Jane Trigere Art

Parshat Noach, 2009

Posted on October 24, 2009 Updated on October 19, 2018

As you just heard from Ruth Katzner, October is Domestic Violence Awareness month in the US and our CBI taskforce decided to do a d’var Torah to help raise awareness of this difficult issue in our own Jewish community.

I was assigned Parshat Noach and wondered how I would make this work.

This is a parsha with lots of measuring and building going on. It begins with the story of Noach and the command to build the ark, collect all the animals … and ends with the dispersion of the people after the skyscraper debacle of the Tower of Babel. Not too obviously promising for my theme…

But something did catch my eye and got me started in my exploration. The rabbis also noted this curious detail.

• God commands that Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives should go into the ark that Noach is to build (Gen 6:18).
• Two more times (Gen 7:7; 7:13) we are told that Noah, his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives enter the ark.
• One year later God tells them to go forth out of the ark…but this time it is: Noach, his wife, his sons and his sons’ wives. (Gen 8:16)Why the change of order?

Textual inconsistencies are what Bible commentators live for! This is, after all, how midrash is created… to explain the quirky, the alternate spelling, the missing person, and to build meaning out of sometimes obscure stuff.

• The animals entered the ark as commanded two by two, male and female of each species.
• But the humans are told to enter first males and then the females. Not as couples.
• One year later there has been, miraculously, no procreation among the humans nor the animals.
• The change of word order is explained by Rashi to mean… that there was sexual abstinence during the entire time they were in the ark.
• The humans were so busy feeding the animals day and night that there was no time for sleep or sex.
• That the animals did not procreate was a miracle, although one rabbinic reading suggests that the animals were also gender separated during the entire year. This would, of course, remove the need for miracles!

A year of abstinence does not explain to me why they leave the ark as couples… two by two. What happened during this terribly confining year on the ark, during which they became the only humans in the world?

• There is a parallel story of destruction and a select few survivors. And that is: Lot and the destruction of Sodom.
• Both Lot and Noach are chosen by God to survive the destruction of their extremely corrupt worlds. Both found comfort in wine and oblivion.

Leaving Lot’s unfortunate daughters and Noach’s strapping sons aside for now… let’s focus on Mrs. Lot and Mrs. Noach—two women with no names.

• The rabbis give them names but they don’t work at all for me.
• What are they doing while Noach and Lot get directions from God or angels and are busy building or negotiating?
• What would you be doing if you were told that the world or your city was going to be destroyed?
• When we move to new places or into new relationships, what gets left behind and what do we choose to take along?

Lot and his family are repeatedly told not to look back at Sodom being destroyed. Mrs. Lot can’t help herself and she gets turned into a pillar of salt. Sodom was supposedly a disgusting, corrupt place and yet she looks back. What did she hope to see? What did she leave behind that she longed for?

Noach’s ark was built with no windows—only a sky light. They were not going to be able to see the destruction of all they had known, the drowning death of their neighbors, of the animals, the submerging of their villages.

They are spared the horror.

So what do we:

• Take along: Memories, photos, a culture, perhaps a story of who we are.
• Leave behind: material stuff, burdens, obligations, neighbors, some friends, a culture, a name perhaps.
• And the stuff that comes along even when we try to discard it? Personality, shticks, relationship issues, and memories

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Getting back to my question of rank and gender order…

Besides feeding the animals, what did Noach and Mrs. Noach do during that year together? Something happened or changed… that is for sure.

Was it like a retreat where husband and wife could focus on each other without the grotesque distraction of the corrupt world around them?

Or did they fall in love again after years of dull routine?

Was it an ‘age’ thing, where Noach and his wife had more in common with each other than he with his sons, and she with her daughters-in-law? The younger folk get to walk out of the ark as couples, too.

Sometimes home is a retreat, a refuge… but sometimes it isn’t… it can be a prison.
What was the ark?

The ark year seems to have been a good thing for Mr. & Mrs. Noach. They walked out hand-in-hand, knowing they had been saved by God to care for the new world. Noach sacrificed to God and planted the first-ever vineyard. And then became drunk…and well, that’s another story and a painful one, too.

