Parashat Emor - Shlomit bat Divri

Shelomith 1: Bible by Tikva Frymer-Kensky

Daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan and wife of an Egyptian, Shelomith is the only woman mentioned by name in the Book of Leviticus. She appears in the narrative about her son, a man who pronounces the name of God in blasphemy during a fight with another Israelite man. Her unnamed son is brought to Moses and placed in custody to await the decision of God.

God then commands Moses to take him outside the camp and have the whole community stone him. At this point, a general policy is set forth, proclaiming that all who blaspheme God’s name, “aliens as well as citizens,” will be punished by being stoned to death (Lev 24:16). Stoning in ancient Israel was the penalty for very serious offenses—ones considered to endanger the universe.

This story may have served a pedagogical purpose by showing that blasphemy was a direct trespass on the holy and that stoning was sanctioned by God through special instruction to Moses. Other stories, such as the tale of the man who gathered wood on the Sabbath day (Num 15:32–36), carry the same message. Such stories also indicate the way a precedent might have developed into a general law.

The fact that the story, whether true or invented, presents a precedent for an important law may explain why it provides details of the man’s parentage: his father’s identity as an Egyptian and his mother’s name and lineage. The fact that the father is Egyptian helps justify the law’s application to non-Israelites (“aliens”) as well as Israelites. His mother’s name, along with her father’s name and tribe, is important in establishing him as an Israelite, perhaps because one’s lineage was usually reckoned through the father’s family. Shelomith’s name may have been preserved because she does not serve as an example of women in general.

Shelomith 1: Midrash and Aggadah by Tamar Kadari

Midrashic Descriptions
The Rabbis describe Shelomith daughter of Dibri as being good-looking, and her name attests that she was perfect (shelemah) and flawless (Tanhuma, Shemot, para. 9). Alternately, she was talkative, and she was called “daughter of Dibri [bat Dibri]” because she would talk (le-daber) incessantly with everyone and would greet every individual with: “Shalom to you,” thus explaining her name: Shelomith. Some Rabbis blame her loquaciousness for her engaging in forbidden sexual relations, which resulted in the birth of a son who was doomed to die (Lev. Rabbah 32:5)...

Shelomith’s Husband and Son
Several midrashim stress that although Shelomith’s son was the child of an Egyptian man, she was not married to her son’s father, and the entire incident is presented (from her perspective) as a sorry mistake. The Egyptian taskmasters would wake the Hebrews at the crack of dawn every morning for their slave labor. To do this, the taskmasters would enter the houses of the Israelites. When one of the taskmasters entered Shelomith’s tent, he was struck by her beauty and desired her. One dawn, after the taskmaster had sent her husband to his daily labor, he returned to Shelomith and lay with her; in the darkness, Shelomith thought that he was her husband. When Shelomith’s husband returned, he saw the Egyptian taskmaster leaving his house. He asked her: “Did he touch you?,” to which she replied: “Yes, and I thought that was you” (Ex. Rabbah 1:28).

Another tradition relates that Shelomith would return the taskmaster’s greeting; he became acquainted with her, and consequently demanded that she sin with him—a request to which she readily acquiesced (Sekhel Tov [ed. Buber], Ex. 2:11). The taskmaster knew that Shelomith’s husband sensed this and so, when the latter returned to his slave labor, the taskmaster beat the husband. This taskmaster was the Egyptian whom Moses saw when he went out to his kinsfolk, as related in Ex. 2:11–12. Moses witnessed, by the spirit of Divine inspiration, what the taskmaster had done to the Hebrew man, and he said: “Is it not enough that you have wronged his wife, you also strike him?” Realizing that the taskmaster deserved the death penalty, Moses struck him a fatal blow (Ex. Rabbah loc. cit.).

According to another tradition, the Egyptians would defile the wives of the Israelites. Shelomith was married to a man from her tribe of Dan. That night Pharaoh’s taskmasters came and killed her husband and then engaged in relations with her; a son was born from this encounter. Everything follows the seed: from sweet to sweet, and from bitter to bitter. Consequently, this child, the offspring of an Egyptian from an act of defilement, cursed the Lord (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, chap. 47). Lev. 24:11 provides his detailed genealogy: “Now his mother’s name was Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan,” because this son was a disgrace to his mother, to his family and to his tribe (Lev. Rabbah 32:5).

