Parshat Miketz: Celebrating our daughters
By the time Abraham achieved advanced old age, the Torah informs us, God had blessed the patriarch “ba-kol — in all things” (Genesis 24:1). This assertion scandalized certain talmudic sages, who protested that Scripture mentions no daughter born to Abraham. How could a man without a daughter possibly be described as blessed “in all things”?!
Rabbi Yehuda insisted that “ba-kol — in all things” of necessity indicates that Abraham did indeed have a daughter (Baba Batra 16b). Others doubled down, explaining that “Bakol” was the name of that daughter: “God blessed Abraham with Bakol!” These views anticipated the wisdom of the Greek dramatist Euripides: “To a father growing older, nothing is dearer than a daughter.”
A little-known observance worthy of our renewed attention is “Chag Ha-Banot” — the “Festival of Daughters” — celebrated each year on Rosh Chodesh Tevet, which always falls during Chanukah. This year we celebrate this filial festival on Tuesday, December 31. Also known as Rosh Chodesh La-Banot, and in Arabic as Eid al-Banat, the celebration was long popular in North Africa, among the Jews of Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco — thus the Arabic designation. The sadly neglected holiday is enjoying a welcome resurgence among Jewish feminists and is still faithfully celebrated by Jews of Tunisian origin in France and Israel.
A special liturgical poem customarily is recited before lighting Chanukah candles on the eve of Chag Ha-Banot, as is a “Misheberach Imoteinu” — a blessing invoking the Four Matriarchs. Some households dedicate each individual Chanukah candle in honor of a specific woman or group of women on this special night. In certain communities, historically, parents would take their daughters to the synagogue, where they would sing and dance, kiss the Torah scrolls, pray for good health, and receive the rabbi’s blessing. To mark the occasion, mothers give special gifts to their daughters, and husbands give loving gifts to their wives: “Many daughters have done superbly, but you surpass them all” (Proverbs 31:29).
Girls and women who have experienced interpersonal conflict or suffered a falling-out seek principled reconciliation in honor of Chag Ha-Banot.
Parshat Miketz, which all but invariably coincides with Chanukah, may well have inspired the gift-giving associated with this mid-Chanukah celebration of daughters. It is in Parshat Miketz that we read of Joseph’s remarkable rise to prominence in Pharaoh’s court. He is rewarded with power, public adulation, and an Egyptian name: Tzafenat Paneach. Joseph is also given Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, the Priest of On, in marriage, further confirming his now lofty aristocratic status (Genesis 41:45).
A number of midrashic sources (Soferim 21:9; Pirkei Rabbi Eliezer 38) preserve a fascinating tradition about Asenath, Joseph’s ostensibly Egyptian bride. They assert that she had been adopted and raised by Potiphera, though actually she had been born to Dinah, daughter of Jacob. Joseph married not merely the daughter of an Egyptian priest, but a granddaughter of Jacob, a party to the chosen, covenantal line. Furthermore, it should be noted, marriage to one’s own niece (especially a sororal niece) is treated in rabbinic literature as a particularly desirable and reliably loving match (Yevamot 62b-63a).
How did Joseph find his Israelite bride among all the Egyptian aristocracy? The midrash explains that Jacob had lovingly presented Asenath with a gift: a gold amulet bearing the Tetragrammaton — the ineffable, holy, four-letter Name of God — which she wore around her neck without fail. When Pharaoh offered the newly ascendant Joseph his choice of Egyptian brides, Joseph saw God’s name inscribed on Asenath’s necklace and understood that Providence had sent her to her aristocratic, adoptive family “for just such an occasion” (compare Esther 4:15).
Thanks to Jacob’s prescient and sensitive gift, a grateful Joseph realized that his marriage to Asenath was God’s will. Asenath went on to become the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh, and is thus to be counted together with Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah as among the progenitresses of the 12 tribes.
This coming Tuesday, December 31, will be celebrated by many as New Year’s Eve. This year, however, Jewish tradition beckons us to mark that day, Rosh Chodesh Tevet, as Chag Ha-Banot, a sacred opportunity to reflect on the profound blessing that all the daughters in our lives represent. In the spirit of the midrash, our celebration of Chag Ha-Banot recalls Jacob’s loving, impactful, and fateful gift to his daughter’s daughter, Asenath.
May Parshat Miketz and Chag Ha-Banot thus remind us that the most precious gift we can bestow on our daughters — as on our sons — is a vivid sense of God’s presence, an intimate connection to God’s Name, and an unassailable faith that they are each an indispensable part of God’s plan.
As we begin 2025, may we strive for precisely that gold standard of spiritual clarity.
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