Post by Rabbi Neil on Dec 6, 2019 21:14:12 GMT
Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful and fair to look upon. (Gen. 29:17). Is it any wonder that Jacob want to marry Rachel? Leah is ugly, Rachel is beautiful. Case closed, or so it seems to most people.
Rather interestingly, Rabbi Hertz says in his Chumash that a better translation of “Leah’s eyes were weak” would be “Leah’s eyes were tender.” Bizarrely, though, he doesn’t choose to use that translation in his own book – instead he uses the traditional one and then comments that another translation would be better! It’s an odd editorial choice. So, it is possible for us to translate the verse as “Leah’s eyes were tender and Rachel was beautiful and fair to look upon.” Then we would have a really interesting story. You see, in Hebrew the words “and” and “but” are exactly the same – there are written by the prefix letter vav. So, there are two possible translations here:
“Leah’s eyes were weak but Rachel was beautiful, and Jacob loved Rachel,” or “Leah’s eyes were tender and Rachel was beautiful, but Jacob loved Rachel.”
There’s a very large difference between them. The first basically says Leah was ugly, but Rachel was beautiful, so that’s why Jacob loved Rachel, because who wants an ugly wife? When he’s tricked by Laban into having an ugly wife, it’s no surprise that he wants to work for another seven years in order to have someone better looking! The second translation, however, is much more romantic. Leah was pretty and also Rachel was pretty, albeit in a different way, but Jacob loved Rachel. It wasn’t based on looks, it was about love. A deep, profound love. When Laban made Jacob marry Leah, Jacob’s problem wasn’t that she was ugly, but simply that he didn’t love her. His heart was with someone else. So, him staying for another seven years was not an act of selfishness in order to have a trophy beauty on his arm, but an act of love.
There’s actually a good reason to suggest that this second translation is more accurate, because of the later verse (Gen 29:30) that says that he loved Rachel more than Leah. That is to say, he did love Leah, but his heart truly belonged to Rachel. It was about more than looks. Unfortunately, though, it’s not that easy. The following verse suggests the first translation. There (Gen. 29:31) it says that God saw that Leah was hated. Not just that Jacob loved her less, but that she was hated. Hardly the sign of a romantic man.
What kind of a man is Jacob, then? Is he a shallow man, or a deep romantic? To answer the question, we need to look at deeper into Genesis chapter 30. Rachel is barren, whereas Leah is popping out more and more children with Jacob. Rachel is naturally upset. She turns to Jacob in desperation and cries “Give me children or else I’ll die” (30:1). It’s an absolutely heart-wrenching plea. Remember, this is the woman whom he loves more than the other. This woman is his favourite. And what is his response to this favourite wife in the hour of her despair? Anger! He gets angry with her! He shouts back at her, “Am I God who has held back children from you?” Not exactly the great romantic – in fact, Jacob makes it all about himself. He is unmoved by his wives’ suffering and more interested in having children than he is caring for his wives. When one wife cannot give him children, instead of supporting them, he just shifts over to the other wife or handmaid. Love, protecting his favourite wife, doesn’t even seem to cross his mind.
His callous attitude is what causes the two sisters to fight over his attention. Leah’s son Reuben gets some fertility plants from the field, and Rachel asks for them. Leah’s answer? “Isn’t it enough that you took my husband from me, now you want these as well?” This is the first time that we hear of Leah’s pain at the whole situation. She marries a guy who lifts up the veil on the special day, looks at her and says, “Oh no, not this one! I wanted her sister!” Imagine the pain of that! Even worse, instead of saying, “This isn’t who I thought I was marrying but let’s do what we can to make this work,” he instead turns around and says, “I want her sister so badly that I’ll work for another seven years for Laban in order to win her.” Now from his point of view, and from the point of view of the Torah, the seven years flies by. But think about it from Leah’s point of view. The man she marries spends the first seven years of their marriage pining over another woman. How mean is that? Jacob’s callousness is real cruelty.