I never understood why God didn’t just recreate humans from earth again instead of saving a few flawed ones.

We never hear of Mrs. Noach again. The story reverts to the male descendants. In fact why did we need Mrs. Noach at all? The only reason I can see is that everyone must have his or her mate on the ark. And there is a midrash on that, too.

One midrash says that Deceit wanted to get on the ark but was rejected because he had no mate. He invited Want to be his mate. They struck a deal for eternity: Whatever Deceit acquires, Want takes away. Together they got on board and are still with us.

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Let us look at 3 more couples.

1. Sarah is barren but Abraham never prays to God for her. He will intercede on behalf of many people but not for his wife. Indeed God’s promise of countless descendants makes no sense if Sarah is to remain barren.

He endangers Sarah on their visit to Egypt by insisting she pretend to be his sister lest Pharaoh kill him to get her for himself. At 65 she must have made quite an impression! And Avraham repeats the subterfuge with Abimelech.

What does one say about such a relationship?

Unlike Mrs. Noach, Sarah is essential to the story. Although Avraham has his son Ishmael, God’s covenantal promise is through Sarah, not Hagar. -Avraham seems somewhat incidental. God tells him to listen to Sarah’s words. This is a partnership of equals, who have traveled a long way together and together have brought followers to their God. They are alienated from their past together. They are barren together. And then they are fruitful. It is a strange and poignant balance.

Isaac is born to them after the physical covenant is made with Avraham.

By the way, Sarah also disappears from the story after the Akeda. Midrashim abound! Isaac feels his mother’s loss profoundly; her tent awaits Isaac’s bride.

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2. Rebecca is also barren, but Isaac “entreats the Lord for his wife” (Gen. 25:21) and she conceives. This is an arranged marriage that is a story of love—if not exactly a love-story. Rebecca eagerly leaves her home to be with this distant cousin. When she and Avraham’s servant Eliezer approach Isaac after the long journey, she asks, Who is that man?
Rashi says: She saw him majestic and she was dumbfounded in his presence.

Aviva Zornberg writes that what Rebecca sees in Isaac is “the vital anguish at the heart of his prayers.” She comes from a different place, “the sunlit world of hesed (loving-kindness)” and although they are a monogamous couple, they never quite understand each other.

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3. Jacob and Rachel are also cousins. He does not pray for his barren wife although she pleads with him: Give me children or else I die.

He responds: Am I in God’s stead who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?

How can he speak to her this way? This is the woman he adores, for whom he has worked 14 years. Rachel does as Sarah did and offers Jacob her handmaiden Bilha. Rachel manages to conceive after she prays for herself.

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Let’s go back to my second theme: What did each take along or leave behind?

• Abraham and Sarah left everything behind to start anew together as equal partners.
• Isaac has been stripped of everything except the tremendous burden of his inheritance. He waits for someone or something to complete him.
• Rebecca jumped at the chance to leave her parents and follow the servant who brought so many gifts. Was this gracious and out-going woman striking out on her own, or running away from her difficult family?
• Jacob leaves home with nothing except the stolen blessing from his father. But he carries with him great fear of Esau’s vengeance.
• What caused Rachel to steal her father’s gods when they leave the only home she has ever known?

When or how do we make ourselves ready for important journeys—real or metaphoric?
What do we need to take with us and what are we willing to leave behind?
When we go, are we primarily moving away from something or toward something?
How to let go, in order to be able to take hold…

We find ourselves in these stories, in these mythic individuals, and their predicaments. The information we have in the Torah about couples is sparse and terse. What we know about the people in our families and in our community is often also sparse and terse and simply hard to really understand.

And what about ourselves?

Are we able to look at our own journeys and choices in a dispassionate and creative way? Can we fill in the details with midrash to help us continue our journeys, or to help us change the journey?

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I’ll end with a Midrash

Now Mrs. Noach was past child-bearing age when the world began anew. Her sons had married fine women and they started their respective families. But Noach was hard to talk to after the flood.

During the year on the ark, they had worked hard and always together.

And they had talked while they worked. They talked of their hopes for the future, for their future grandchildren.

They remembered together their youthful days when they worked the land and struggled to feed the growing boys.

But now, Noach was quiet and kept to himself. He planted a vineyard by himself; a whole vineyard! Who ever heard of such a thing? He harvested the grapes and made wine and nearly every night he drank himself into oblivion. This was not the man she had loved. She did not understand him.

She had left the ark full of hope and now she was more alone than ever. The Lord blessed Noach and her sons and told them to multiply. She was past all that and wondered what exactly God had in mind for her.

And so one day, Mrs. Noach took a walk and kept on going. She never looked back… and no one ever came looking for her. One day, a dove circled overhead and alighted on a nearby branch. The dove seemed to be cooing… something about Noach… that he was unwell and had cursed their youngest son…and then it flew away.

Mrs. Noach was not sure she had understood, but found herself humming softly as she walked, and after awhile, as the path got easier, her voice became full and her singing filled the air.

Aharei Mot & Kedoshim, 2009

Posted on May 2, 2009 Updated on October 19, 2018

Today’s double parshiot, Aharei Mot & Kedoshim are all about Holiness.

How to become Holy and stay Holy.

I want to review the highlights of the reading and then focus on what I have been studying this month.

In Aharei Mot, we begin, importantly, with a reminder of the death of Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu and God’s command to Moses to tell his brother Aaron to be careful when to go into the holy of holies to avoid a death like his sons’.

The rituals of the High Priest on Yom Kippur follow. Today’s parsha is, in fact, the one we read on Yom Kippur. The reading of this ritual became a stand-in for the actual ritual that can no longer be performed since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. We get a description of the special holy white linen garments the High Priest puts on. And by the way, we will all be dressed this way eventually, because these clothes are the model for the shrouds that Jews wear when they are buried.

28 verses describe the sacrifices (lots of blood and guts and really strange rituals), the changing of garments, etc. and the commandment that we must do these Yom Kippur rituals “for all time.”

The Parsha continues with prohibitions against drinking blood, against being like the other peoples and following their ways, and a long list (13 verses) of whose “nakedness” one may or may not uncover. A fool-proof system for controlling appetites and protecting familial lines & societal order.

But there are many more prohibitions:

• No sex with…
  • menstruating women,
  • your neighbor’s wife,
  • a man as with a woman,
  • animals;
• No sacrificing your children to Moloch;
• Do not profane God’s name;
• Do not defile the land or it will spew you out, and you will be cut off from your people.

Kedoshim, the second parsha has more laws about how to be holy.
It is the Holiness Code: an expansion of the 10 commandments:

• Revere your parents;
• No idols;
• Sacrificing correctly;
• Leave the corners of the fields and fallen fruit for gleaners and the poor;
• Don’t steal;
• Don’t deal falsely;
• Do not profane God’s name;
• Don’t defraud or rob;
• Pay your workers promptly;
• Don’t insult the deaf… nor place stumbling blocks before the blind;
• Don’t judge unfairly; don’t favor the poor nor show deference to the rich;
• Don’t profit at the expense of others;
• Don’t hate;
• But do reprove your kinsman;
• No vengefulness or grudge-bearing;
• Don’t mix species. …animals, nor seeds, nor 2 kinds of material in your clothes;
• Make amends for improper behaviors;
• Pick fruit from trees that are 5 years or older;
• Do not eat blood;
• No magic, divination, speaking to ghosts, etc.;
• Do not cut the hair from the sides of your head and beard;
• Do not cut nor tattoo yourself;
• Do not prostitute your daughter;
• Keep the Sabbath and venerate the sanctuary;
• Show respect to the elderly;
• Be kind to the stranger for you were once a stranger in Egypt;
• No false weights & measures;
• Be honest.
• Again, no offering of one’s children to Moloch.

Now, to my topic.

I was intrigued by the ritual of the two goats. There are many examples of “twosomes” in the Tanach and some of them have a connection to these two goats and what they represent. First the goats and what happens to them:

Leviticus 16: 5-10

And from the Israelite community he shall take two he-goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. ⁶ Aaron is to offer his own bull of sin offering, to make expiation for himself and for his household. ⁷ Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting; ⁸ and he shall place lots upon the two goats, one marked for the Lord and the other marked for Azazel. ⁹ Aaron shall bring forward the goat designated by lot for the Lord, which he is to offer as a sin offering; ¹⁰ while the goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be left standing alive before the Lord, to make expiation with it and to send it off to the wilderness for Azazel.

Lev 16:15

¹⁵ He shall then slaughter the people’s goat of sin offering, bring its blood behind the curtain (parochet), and do with its blood as he has done with the blood of the bull: he shall sprinkle it over the cover (kaporet) and in front of the cover.

Lev 16: 20-22

²⁰ When he has finished purging the Shrine, the Tent of Meeting, and the altar, the live goat shall be brought forward. ²¹ Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. ²² Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.

The Hebrew for this “wilderness” is called Azazel. In English we call the second goat the scapegoat, as in the one who escapes.

The word “Scapegoat” is an inaccurate translation of the word Azazel.

In 1530, when William Tyndale translated the Bible into English, he understood the word Azazel as ez ozel – literally, “the goat that departs”; therefore “(e)scape goat.” This was adopted in the King James version in 1611. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But the Talmud (Yoma 67b) says it is a contraction of az (harsh) and eil (strong) and points to a rugged mountain. This explication is seconded by Rashi, who said it was the name of a specific mountain or cliff over which the goat was driven.

Another English scholar (R.H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Oxford) said it was the home of the fallen angel Azazel. Modern scholars generally reject Tyndale’s (e)scape goat interpretation and favor the fallen angel/evil demon version.

In modern Hebrew we now hear lekh la-Azazel (“go to Azazel”), as in “go to hell“.

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So let us look at some of those other interesting twosomes…

Keep in mind the preference for flesh and blood offerings versus milder vegetation ones. Note the wilderness option and what all these things mean in each story. In all cases, except the last, the 10 commandments and the holiness code we read today had not yet been given.

Cain and Abel

Cain was a tiller of the soil and his younger brother was a shepherd. They both made offerings to God; Cain presented “fruit of the ground” and Abel presented an animal. Abel’s offering was accepted but not Cain’s. Cain murders his brother in jealousy and when God asks him where his brother is he cries out: Am I my brother’s keeper?” God says that Abel’s blood cries out to him from the ground. So Cain finally has his blood sacrifice but God is not pleased. Rather he is sent out to be a “ceaseless wanderer on the earth. This is a coded story I think. Two males of a species; indeed—two brothers; one is sacrificed and the other is sent out to the wilderness—much like the two Yom Kippur goats.

Ishmael and Isaac

Isaac is nearly sacrificed by his father. A ram miraculously appears and is substituted for the boy. But earlier it was Ishmael who is sent to the wilderness to fend for himself and probably die. God saves him but he lives apart mostly. God then tests Abraham’s faith by ordering a human sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham passes the test by agreeing to God’s demand. Here is a decisive moment that tests faith but comes down on the side of animal instead of human sacrifice. Two males of a species; indeed—two brothers; one is nearly sacrificed and the other is sent out to the wilderness—much like the two Yom Kippur goats.

Esau and Jacob

Jacob is known for cooking red lentils and Esau for his hunting skills and roasted meat he prepares for his father Isaac. Esau is the first-born twin and his father’s favorite. Jacob and their mother Rebecca trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing of the first-born. The mother provides and prepares the meat. We are now in the third generation and there is a blending of the various options. We are the descendants of Jacob, not Esau. His is not to be our path. Esau is a man of this world, of the earth, of passions and he is pained by his loss and goes his way. Jacob, the future God-wrestler, grabs what is needed for his journey—the birthright. And then he must leave far away to escape his brother fury. Sacrifice becomes something different—more akin to how we use the word today. And wilderness is something that exists between known places… perhaps the wildness between frightened and angry brothers.

Two males of a species, indeed—two brothers; their relationship is sacrificed and they both go out to the wilderness—both Yom Kippur goats.

Joseph and his Brothers

First-born of Rachel but eleventh son of Jacob, Joseph is “sacrificed” by his brothers. They argue the possibilities: kill him or sell him. Joseph is sold, but the brothers slaughter an animal and soak Joseph’s coat in the blood to explain his “death” to their father Jacob. Joseph becomes both goats—the sacrifice and the expiation. A long journey far from home and family, a wilderness of loneliness eventually puts Joseph in the right place at the right time to forgive and redeem his brothers. Brothers, indeed—but the sacrifice and the redemption are all in Joseph.

Nadav and Avihu

And now back to the parsha…

We have seen that those who become close …karov …to God become the actual korban…the sacrifice. This was no accident. They brought their fire to God’s fire and the intensity was fatal. Their death it seems was a sacrifice necessary to properly sanctify the Mizbeah and future Temple. After all, the word Sacrifice means to perform a sacred ceremony (in Latin: sacrum facere)

Moses said to his brother: “Of this did God speak, saying: ‘I will be sanctified through those who are nearest Me, thus I will be honored before the entire people.’ And Aaron was silent.” (Leviticus 10:3)

Moses must have thought this would mean himself and maybe Aaron too. Two brothers.

A midrash explains.

Moses told Aaron: “Aaron, my brother, I knew that the Temple would be sanctified through someone very holy and close to God. I thought it had to be either you or me … but now I see that they, Nadav and Avihu, are greater than we are [as they were selected].” (Talmud, Zevochim 115b)

And so it seems, Nadav and Avihu were also scapegoats of a sort; their deaths were required to inaugurate the Temple for the rest of us. Their brothers Eleazar & Ithamar will take over.

We know that the Lord is our shepherd.

One last thought.

Today was brought to you by the letters: Kaf Pey Resh & Tav.
I want to bring your attention the permutations and what they might indicate.

Kippur meaning atonement and Kapara meaning Sacrifice are both Kaf, Pey, Resh.

The High Priest enters the Holy of Holies alone only once a year on Yom Kippur. This is where the gold covered box holding the tablets of the law is kept. The cover of the box is called the Kaporet (Kaf, Pey, Resh & Tav)

Part of the sacrifice ritual includes putting blood on this cover.

In front of this is the ark curtain, Parochet in Hebrew. (Pey, Resh, Khaf, Tav)

Same letters; different order.
Behind the Parochet is the Kaporet.

You may have heard of the ritual of Kaporet? Get a chicken, swing it around over your head to indicate that it covers you or takes on your sins, then slaughter it. Still done today in Orthodox communities, it is a sacrifice done to expiate one’s sins. The animal is a substitute for us.

Therefore the Holy of Holies is also called Beit Kaporet (house of the cover or house of sacrifice).

I understand now that something terribly important happens every year between the curtain and the cover — between the Parochet and the Kaporet:

It is a reversal that is truly transformational…
It is redemption.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dvar Vayetzei, 2008

Posted on December 6, 2008 Updated on October 19, 2018

Vayetze! (And he left) What a Parsha! Let’s review a summary:

• Jacob leaves home to escape his brother Esau’s vengeance, and to find a wife among his cousins in Haran.
• He has a dream that marks the spot where divinity abides.
• He arrives in Haran with no gifts and falls in love at first sight with his cousin Rachel by the well.
• He spends 20 years in exile in Haran—years and pages filled haggling with Laban for wives and for sheep and goats. And the wives barter for their time with Jacob.
• He fathers 12 children with 4 women… 11 sons & 1 daughter.
• Jacob leaves again… actually…he escapes again…

or runs away from Laban with all his wives, children, servants and flocks.

• He negotiates a treaty with Laban, who sets a boundary which neither of them will cross.
• The Parsha ends just before Jacob prepares to return and meet with Esau. He becomes Israel after a transformational struggle with a “messenger.” But that’s next week!

What I left out …
are the enticing details that we and the rabbis have been pondering ever since.

