Drasha on parasha Devarim (slavery)

We are starting Devarim, or Deuteronomy, the fifth book of Torah. It represents Moses’ renewal of the Sinai covenant with the next generation, who would soon enter the Promised Land1. Moses recounts the events of the past 40 years to the Israelites camped on the banks of the Jordan. In fact, "Deuteronomy" is derived from the Greek term for "repetition of the law." 

Today’s portion recounts Moses’ appointment of leaders, the sending of the spies, and the crisis of faith that led to the forty-year stay in the wilderness. Moses reminds the people of their victories over Moab and Ammon and the settlement of their land by the tribes of Reuben and Gad and part of Menashe, and the appointment of Joshua as Moses’ successor.

However, in honour of Mona’s birthday and the anniversary of the UK Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, I’m going to discuss slavery in Torah. The Hebrew term eved, translated as either slave or servant, appears roughly 800 times across the Tanakh. (But unhelpfully, not once in today’s portion.)

I want to tell you that Torah advocated a more progressive, enlightened view of slavery. I want to tell you that slavery at the time was different from the racist and vicious slavery of the Atlantic slave trade. I want to quote Rabbi Shai Held2 who wrote Devarim 15, “radicalizes the requirements laid out in Exodus. Not only is the tenure of indentured servitude given a firm limit of six years3 but the Israelite is enjoined to help the newly freed slave achieve a fresh economic start.” Even while telling the Israelites how to treat slaves, God says to keep this commandment because “you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you.”

But therein lies the problem: The Torah knew slavery was wrong! Tzvi Freeman writes, “The central event of the Torah narrative is the liberation of an entire nation of slaves from a cruel oppressor. Torah is about liberty, human dignity and respect.”4 Exodus 20 contains the ten commandments and the first one begins, “I am the Lord thy god, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Yet the very next chapter contains the rules for Hebrew slaves! Slaves are directly referenced as chattel, as property belonging to their masters, and the life of a slave is even given a price: 30 shekels of silver (Exodus 21:32). Slaves could be beaten (Exod 21:20-21), taken as concubines (Gen 16:3-4; Exod 21:8-11) and raped without serious consequence (Lev 19:20-22).

In Genesis 16, Hagar, Sarai’s maidservant and the mother of Ishmael, was an Egyptian slave. Sarai tells Abram, “Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a child through her.” When Hagar does become pregnant, Sarai complains and Abram responds, “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right.” Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she ran away, but an angel convinced her to return. After Sarah gives birth to Isaac she tells Abraham, “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

According to Jonathan Schorsch5, Hebrew slavery was prohibited during the Rabbinic era for as long as the Temple in Jerusalem is defunct. Maimonides proposed that a non-Jewish slave should be offered conversion and, if accepted, would then be released because Hebrew slaves were not permissible. If the slave did not accept conversion, the Jewish slave owner should sell the slave to non-Jews.6 It is not clear if this convention was ever adopted, but in order to fulfill three of Maimonides’ 613 mitzvot, you will first need to own a slave!

By 1783, an anti-slavery movement had begun in Britain. Josiah Wedgewood – of pottery fame – designed a cameo that depicts a kneeling black man in chains with his hands raised to the heavens inscribed with the phrase "Am I not a man and a brother?" which became quite a popular symbol of abolishionists. In 1807, the UK made the slave trade illegal; slaves could still be owned but no longer sold or transported. Initially, a fine of £100 was applied for every slave found aboard a British ship; however, this led to slaves being thrown overboard whenever a Royal Navy ship approached. In 1827, participation in the slave trade was punishable by death.

In 1804, a slave revolt in Haiti ended with the country’s independence from France. In 1823, the Demerara rebellion in British Guiana saw up to 12,000 slaves revolt. In 1831, the Christmas Rebellion in Jamaica saw 60,000 slaves rise up. By 1832, the profitability of the sugar economy in the British Caribbean was declining and a reform of the House of Commons reduced the influence of wealthy slaveholders, setting the stage for the UK Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

However, it did not take effect for an entire year, and even then only children under the age of six were emancipated. “Slaves” were rebranded “unpaid apprentices” and bonded to their former owner for four to six years. Approximately 800,000 enslaved Africans were affected, but many parts of the Empire were excluded. It would be another 100 years before the last two British territories, Bahrain and Nigeria, abolished slavery.

As Mona made me aware, the British government did make reparations for slavery: The government borrowed 20 million pounds – three-quarters of which was from Nathan Rothschild and Moses Montefiore7 – which was used to pay the owners of registered slaves. In British Guiana, the average compensation was £50 per slave, equivalent to £7,000 today. The slaves themselves did not receive any form of compensation. (Some say the loan from Rothschild and Montefiore enabled this emancipation8, but it is also possible they were just profiting from it.)

As you know, governments finance debt by issuing bonds and then paying interest on that bond every year. Government debt tends to get bundled together, so it’s hard to track a specific loan, but in 2015, the total redemption value of the debt bundle that contained the Slavery Abolition Act loan reached £218 million pounds. For 180 years, British citizens were still paying reparations to slave owners.

And of course, the US continued its slave trade until the Civil War, which was anything but civil. In August 1862, Abraham Lincoln stated: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it.” In 1863, Lincoln issued his “emancipation proclamation” which declared "that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." As my ninth-grade history teacher pointed out, by singling out the rebellious states, Lincoln freed all the slaves he couldn’t free (i.e. he had no control over them) and didn’t free any of the slaves he could free (as there were still slave States aligned with the North).

It wasn’t until 1865 that the 13th amendment forbid slavery, but the institutional racism it created still defines America. In 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, on average, White individuals have $80,040 in savings, compared to $13,370 for Black individuals. In 2023, home ownership among whites was 72.4%, blacks were 44.7%. In 2022, the infant mortality rate for Black Americans was 2.4 times the rate for whites. 35% of the US population hold a university degree but only 26% of Blacks do. Today, the US government continues to honour individuals who waged an insurrection for the right to keep slaves.

We haven’t abolished slavery so much as abolished the word “slavery.” Today, it goes by terms like human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage and domestic servitude. In the States, the 13th Amendment banned slavery and involuntary servitude "except as punishment for a crime." In California in 2018, 2,500 incarcerated workers fought dangerous wildfires for $1 per hour. Prison labour is rife in the UK, Australia and China. In India, people are used as security against a loan, and even when they die the debts are passed down to relatives. Undocumented immigrants are taken advantage of across the world. In Qatar, there were over 6,500 recorded migrant deaths during the construction of the stadiums for the FIFA 2022 World Cup. Sexual slavery is prevalent in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. 

In 2022, it was estimated 49.6 million people live in modern slavery, roughly a quarter of them children. This includes child trafficking, child soldiers, child marriage and child domestic slavery.9 In the United States between 2002 and 2017, over 200,000 minors were legally married, primarily to adults, with the youngest being only 10 years old.

Coming back to Torah, Tzvi Freeman offers this defense: “The Torah effects change not by imposing an exogenous order, but by revealing the inner, hidden order. The Torah must deal with the world as it is [while] inspiring us with its vision, pulling us into the future.”10 At a time when slaves were considered less than human, Torah reminds us – repeatedly – that we were once slaves and admonishes us to do better. Today, as the problem of slavery has only become worse, it still admonishes us to do better.

I will finish with the lyrics from a song written by Doug Mishkin on his Celebrate Passover album.

Once we were strangers in Egypt

Our people and our land were apart

But when Moses stood before that troubled sea

He made those waters part  

Somewhere tonight lives a free man

Somewhere else freedom’s just a song of the heart

We must find the river flowing between them

And make those waters part

Troubled seas rising around us

Sometimes the Promised Land seems hidden from view

So we retell these stories, that’s how we start

To make those waters part

For more information, including ways you can help, please visit www.endslaverynow.org and https://truah.org/

1.  https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-family-edition/devarim/the-teacher-as-hero/

2.  https://hadar.org/torah-tefillah/resources/opening-our-hearts-and-our-hands

3.  Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 15:12

4.  https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

5.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_slavery

6.  Mishneh Torah, Sefer Kinyan 5:8:14

7.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/45299245

8.  https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

9.  Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage, Geneva, September 2022

10.  https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

Drasha on parasha Chukot (Miriam)

Numbers 20 begins, “The Israelites arrived in…Zin. Miriam died there and was buried there. The community was without water.”

From that, the sages deduced that the Israelites had not complained about water for 40 years because a magical well1 followed Miriam through the desert, and dried up on her death. Is that the most logical deduction? Probably not, but we still put a cup of water on the seder table for Miriam.

So who was Miriam? She is first mentioned in Exodus 2:4, when Moses is put into the basket by the Nile, “And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him.” Miriam is the only sister of Moses mentioned in the Torah, so it is reasonable to assume this is her.

When Pharoah’s daughter finds Moses and realises it is a Hebrew child, Miriam asks, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?” Miriam then calls the child’s mother - her mother - to raise Moses.

