On Bechukotai and the Valuing of Females

Bechukotai, Leviticus 26:3-27:34, was read in synagogues around the world on May 24, 2025.  As I have mentioned in past blogs, my timing is somewhat off in my attempt to finish my (eco)feminist commentary on all 54 of the parshot.  Bechukotai discusses the consequences of both following and ignoring the commandments.  For those of you who have been following along with these commentaries, you could probably already tell me how this parshah is going to go.  If you have guessed follow the rules and live and eat well in the land or don’t and be exiled, sick, starving, and so on, then you have guessed correctly.  As this is the case, this thinking betrays a certain logic, common to the ancient world and its understanding of flourishing or lack thereof.  I have written about this numerous times on this site (see here for what is perhaps my most thorough explanation).  Yet, Bechutokai also makes some rather interesting comments about women, and that will be my focus for today’s post.

Women appear three times within the parshah.  First, in 26:26, women are acknowledged as the bakers of bread, who will be forced to share one oven, (which as Rashi explains would have been because of a lack of firewood), and whose bread will not be satiating.  Perhaps this also means that there will not be enough bread to truly feel full on.  The meaning is not clear; Rashi suggests that the bread will feel lacking in the stomach due to a curse put onto the grain.  This curse is one of the many punishments inflicted on the Israelites for disobedience.  What I find interesting here is the way in which the women are both affected by the disobedience (they now only have one oven to bake all the bread within), but also they are not the intended audience of the food or at least not the intended audience that is important to the authors of the Torah.  It is the men who, as we saw in last month’s post, count.  But, how will the women feel when they eat the bread?  How does it feel to have their work so affected?  We are not told.

The second mention of women in Bechukotai relates to cannibalism (26:29), again due to food scarcity.  The Israelites will be forced to eat their daughters and sons.  Perhaps this is included not because it actually ever happened, but to suggest just how dire the consequences of certain actions are and how fierce the divine wrath may become.  This idea is supported in verse 26:41, where the deity acts in proportion to the severity of the Israelite betrayal, or at least that is how I read it.  If this is the case, then, most likely, the threat of such desperate situations was meant to inspire adherence to the commandments.

The final mention of women in the parshah is sadly the most problematic.  Here, there is a discussion of worth of females and males in literal monetary amounts.  The terms used for female in the parshah is נקבה (pronounced n’keva) and refers to the biological sex of the individual.  For males, the term זכר (pronounced zaḥar) is used, again referring to the biological sex.  Males from the ages of 20 to 60 are valued at 50 sh’kalim (27:3), whereas females are valued at 30 (27:4).  A 5 to 20 year old male’s value is 20 sh’kalim and female’s 10 (27:5).  Male children from 1 to 5 years old are 5 sh’kalim and female children of the same age are 3 (27:6).  Only later in life do the values seem to be more equal: males over 60 are valued at 15 sh’kalim and females 10 (27:7).  Even Rashi acknowledges as much.  He points out that percentage-wise males depreciate more in value over their lives compared to females. See his commentary to verse 27:7.  While it may be laudable to see that both males and females can participate fully in the religious endowments (whatever those may be), the wide gulf between the worth of males and females is astounding.  To me, this section of Bechukotai is the most blatant example of sexism I have read in the Torah thus far. I am deeply saddened and enraged by such bold, unapologetic terms.    

What else is interesting is the use of biological gender to make these distinctions.  The use of the term female is used 22 times in the Torah according to my search here, and four of these 22 times are here.  Another reference is in the first creation story to distinguish between human beings, when ironically they were both made at the same time as equals (Genesis 1:27).  Three other references refer to the breeding pairs of animals gathered into the ark (Genesis 7:3, 9, and 16).  I had not thought of the specific ways biological sex is referred to in the Torah compared to gendered roles until now.  

This has lead me to the conclusion that this link of biological sex to the value of the human being then has nothing to do with the actual work individuals do in their community, meaning that the least contributing male is still valued higher than the most contributing female.  Yet, this is counter to Rashi’s conclusion in his commentary to verse 27:7.  He directly relates the lower value of older male members of the household to them being less productive as they age whereas older females are “treasures and good omens… providing blessing in the house.”  However, he does not comment on the productivity or roles of females or males in the other verses, only when the male’s value decreases comparatively more than the females.  Clearly, the other instances of sexism were not an issue for him and only became an issue when it appeared to affect older males. There is more I could say here about the connection between female humans and female animals, but I will leave that for another blog.

Bechukotai is a parshah in which women, their work, their feelings, their bodies, and their biological differences from males are ignored and devalued.  The parshah contains the literal monetary devaluing of the female half of humanity.  Usually, I find something in the parshah to redeem the general misogyny of the Torah, but this time I feel we should all sit in the sexism that we find in Bechukotai in all of its unholy demeaning of half of humanity.  

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And, know that you are valuable regardless of the sex you have been assigned at birth.