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Parshat Vayetzei

By: SFW Students & Alumna
Jaimie Fogel, SFW '04-'05

Shalom chaverim! This week's parsha is Vayetzei and is "action packed" with many exciting stories of our tremendous forefathers and foremothers. The parsha has the story of Yaakov's dream, the switch of Leah in place of Rachel, the birth of the shevatim, the incident with the dudaim, the flee from Lavan, the confrontation with the idols, and the treaty between Yaakov and Lavan that ensues. There are a tremendous amount of questions that can be raised on all of these issues but there is one pasuk that I would like to focus on. 

Perek lamed, pasuk alef states (I am going to quote it in English for clarity's sake):

"When Rachel saw that she had borne no children to Yaakov, Rachel became envious of her sister and said to Yaakov: Give me children or else I will die." 

This pasuk poses many questions, but even more troubling is Yaakov's reply in the next pasuk:

"Yaakov got angry at Rachel and he said: Can I take the place of God who has denied you the fruit of the womb?"

A quick look into Rashi's comments on these mystifying pesukim adds some very important insights. What does it mean that "Rachel became envious of her sister?" Rashi is very quick to defend, and says that she was jealous of her sister's good actions and thought to herself that maybe she had not done enough good and her barren womb was a punishment. And on the statement of "or else I will die," Rashi quotes the Gemara in Nedarim, which says that whoever does not have sons is considered dead. Rachel was imploring Yaakov to daven on her behalf.  Clearly he could not just produce sons out of thin air but she was telling him, "Go daven for me because I can not live like this any longer!" But what does Yaakov reply?  Rashi explains that Yaakov meant, 'I am not like my father Yitzchak who's prayers Hashem answered. He did not have any sons of his own. Yaakov was saying: ". God who has denied you," meaning, "Hashem has not denied me anything.  I have sons, it is you who does not have any."  Rashi, who was so quick to explain away Rachel's apparent jealousy, is making Yaakov look even worse!  This is all very puzzling. 

The Rishonim, and later Nechama Leibowitz pick up this same discussion. She notes the seemingly heartless response of Yaakov to Rachel's plea for help and quotes the Ramban, who gives two possible explanations. Both involve Rachel's misunderstanding of the nature of tefilah. The first explains that Yaakov got angry because he knew that Hashem does not simply answer all of the tefilot of tzaddikim. He was not the one directly involved since it was not his womb being denied of fulfillment so his tefilah would not help. (However, since this may not redeem Yaakov's very harsh response, the Ramban goes further.) The second explanation puts Yaakov in a better light.  It is inconceivable to say that Yaakov had not davened on Rachel's behalf. He had bombarded God with her sorrows but Hashem had not granted the request and so he responded with anger to her accusation of doing nothing to help. He then says, 'I have done my part. The matter rests in God's hand. Yitzchak had been answered because he was destined to have descendents. Here, it is not my request which is being denied; I already have children.  But it is you who has no offspring.

This second explanation pleases the Ramban best. It highlights Rachel's misunderstanding of the nature of tefilah and places her at fault, not Yaakov.  But Yaakov's response aside and the explanation of the midrash which says a woman is considered dead without any sons, what did Rachel mean when she demanded, "Give me children or else I will die"?

The commentary, the Akeidat Yitzchak, explains the following. The woman is given two names, isha and chava.  The first implies her being taken from man and having equal capabilities in the intellectual and moral fields. The name chava, which comes from em kol chai, gives her the added dimension of the species who can bear children. Yaakov was mad at Rachel for forgetting that without her second purpose in this world, she can still exists just as a man can exist without bearing children. She did not have to proclaim her imminent death because there is much to life even without fulfilling the second purpose. 

The Rav, in the collected works on family relationships entitled Family Redeemed, has an essay devoted to this exact feeling of death from which a childless woman suffers in the essay titled, Parenthood: Natural and Redeemed.  He explains that the natural community, that of Adam and Chava until the names of Avraham and Sara are changed, is a physical community. The mother is connected to her child because it is physically dependent on her for everything. But once the new aspect of Hashem is infused into their community the mother's role changes from the passive to the active, from the natural to the covenantal.  Her preoccupation with the child is endowed with ethical meaning. She no longer merely brings him up physically, but is now assigned the role of teacher, to pass down the mesorah to the next potential community. This is why, the Rav explains (similar to the Akeidat Yitzchak), a childless couple should not feel as if they are without an existence. They too can fulfill the covenantal aspect of the community by teaching the children of those born to other unions.  The mother now has a double role than that of the father. She is still the physical source of existence for the child and now, is imbued with a spiritual purpose to teach the child the ways of God as well. 

But why then was Rachel so miserable? Surely she knew of this power she possessed, given to her predecessor and now genetically encoded in her Ima genome.  The Rav discusses this at length, and my summary cannot do justice to his poetic language:

"There is a distinction between mother's and father's mission within the covenantal community, since they represent two different personalistic approaches.  Father's teaching is basically of an intellectual nature. Judaism is to a great extent an intellectual discipline, a method, a system of thought, a hierarchy of values. In order to be acquainted with all these aspects, one must study, comprehend, acquire knowledge, and be familiar at least with its basic principles.However, Judaism is not only an intellectual tradition but an experiential one as well.  The Jew not only observed but experienced the Shabbat.There is beauty, grandeur, warmth and tenderness to Judaism.  All these qualities cannot be described in cognitive terms. One may behold them, feel them, sense them. It is impossible to provide one with a formal training in the experiential realm. Experiences are communicated not through the word but through steady contact, through association, through osmosis, through a tear or a smile, through dreamy eyes and soft melody, through the silence at twilight and the recital of Shema.  All this is to be found in the maternal domain. The mother creates the mood; she is the artist who is responsible for the magnificence, solemnity and beauty. She tells the child of the great romance of Judaism. She somehow communicates to him the tremor; the heartbeat of Judaism, while playing, singing, laughing and crying."

I believe that this gives us a greater insight into the plight of Rachel.  Whatever Yaakov's response might have been; whether she had misunderstood the nature of tefilah or had fewer good deeds under her belt than Leah, we can understand a little more clearly her cry for help from the one person she mistakenly thought could help her in this quest for maternal fulfillment.

Yehi ratzon, that we should never fully understand the plight of Rachel and that our tefilot will always reflect the proper desires to serve the lives we have molded for ourselves out of our portions in this world.  Shabbat shalom l'kulam u l'kol haolam.