Of course, none of this is realistic. Why would a slave girl speak to Pharoah’s daughter? If Pharoah’s daughter realised it was a Hebrew child, and that Pharoah had decreed all Hebrew boys were to be thrown into the Nile, why would she save this one? And why would she need a Hebrew nurse to feed and raise him? Because if that didn’t happen, Moses would not have realised he was a Hebrew, would not have killed the Egyptian beating a Hebrew, would not have fled Egypt, would not have married Zipporah the Cushite, would not have encountered the burning bush and would not have been instructed to return and free the Israelites.

In other words, it’s a MacGuffin, a contrivance that moves the story on. But I digress.

Miriam is first mentioned by name in Exodus 15:20, after the Sea of Reeds: “Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, picked up a hand-drum, and all the women went out after her in dance with hand-drums.” So the first two references to Miriam connect her to water.

It seems odd the Torah mentions Miriam is Aaron’s sister rather than Moses’. The sages teach this is because Miriam was prophesying before Moses was born. Her earliest prophecy, they said, was when she was five years old, that her mother was going to give birth to a son who would free the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage. At the time Aaron was one and Moses would be born two years later.

The Midrash links Miriam and Puah, one of the midwives who disobeyed Pharoah’s command to kill the Hebrew boys, saying they are the same person even though Miriam would have been about five years old at the time!

Another story about Miriam’s wisdom goes:

When the cruel Pharaoh gave the order that all Jewish baby boys should be thrown into the river, her parents decided to separate and have no more children. Being aleader of the Jewish people, Amram had set an example which other Jews were quick to follow, and they too divorced their wives.

The six-year old Miriam said to her father, “Your decree is worse than Pharaoh’s for Pharaoh’s decree was aimed at boys only, while you would prevent both boys and girls from being born.” Amram saw the wisdom of his young daughter and remarried his wife, whereupon the others also remarried their wives. The following year Moses was born.

Miriam then disappears from the Torah for many years, reappearing almost randomly in Numbers 12: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had taken [as his wife]: “He took a Cushite woman!” Adonai called Moses, Aaron and Miriam to the Tent of Meeting like naughty schoolchildren. When Adonai finished scolding them, Miriam was stricken with tzara'at, which is often translated as leprosy but could be any type of rash or skin disease. Tzara'at is often considered to be the punishment for lashon hara, evil speech, which includes gossip, slander, rumours and deceitful speech.

Why didn’t Aaron get punished? Some believe it was because as the High Priest, a skin disease would have left him impure and unable to perform his duties. In any case, Moses intervenes and God heals Miriam but requires her to be isolated for a week. The Israelites wait until Miriam can join them before moving on (possibly because she had the well).

I want to come back to “Cushite” because this is often interpreted as Miriam not approving of Zipporah’s ethnicity or colour. Kush is often understood to be a reference to Nubia, which is modern-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan, indicating Zipporah had very dark skin. However, Rabbi Abraham Ibn [ebun] Ezra notes Zipporah is a Midianite, and Midianites are Arabs, so the complaint could not have been about her ethnicity.

Rashi suggests Miriam is not criticising Moses for marrying a Cushite, but instead for separating from her. There are many discussions about Moses being celibate2; Rashi references Rabbi Nathan, who says:

Miriam was beside Zipporah when Moses was told that Eldad and Medad were prophesying in the camp. When Zipporah heard this, she said, “Woe to their wives if they are required to prophesy, for they will separate from their wives just as my husband separated from me.”3

Finally, Miriam is last mentioned in Deuteronomy 24:9, in a warning about an outbreak of tzara'at: “Remember what your God יהוה did to Miriam on the journey after you left Egypt.” It is not clear if this is a warning to guard against evil speech, or just dealing with skin diseases in general.

Coming back to Miriam’s well, after the Hebrews complained about the lack of water, Adonai told Moses, “Take the rod and assemble the community, and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water.” But Moses…struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, but Adonai said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.”

Why did Moses strike the rock when Adonai told him simply to speak to it? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers a simple explanation: He had just lost his sister. “Bereavement leaves us deeply vulnerable. In the midst of loss we can find it hard to control our emotions. We make mistakes. We act rashly. We suffer from a momentary lack of judgement.”

Aaron, Miriam and Moses died within twelve months of each other. Aaron died on the 1st of Av, Miriam on the 10th of Nissan and Moses on the 7th of Adar. Miriam was 126 or 127. If the 10th of Nissan sounds familiar, it is because it was one year to the day of her death that the Jewish people crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land.

1.  https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3916196/jewish/Miriams-Well-Unravelling-the-Mystery.htm

2.  https://www.thetorah.com/article/moses-separated-from-his-wife-between-greek-philosophy-and-rabbinic-exegesis

3.  Based on Tanchuma Tzav 13 (see https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/4240317/jewish/The-Untold-Story-of-Zipporah-Wife-of-Moses.htm)

Drasha on parasha Naso (priestly blessing)

Three weeks ago, I talked about the Kohanim, so it seems relevant that this week's parashat includes the priestly blessing (In Hebrew: ברכת כהנים, birkat kohanim).