Here are 10 of them:

— Is Jacob the trickster who gets justifiably tricked in return? (fooling his father is followed later by getting the wrong bride) Is he genetically bound to be devious as the son of the wily Rebecca and the nephew of the insatiable and untrustworthy Laban, a man who makes up the rules as he goes along?

— Or, alternatively …is Jacob fulfilling the message from God to his mother Rebecca…the one she heard when she was pregnant with twins… that the older will serve the younger.

Is God’s plan put into action through dubious but necessary human maneuvers?

— What happens to Rebecca & Isaac after Jacob leaves home? They are stuck with the embittered older son, Esau, the 3 unfavorable daughters-in-law. They never see Jacob again, nor his wives, nor their grandchildren. This is a tremendous sacrifice ( I use the word intentionally) to fulfill the covenantal promise. There is room here for a midrash!

— Do the stones Jacob sets out at the beginning of the parsha marking the gateway to heaven of his ladder & angel dream have anything to do with the stones at the end of the parsha that Laban sets up as a boundary marker?

— And why are 20 years of negotiating with Laban important in the Jacob’s story? Why does Laban merit hearing God speak to him? And why does he not give up his idols after this revelation?

— What do women have to do with sheep and goats? Rachel (rahel) means ewe lamb (a baby female sheep). Laban and Jacob argued and negotiated about all of them—women, sheep and goats.

— Here’s a good one:

Two sisters become wives to one man. One is loved and the other isn’t. One has children and the other is barren. What is that about?Ruth Ever’s father taught us last week in his wonderful dvar that barrenness followed by births in our Matriarchs is nature’s course being altered by God at His will. And prayer paving the way.

Mr. Ever spoke of the order reversal of older and younger siblings as being God’s decisions despite the social order of the time… and indeed assurance that, as Jews in minority status, we will survive and thrive. These sibling reversals & struggles permeate the Bible: Cain and Abel. Yishmael and Isaac. Esau and Jacob. Tamar’s twins Peretz and Zerach. Aaron and Moses. And, of course, Leah and Rachel.

— Why is the beloved Rachel not buried next to her husband in the family tomb, and Leah is? There in Hevron are Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Leah. But Rachel is buried on the road near Bethlehem where she died ironically and poignantly in child birth.

— All the mothers get to name their children. The names are related to the mothers’ feelings or longings: See a Son, God heard, My husband will be attached to me, Praise God, What luck!, What fortune!, God has rewarded me, My husband will exalt me, etc. Before she dies, Rachel calls her 2^nd baby Ben-Oni “son of my sorrow,” but Jacob translates Oni as “of my strength. And yamin from Ben-yamin means “right” as in right hand, the hand of my strength. Jacob redirects the name to reflect his feeling rather than Rachel’s. It is about his strength or virility. What do we make of this?

— Jacob is the sort of guy who allows things to happen to him. Rebecca directs him in the stolen blessing scene, in his escape to Haran, in his search for a wife. He is not in position to “buy” a wife with gifts, so he becomes a worker of Laban’s. He accepts the conditions of the contract without dispute and though angered at the wife-switch perpetrated on him, he accepts that too. Finally, he runs away from Laban by night rather than confront him. And his only firm and decisive words are a vow to kill whomever has stolen Laban’s idols. Not a good thing considering Rachel is the guilty party!

He is not heroic. And what has he done in 20 years that relates in any way to his ladder and angel dream experience? Because he is so human, I love him. He is like us; daring only sometimes; judgmental at the wrong times; easy victim of life’s vicissitudes.

Indeed look how different his meeting at the well is from that of Eliezer searching for Isaac’s bride. Jacob, a man, does all the things that his mother Rebecca, a woman, did a generation earlier. He runs to meet Rachel, he waters her flock, and he weeps. These friendly, endearing traits do not prepare him well for the likes of Laban.

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These are all the topics, and more, that I have been intensely thinking and reading about recently. I simply share them with you… so you can think about them too.

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What I want to focus on in the next few minutes
is about yearning for what we do not have …
and creating the future by changing one’s destiny.

According to the text…
Leah loves Jacob who does not reciprocate the feeling.
Jacob loves Rachel,
but Rachel yearns only for children.

