Friends - last week we met a dynamic pair - Eisav and Ya'akov, who each had a very distinct identity - before they even came out of the womb. This week we meet another dynamic pair - Leah and Rachel - and they, too, are revealed to be distinct immediately. It's interesting that, actually, Leah and Rachel were supposed to marry Eisav and Ya'akov respectively. Rashi tells us this in explaining that Leah's eyes were "soft" - soft from crying that she'd have to marry Eisav. But Rachel her sister, was "good-looking" in the way we describes two weeks ago - meaning she had good eyes, looked upon the world with a good eye.
We see a lot about Leah and Rachel by their attitude toward their children. Leah gives birth first - because G-d sees she is hated. How was it possible for Ya'akov to hate? And his own wife, no less! Didn't he see that it was G-d's will that he marry her? Was his hatred toward the circumstance, or toward the woman herself? Didn't he really hate Laban? Could Leah have been that horrible? Leah names her first 3 children after the fact that she wants her husband to appreciate her more. The Netziv points out that not all the children were named for their essence - some of them were named for the circumstance - i.e. now my husband will love me. It sounds like such difficult challenge for both of them - both feeling manipulated, trying to move toward love somehow.
Rachel is a different story - she knows already without a doubt that Ya'akov loves her. She doesn't need children in order to gain his love. But she has her own sense of self-worth at stake. "If you don't give me children then I am dead!" And when she finally does have Yosef, she says "Hashem has gathered in my shame." It seems to be more about her sense of self as a woman. And she brings out deep issues in Ya'akov "Am I inplace of G-d, that I can give you children?" (Well, yes, Ya'akov. You may well be.) Their relationship seems to reside on the deepest level, always, always dealing not just with local issues of whose bed is my primary residence, but the cosmic. "I want to die!" "Am I G-d?" When he met her, he kissed her, and cried. His years of work were like days because he loved her so much. Yet we never see Ya'akov speaking directly to Leah in the entire time they are together.
Leah and Rachel are said to be aspects of the same "divine persona". They can be seen as two aspects of every relationship - both of which must be honored - the position, and the passion. The position is how we face each other. Demonstrated by Leah's constant worry that Ya'akov loves her, it is the often hidden but totally important circumstance of relationship. Without it being recognized and refined, the passion that Rachel is is inaccessible - and often one doesn't know why. One has a position whether one knows it or not. And, of course, without the passion, there may be no need to have relationship.
Each of these two facets bear children - like it or not. Every encounter - not just the passionate ones, but also the slow-moving technical ones, the difficult negotiations that loves really demands of us, brings new life into the world. The children of impatience that are Ya'akov's first children with Leah are not allowed to be who they really are, as the Netziv pointed out about their names, because borne in them is the sense of imbalance, of not meeting eye to eye, of a need for more depth, more honesty. And this is what Ya'akov has to accept - that his chidlren with Leah are just as much a part of the 12 tribes as Rachel's kids. All of these movements to negotiate the correct circumstances, the positionings that life demands of us, strategy and approach, patience and response, the capacity to bend, to let go, to accept the times when passion is not there - these also bear children. Ya'akov cannot continue to hate Leah, cannot continue to hate that which he has been drawn into against his will, because in those moments the true character of a person is revealed. And Ya'akov does find it - when Leah begins to name her children not after how much Ya'akov ignores, but after thanking G-d, and how fortunate she is, and how there is reward for her toils.
I hope that we all allow ourselves to recognize the need for hard work that Leah represents, and to let even those hard moments bear children of patience and virtue, who bear in themselves the beauty of great moments well-earned. Good shabbes
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |