph Smith reading in the Bible that he could ask God for wisdom, and taking that seriously enough to give it a try. Read More

I first heard this story during my Jewish Studies coursework. I keep poking around trying to find the original since more than ten years have passed since that first hearing, but I have been unsuccessful. So here is the story, reconstructed from class notes and filtered through a decade of forgetfulness:

Once, shortly after the Second Temple was destroyed, a famous Rabbi told his students that he would be making the long journey from Yavne to Alexandria, Egypt, to meet with an important Gentile woman. His students loved him and could not bear to part with him, so they insisted upon accompanying him on the journey. Read More

For several years I have struggled mightily with the 10th commandment. Most of the others I can handle. The prime number commandments I’m especially good at, being a math major. Graven images hold little appeal (math majors aren’t artistic anyway), I try not to bow down much because it aggravates my recurrent sinusitis, my mom and dad are easy to please, and I’m too immature to commit anything that has the word adult in it. Read More

In Rabbinic tradition, Noah is considered the lesser – if not the least – of the Patriarchs. Unlike fathers Abraham and Jacob, Noah did not argue with God. When faced with God’s declaration of the impending destruction of all life through the Flood, Noah was obedient and preached to the people, warning them of the imminence of God’s wrath. But he did not, like Abraham when contemplating the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, attempt to persuade God to forgo such a drastic, horrific plan.

For the rabbis, then, part of righteousness comes from dialogue with God. Noah was righteous, yes. But the better part of valor – the proof of the truly great – is in challenging God; in wrestling like Jacob and the angel until we may claim our blessing (Genesis 32:24-32). Although we are to be obedient, we are not to be unquestioning. On the contrary, God wishes us to respond. No human question could upset the Divine; it is questions that bring us closer to Him. Read More

You can find the earlier posts in this series here, here, here, and here.

5) The Elders

I have no younger brothers. On my mission I came to feel a sense of siblingdom with a lot of the Elders in my different zones and districts – a feeling of occasional exasperation mixed with tenderness and deep affection, what I imagine I would feel toward my younger brothers if I had them. I loved those guys.

I served in the Provo MTC alongside an Elder from California. He and I were in each other’s district there and again after we moved to a smaller MTC in Latin America for our Spanish language training. Then, after we arrived at our mission country, we happened to be placed in the same district again. I will try to be careful in how much detail I give in this story because it is his and not mine.

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Mike C has done a couple of great guest posts for us recently, and we’re excited to announce that after the appropriate contract negotiations, he has been officially adopted by ZD. Read More

For much of my life, I have been both intrigued and a little terrified by the idea of grace. Growing up in the church, I rarely heard the term, but I was drawn to the questions it posed. One day when I was an early adolescent, I stumbled across a standard evangelical pamphlet in a Reader’s Digest. I read it clandestinely, because I doubted it was okay for a good Mormon  to be reading such wild things. But I was fascinated by the idea that you could get yourself saved simply by saying a prayer. For someone who felt overwhelmed by the expectations of the church, that seemed way too good to be true. Read More