What could be more hellish than to be stuck in such a configuration?

Indeed Jean Paul Sartre wrote the morality play No Exit about just such a triangle. Each has expectations and needs of the others and none of them are met.

It is Leah whom I find intriguing.

According to midrash she was meant to marry Esau and Rachel to marry Jacob.

Rebecca’s 2 sons were a match for Laban’s 2 daughters;the elder with the elder and the younger with the younger.

Leah sat by the crossroads and heard these things. She asked about Esau, her intended and heard that he was a bad sort, a robber. She asked about Jacob and heard that he was gentle and studied Torah. So she cried her eyes out. This explains her “weak eyes.” (Gen 29:17) But, with her crying, she chooses to change the course of her destiny…at the crossroads… and plans to get Jacob as her husband instead. Indeed perhaps she, not Laban is the actor in this theater.

When Jacob discovers Leah in his marriage bed instead of Rachel and confronts her, I think … I think that Leah must have quietly reminded him that they were made of thevery same cloth. He had changed his limiting destiny as a 2^nd son and had become the bearer of the father’s blessing and the next patriarch. She had changed her destiny and would produce half the tribes of Israel. He needed her as much as she needed him. She adds (I think) that he, not she, had weak eyes and could not see what was right in front of him…. much like his father Isaac.

Leah, in her own quiet way was much like his mother, the take-charge Rebecca. Leah tells him that his choice of Rachel, based on “love at first sight” is doomed. He cried when he first saw Rachel and he will cry again when she dies in childbirth. His passions will rule, and even cloud, his ability to raise Rachel’s sons with equity and good judgment. Preferential treatment given to Joseph will spoil him and make his brothers envious.

All this she tells him, (I imagine) and then she is silent. She waits to see what Jacob will say or do. True to his style, he accepts her leadership and wisdom. He is passionate about Rachel, but he grows to respect Leah. Leah, for her part has the will to create her future, unlike Sartre’s doomed characters in No Exit, who are stuck in their destinies and replay the past ad nauseum. That is their hell.

And that leaves Rachel. Her role is entirely out of the ordinary. She yearns for children but her role is rather as creator of redemptive powers. One will be Joseph who will save his family, and the other is found in her tears, understood by the rabbis as the redemptive power that will bring the exiles back to the land. That is why she is buried “on the way.” It was on the way back to Canaan for Jacob, but it will be on the way to Babylon when the Jews are exiled. They will hear her crying and will know that they will return.

There are two interpretations on what becoming “one flesh” means.

–According to Rashi, “one flesh” is the resulting child.

The marriage of Jacob and Leah is like this. They can project into the future.

–But according to Ramban, “one flesh” is the union of two people for eternity with no link to progeny. That is the marriage of Jacob and Rachel.

Jacob has both marriages and has the opportunity to understand the difference and to synthesize the experiences.

When is this part of the story over? When is it time to return to Canaan?

It is after Joseph is born that Jacob feels safe enough to return to Canaan and meet with his brother. Joseph’s future role is a guarantee of sorts.

But Jacob has learned much … He will struggle (in the night) and change his destiny too.

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This is an unusual family. It hasn’t been a normal nuclear family in the past, and will not become more normal in the future. Abraham and Sarah were cousins and/or half-siblings. Hagar and Sarah were at odds, so Abraham’s sons are separated and become tribal enemies.

Isaac is nearly killed by his father and remained affected the rest of his life. Sarah died from the shock. Rebecca sets in motion a corrective to the natural order of her twin sons, but separates them in enmity as well. Jacob has to balance two sister wives, looses his favorite one and her two sons are nearly lost as well. The older one, Joseph becomes a bi-cultural economic ruler of Egypt. The younger one is involved is a stolen goblet caper that mirrors oddly Rachel and her father’s stolen idols.

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I turned 60 last shabbes.

Once, I thought I could correct the choices made by earlier generations in my family.

But, I have been humbled by the persistent repetition of patterns… generation after generation… in spite of every effort. In other words, it is hard to do what Leah did …to change one’s destiny.