In Orthodox services, Kohanim deliver the priestly blessing during the Amidah. In Progressive Judaism, rabbis often say it at the end of services. Many parents say it to their children on erev Shabbat.

Here are several translations:

The JPS Contemporary Torah:

יהוה spoke to Moses: 

Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel. Say to them:

יהוה bless you and protect you!

יהוה deal kindly and graciously with you! 

יהוה bestow [divine] favor upon you and grant you peace!

Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them.

From the New King James Bible:

"And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying:

Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying: In this way you shall bless the children of Israel; you shall say to them:

May the LORD bless you, and keep you;

May the LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;

May the LORD lift up His face to you, and give you peace.

So shall they put My name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them."

From Mishkan T'filah (page 121)

May God bless you and keep you.

May God's light shine upon you, and may God be gracious to you.

May you feel God's presence within you always, and may you find peace.

From Bob Dylan:

May God bless and keep you always

May your wishes all come true

May you always do for others

And let others do for you

And from Star Trek:

Live long and prosper.

During the High Holy Days, the kohanim spread their hands over the congregation, and the custom is to spread their fingers to form the letter Shin, the same letter found on the mezuzah. Spock used a single-handed version of this gesture for the Vulcan salute. (Both Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner were Jewish.) 

In 1979, two silver scrolls were uncovered at Ketef Hinnom, southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem, which contained a variation of the Priestly Blessing. The amulets were dated paleographically to the late 7th or early 6th century BCE, during the First Temple period, making them the oldest known Biblical text that has been found. 

Of the priestly blessing, Rashi wrote: “Do not bless them in haste, nor in hurried excitement, but with full consciousness (kavannah), and with a whole heart.” 

The text is clear, these blessings come from God, not the priests, and the last line emphasizes this. “Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” Rabbi Neal Loevinger wrote, “In other words, God did not want these ritual leaders to have Divine powers, but rather, a full humanity — and maybe that’s why these words still move us today.”1

Rabbi Alex Israel wrote, “The priests are to bless the people by putting into the public consciousness the notion of God as a source of all goodness. Once the nation understands that their fortunes are intimately tied up with God, then, and only then, will God issue the blessings for the nation”2

Rabbi Elisa Koppel noted the next line after the birkat Kohanim is: “On the day that Moses finished setting up the Tabernacle, he anointed and consecrated it and all its furnishings.”

She writes, “When we bless others, the place in which we find ourselves becomes a holy place. Only after the people have been blessed could the structure that allowed for God to dwell among them be complete. Holy community must precede holy space.”3

Rabbi Lord Sacks wrote, “If you seek to understand a people, look at its prayers. The Jewish people did not ask for wealth or power. They did not hunger after empire. They had no desire to conquer or convert the world. They asked for protection, the right to live true to themselves without fear; for grace, the ability to be an agent for good in others; and peace, that fullness of being in which each of us brings our individual gifts to the common good. That is all our ancestors prayed for, and it is still all we need.”4

And no drasha would be complete without a reference to kabbalah. “koh tevarkhu” (כֹּ֥ה תְבָרְכ֖וּ) is translated as, “thus shall you bless…” The Zohar (III, 146a) says koh is an allusion to the divine light of Creation. The value of koh (כה) is 25; the 25th word of the Torah is “light.” During the High Holy Days, Kabbalah teaches the hands come together in a samekh, not a shin, the only circular letter in the Hebrew alphabet, representing infinite cycles and endless blessings. Sefer haTemunah teaches that the proper shape of a samekh is a combination of a kaf and a vav. Kaf literally means the “palm” of the hand, and the vav represents a shining ray of light. These are the hidden rays of light, the light of koh, emerging through the hands of the kohanim as they bless. It is also why it is customary not to look directly at the kohanim when they relay the blessing, as the hidden light may be far too intense.5

1.  Rabbi Neal J. Loevinger, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/human-vessels-for-blessing/

2.  https://www.etzion.org.il/en/tanakh/torah/sefer-bamidbar/parashat-naso/naso-priestly-blessing-1

3.  Elisa F. Koppel, https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/blessing-faces-and-places

4.  https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/naso/the-priestly-blessings/

5.  https://www.mayimachronim.com/secrets-of-the-priestly-blessing/

Drasha on parasha Emor (Kohanim)

Emor translates to “speak.” It begins with Leviticus (Vayikra) 21:1:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֱמֹ֥ר אֶל־הַכֹּהֲנִ֖ים בְּנֵ֣י אַהֲרֹ֑ן

יהוה said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron

So, who are the Kohanim? The word Kohen derives from a root common to the Central Semitic languages and is used to refer to all priests, Jewish or pagan.1 The first person in the Torah referred to as a priest is in Genesis 14:18 

וּמַלְכִּי־צֶ֙דֶק֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ שָׁלֵ֔ם הוֹצִ֖יא לֶ֣חֶם וָיָ֑יִן וְה֥וּא כֹהֵ֖ן לְאֵ֥ל עֶלְיֽוֹן׃

And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High

Jewish priests are first mentioned in Exodus 19:6

וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ-לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִי,

And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests

In Exodus 13, after the ten plagues and before the sea of reeds, יהוה tells Moses, “Consecrate to Me every male first-born; human and beast, the first [male] issue of every womb among the Israelites is Mine.” The sages interpreted this to mean the first-born males were set aside to be priests.

In Numbers 3, shortly after the Levites joined Moses in the incident of the Golden Calf, יהוה said “I hereby take the Levites from among the Israelites in place of all the male first-born: the Levites shall be Mine.” In Deuteronomy 10:8-11, “the LORD set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant, and to stand before the LORD as his ministers, and to pronounce blessings in his name.” However, the Levites are not referred to as kohanim.

Instead, back in Exodus 28, יהוה says, “You shall bring forward your brother Aaron, with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests.”

Halachically speaking, the kohanim are required to be of direct patrilineal descent from Aaron.2 While there is evidence from Josephus and rabbinic sources that this tradition existed by the end of the Second Temple, a historical-critical reading of the biblical text suggests that the origin of the priesthood is much more complex, and that for much if not all of the First Temple period, kohen was not synonymous with "Aaronide". Rather, this traditional identity seems to have been adopted sometime around the second temple period.

Instead, the “presumption of priestly descent”3 states that a Jewish man is a kohen based not on genealogical records but rather by observation of his priestly behavior as recognized by his peers and community. Once the presumption was made, Maimonides considered it to be in force unless a valid objection to his lineage is made before a Beit Din.

Rabbi Luria (of Lurianic Kabbalah) tells the story of Hai Gaon, who would travel to Jerusalem for Sukkot and circle the Temple Mount with hundreds of kohanim in the company of Elijah the Prophet. One year, a student noticed him laughing during the procession. Asked why, Hai Gaon responded that Elijah revealed to him that, of the hundreds of kohanim that accompanied him in a haughty way, none were legitimate kohanim, except for one kohen who proceeded humbly.

Since men can only inherit a Y chromosome from their father, in 1997 Karl Skorecki and collaborators from Haifa, Israel, hypothesised that sons of Aaron would share similar markers, or haplotypes. In their study, "Y chromosomes of Jewish priests," published in the journal Nature4, they reported 48% of Ashkenazi Kohens and 58% of Sephardic Kohens had the J1 Cohen Modal Haplotype, compared to 5% in the general Jewish population. This indicated a common ancestor from before the destruction of the Second Temple and the Jewish diaspora.

However, further research – including by the original authors – have not only challenged the original conclusions, but shown the opposite: The genealogical record "refutes the idea of a single founder for Jewish Cohanim who lived in Biblical times.”5

Today, in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, kohanim retain a lesser though distinct status, including certain honors and restrictions. When the Torah reading is performed in synagogue, a kohen (if one is present) is called for the first aliyah and a Levite for the second6. The kohanim also deliver the priestly blessing during the repetition of the Amidah. Orthodox rabbis will not perform a marriage between a kohen and a divorced woman7, and kohanim may avoid corpses except for immediate family members. Kohen only refers to men although some Conservative synagogues will allow a “bat kohen” to take the first aliyah and perform the priestly blessing8.

Reform Judaism does not afford any special status or recognition to kohanim. 

Given all the above, we might expect kohanim to be somewhat rare. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, Cohen is the most common surname in Israel9. (The next most common is Levy.)

1.  See Genesis 14:18, 41:45,50, 46:20, 47:22,26; Exodus 2:16, 3:1,18:1; et al.

2.  Mark Leuchter (2021). "How All Kohanim Became Sons of Aaron". TheTorah.com

3.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_priestly_descent

4.  https://www.nature.com/articles/385032a0

5.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron

6.  https://jewishaction.com/religion/jewish-law/whats-truth-giving-levi-first-aliyah/

7.  https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/468267/jewish/Kohen-Marriages.htm

8.  http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuvot/docs/19912000/rabinowitz_women.pdf

9.  Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), 2019