Shelomith’s Son Curses the Lord
What was the quarrel that led Shelomith’s son to curse the Lord? In the Rabbinic account, he converted and wanted to pitch his tent within the encampment of Dan. The Danites asked him: “Why do you want to have your tent here?” He replied: “I am from the daughters of Dan.” They retorted: “But Scripture says: ‘The Israelites shall camp each with his standard, under the banners of his father’s house’ [Num. 2:2]. Although your mother is from the daughters of Dan, your father is not from the sons of Dan, and the encampment follows the father’s line, and not the mother’s.”

Shelomith’s son entered the court of Moses and asked for a judgment in his case. Moses ruled against him, declaring that he could not dwell among the Danites because he was a mamzer (bastard). The son left the court and blasphemed, using the fully-pronounced Name of the Holy One, which he had heard at Sinai (Sifra 14:1–2). This midrash is highly critical of the conduct of Moses and the Danites. Shelomith’s son tried to mend his ways: he converted and wanted to be part of his tribe, but they cast out the “Other” from their midst on the flimsiest of excuses. His isolation within society and the unwillingness of his tribe to accept him drove him to the extreme act of blasphemy, which resulted in his death.

A Tribute to the Blasphemer’s Mother: Shelomit, Daughter of Divri by Prof. RabbiWendy Zierler

Rashi (on Leviticus 24:11) takes this midrashic tradition one step further, suggesting that Shelomit’s explicit naming designates her not just as a gossip or flirt but as a strumpet:

And his mother’s name was Shelomit the daughter of Divri: It is to praise Israel that her name was publicized, to say that she, and only she, was a harlot.

In other words, Shelomit is mentioned by name, and not merely called “an Israelite woman,” to distinguish her from the other women of Israel, who do not share her bad character.

How crushing to think that the Torah takes the trouble to mention this mother’s name only to label her a whore!...

Shelomit as a Struggling Single Mother

How is it that in the case of the son of Shelomit bat Divri the effort to speak goes so terribly wrong? Building on the rabbis’ desire for a credible backstory to explain this cryptic, troubling tale, I’d like to offer my own backstory about Shelomit bat Divri and the son she bore with an Egyptian man. The terse narrative of the Bible offers us no details on how this son came to be born and raised within the tribe of Dan. It is because of this lack of context that some of the midrashic authors supply accounts of harlotry. But given the context of Israelite enslavement in Egypt, is it not possible that Shelomit, like so many African American slaves who were raped and impregnated by their masters, might have been abused and used by a slavemaster or overseer, and that is how she came to give birth to the son of an Egyptian man?

According to this reading, Shelomit bat Divri was a struggling ex-slave and single mother, who labored against all odds to raise her son and shield him from the prejudices of the surrounding community. Alas, the son—whom the text presents as a בן, a “son” or “boy,” rather than an איש, a “man,” hinting, perhaps, at his not-yet or barely emergent manhood—went out of his mother’s tent and discovered that the world around him was not what he expected. He saw that he was a second-class citizen in a society of former second-class citizens, that he was not wanted among his would-be brethren. His mother may have attempted to counter and to diffuse his youthful anger when it flared. Befitting her name, Shelomit—from shalom, “peace”—she may have tried on any number of occasions to bring peace and calm and to shore up her son’s bifurcated identity.

But when איש הישראלי, a full-fledged “man of Israel,” told her son he didn’t belong, and when Moses ruled that the son’s status as perpetual outsider was ordained by God, the son succumbed to rage and cursed the God who had banished him from his assumed place among the Israelites. As Bat Divri, a daughter of speech, Shelomit may have endeavored, just like the daughters of Zelophehad, to speak up, defend her son, and demand justice for him. But tragically, she failed in her bid to save him.

Emor - Elitism in the Levitical Priesthood by Rabbi Valerie Lieber (from The Women's Torah Commentary ed. R. Elyse Goldstein)

Shlomit and the Dangers of Perfection by Susan Sered phd

The image I carry away from this parasha is of the women named ironically or cruelly named Perfection, daughter of Speech, of the tribe of Judgment, forever mourning her son who, judged by God and man, was stoned to death because of the words he used when he could no longer bear the burden of his imperfection.