The final surety that Jacob is a heartless pig as opposed to a deep romantic is that when Jacob goes to leave Laban, he doesn’t say “Give me my wife whom I love” but rather “Give me my wife whom I have worked for” (Gen. 30:26). Jacob isn’t interested in love but he sees women, even those whom he thinks he loves, as property to be purchased. Leah isn’t different in his eyes, she is ugly to him. Jacob is, in fact, an absolutely despicable man by modern ethical standards.
Now, we have to cast our mind back to why Jacob was living with Laban in the first place. It was because he had tricked his brother out of his birthright. In other words, this is a man who not only has no respect for women, but also for family as well. And this is one of our ancestors whom we mention in prayer!
But with whom is he mentioned? Abraham and Isaac. What was their relationship to women like? Well, considering that the two of them both pretend that their wife is their sister, there would seem to be something of a family character trait going on. The two men are in a foreign land, and because they are afraid that powerful men will kill them for their wives, they pretend to be siblings, essentially offering up their wives to anyone who may want them. These married men would rather other men invade their wives than stand up for them. No wonder Jacob, the last of the three, has no respect for women! He learned it from his father and grandfather!
Although this community accepts it as normality, the inclusion of the matriarchs in our prayers, particularly in the T’fillah, is a very modern liturgical addition. We can’t take the patriarchs out for being sexist, but perhaps one of the reasons we include the matriarchs can be an acknowledgement of what they had to endure by these men whose morality seemed to be so focused on love of God that they didn’t really consider love of women. Of course, Torah was written down thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away, so a totally different ethical code was in effect compared to today. And yet, if we understand the phrase that Noah was righteous in his generation to mean that his ethics were far superior to those around him, could we not ask the same of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? To let them off the hook because that was just how men were back then seems too little to me.
Reform theology tends to view revelation not as Divine dictation from God to Moses but, rather, as an excurses by the men of the time as to what it means to live with God. The maleness of Torah is not a problem in any Temple where only men can come up to Torah itself, but in a community like ours, where both men and women can come up to Torah, how do we respond? How do we take the lessons of equality that we as Reform Jews hold so dear and apply them to Torah? It’s not enough to say “Well, that was then and this is now” because we read it every week - it’s our narrative. We mention these men in our prayers. I think the answer is that we really need to explore between the lines. We have to do what the Rabbis always did through midrash – try to work out what the characters were thinking and feeling, and saying to each other when the Torah wasn’t recording it. We have to look for the hidden narratives, especially of the characters that are acted upon, which is normally the women. By asking how they might have felt, we often get a very different response to what our tradition suggests was going on. Our Torah becomes renewed with perspectives that we would never have imagined before.
What’s most interesting for me about delivering this sermon is that it reminds me to constantly remember who I am. I’m not just a Rabbi, but I’m a male Rabbi. I think like a man, I read Torah as a man. I’m not embarrassed of being a man, not at all – I love being a man - but I know that it does influence the way I read texts, especially the Bible. I know it influences the way I relate to men in the Bible, and the way I relate to women in the Bible. There is nothing threatening about the awareness of our gender when we’re reading a text. In fact, it’s very healthy - it adds more to our understanding.
So, I feel that as a man in the 21st century, I resent the behaviour of Jacob in this text. I resent the way he uses women, pays for them, and then jumps into bed with them whenever he can. I resent it as the base behaviour of someone male. That is my reading as a male rabbi. And if you don’t think that gender has anything to do with the way we read texts, ask yourself one simple question. This sermon about men mistreating women in the Bible was given by this synagogue’s male rabbi. How different would your thoughts about this sermon have been had it been given by our female rabbi? Let us therefore use this week’s portion of Vayetze, and the reading of Jacob, Rachel and Leah to explore our own gendered influences on the way we read Torah, and let us not only hear the interpretations of our very gendered tradition, but also those waiting to be uncovered through the ethical perspectives of today, and let us say, Amen.
Rather interestingly, Rabbi Hertz says in his Chumash that a better translation of “Leah’s eyes were weak” would be “Leah’s eyes were tender.” Bizarrely, though, he doesn’t choose to use that translation in his own book – instead he uses the traditional one and then comments that another translation would be better! It’s an odd editorial choice. So, it is possible for us to translate the verse as “Leah’s eyes were tender and Rachel was beautiful and fair to look upon.” Then we would have a really interesting story. You see, in Hebrew the words “and” and “but” are exactly the same – there are written by the prefix letter vav. So, there are two possible translations here:
“Leah’s eyes were weak but Rachel was beautiful, and Jacob loved Rachel,” or “Leah’s eyes were tender and Rachel was beautiful, but Jacob loved Rachel.”
