Rabba Daphne Lazar Price
This week’s Torah portion is Vayelech: Deuteronomy 31:1 – 30
Parshat Vayelech is deceptively short, but its impact is profound. In just 30 verses, Moses prepares for his death, hands leadership to Joshua and establishes rituals meant to outlast him.
Moses tells the people “I am 120 years old today. I can no longer go out and come in” (Deuteronomy 31:2). He knows his time is ending. He knows he will not cross the Jordan. He knows he is mortal. But he also knows that the covenant must survive him. His final acts are about ensuring continuity of leadership, of Torah, and of the people’s relationship with God. Joshua is then formally charged with leadership, encouraged to be “strong and courageous” (Deuteronomy 31:7). But the most striking detail of Vayelech is about Hak-hel, the once-in-seven-years ritual of collective Torah study. Moses commands that at the end of every seventh year, during Sukkot, the entire people must gather in Jerusalem, “Men, women, children and the stranger within your gates” (Deuteronomy 31:12). There, the Torah will be read aloud.
On the surface, this sounds like a public reading. But the Torah’s language is deliberately expansive. It names categories of people that were often excluded: women, children and strangers. Those without political power, legal standing, or economic independence are nonetheless central to the septennial ritual of covenantal renewal.
Why these groups? The rabbis ask this question too. If children cannot yet understand, why must they be present? The Babylonian Talmud in Chagigah 3a explains that they should be present in order “to give reward to those who bring them.” But I would argue that the deeper lesson is about presence. A child does not need to grasp every word in order to absorb that they belong amidst this people, this nation. A woman does not need to wield political authority in order to claim her place in the covenant. A stranger does not need to be Jewish in order to hear Torah and be shaped by its ethical imperatives.
This is radical. In the ancient world, gatherings of consequence almost always excluded women, children and outsiders. Political assemblies, military councils and many rituals were the exclusive domain of men. But the Torah insists otherwise. At Hak-hel, the covenant is reaffirmed not in the exclusive chamber of priests but in the public square, with everyone standing together. Torah is not a possession of elites, rather it is the inheritance of the entire people.
From a feminist perspective, this resonates powerfully. For centuries, Jewish learning was treated as the domain of men. Women were often praised for piety and their support for men’s learning but discouraged from their own Torah study. Authority flowed through pulpits, houses of study and rabbinic courts — where women’s presence was virtually nonexistent and their voices were rarely heard. Yet here, in the closing chapters of the Torah itself, women’s presence is required in the ritual that reaffirms Jewish collective identity.
This Hak-hel moment is about communal learning and communal responsibility. Justice, compassion and reverence are not values to be hidden away. Torah is meant to be loudly proclaimed and lived by all who dwell in the community’s midst.
In our own time, we might think of who is still missing when we gather. Do we make space for the differently abled, who may not enter easily into our sanctuaries or classrooms? Do we welcome converts as equal inheritors of Torah? Do we hear the voices of women and girls not only in theory but in leadership and authority?
Moses already knows the people will falter after his death. God tells him plainly that they will turn toward foreign gods. Leaders cannot prevent human weakness. But Moses establishes a framework that is stronger than any one leader: a cycle of gathering together, recitation, remembrance, and renewal designed such that each individual carries responsibility.
As an Orthodox feminist leader, I see Hak-hel as more than an ancient ritual. It is a blueprint for how we must gather today. Vayelech teaches that covenant is strongest when it is claimed by the many. And that remains our charge: to ensure that when we gather, we do so with courage, with inclusivity and with the unshakable belief that Torah belongs to us all.
Rabba Daphne Lazar Price is the executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and an adjunct professor of Jewish law at Georgetown University Law Center.
