Noa, at six­teen, sets out with the twelve tribes of the Exo­dus, dream­ing of a life of free­dom and the Promised Land that her father says will be theirs. When reli­gious fanat­ics kill her father, Noa and her four sis­ters are in dan­ger of being sold into bondage. Noa vows to win wom­en’s rights of inher­i­tance to pro­tect her sis­ters and her­self. In her quest for jus­tice, Noa faces fam­i­ly rival­ries, polit­i­cal trick­sters, and an unbend­ing patri­ar­chal sys­tem. Plead­ing her case before ever-high­er courts, Noa encoun­ters a mali­cious judge. When she mut­ters a curse against him and he dies, she is charged with witchcraft.

Gain­ing strength and com­plex­i­ty as she approach­es the high­est judge, Noa and her pur­suit caus­es tur­moil among the tribes: she is a noto­ri­ous trou­ble­mak­er, and she is hero­ic. Based on a few bib­li­cal vers­es (Num­bers 27:1 – 7), the tur­bu­lence of Noa’s life is set against the sweep­ing tur­bu­lence of the Exo­dus. In Judg­ing Noa, her quest for jus­tice is a jour­ney that has as much mean­ing today as it did then.