There’s a very large difference between them. The first basically says Leah was ugly, but Rachel was beautiful, so that’s why Jacob loved Rachel, because who wants an ugly wife? When he’s tricked by Laban into having an ugly wife, it’s no surprise that he wants to work for another seven years in order to have someone better looking! The second translation, however, is much more romantic. Leah was pretty and also Rachel was pretty, albeit in a different way, but Jacob loved Rachel. It wasn’t based on looks, it was about love. A deep, profound love. When Laban made Jacob marry Leah, Jacob’s problem wasn’t that she was ugly, but simply that he didn’t love her. His heart was with someone else. So, him staying for another seven years was not an act of selfishness in order to have a trophy beauty on his arm, but an act of love.
There’s actually a good reason to suggest that this second translation is more accurate, because of the later verse (Gen 29:30) that says that he loved Rachel more than Leah. That is to say, he did love Leah, but his heart truly belonged to Rachel. It was about more than looks. Unfortunately, though, it’s not that easy. The following verse suggests the first translation. There (Gen. 29:31) it says that God saw that Leah was hated. Not just that Jacob loved her less, but that she was hated. Hardly the sign of a romantic man.
What kind of a man is Jacob, then? Is he a shallow man, or a deep romantic? To answer the question, we need to look at deeper into Genesis chapter 30. Rachel is barren, whereas Leah is popping out more and more children with Jacob. Rachel is naturally upset. She turns to Jacob in desperation and cries “Give me children or else I’ll die” (30:1). It’s an absolutely heart-wrenching plea. Remember, this is the woman whom he loves more than the other. This woman is his favourite. And what is his response to this favourite wife in the hour of her despair? Anger! He gets angry with her! He shouts back at her, “Am I God who has held back children from you?” Not exactly the great romantic – in fact, Jacob makes it all about himself. He is unmoved by his wives’ suffering and more interested in having children than he is caring for his wives. When one wife cannot give him children, instead of supporting them, he just shifts over to the other wife or handmaid. Love, protecting his favourite wife, doesn’t even seem to cross his mind.
His callous attitude is what causes the two sisters to fight over his attention. Leah’s son Reuben gets some fertility plants from the field, and Rachel asks for them. Leah’s answer? “Isn’t it enough that you took my husband from me, now you want these as well?” This is the first time that we hear of Leah’s pain at the whole situation. She marries a guy who lifts up the veil on the special day, looks at her and says, “Oh no, not this one! I wanted her sister!” Imagine the pain of that! Even worse, instead of saying, “This isn’t who I thought I was marrying but let’s do what we can to make this work,” he instead turns around and says, “I want her sister so badly that I’ll work for another seven years for Laban in order to win her.” Now from his point of view, and from the point of view of the Torah, the seven years flies by. But think about it from Leah’s point of view. The man she marries spends the first seven years of their marriage pining over another woman. How mean is that? Jacob’s callousness is real cruelty.
The final surety that Jacob is a heartless pig as opposed to a deep romantic is that when Jacob goes to leave Laban, he doesn’t say “Give me my wife whom I love” but rather “Give me my wife whom I have worked for” (Gen. 30:26). Jacob isn’t interested in love but he sees women, even those whom he thinks he loves, as property to be purchased. Leah isn’t different in his eyes, she is ugly to him. Jacob is, in fact, an absolutely despicable man by modern ethical standards.
Now, we have to cast our mind back to why Jacob was living with Laban in the first place. It was because he had tricked his brother out of his birthright. In other words, this is a man who not only has no respect for women, but also for family as well. And this is one of our ancestors whom we mention in prayer!
But with whom is he mentioned? Abraham and Isaac. What was their relationship to women like? Well, considering that the two of them both pretend that their wife is their sister, there would seem to be something of a family character trait going on. The two men are in a foreign land, and because they are afraid that powerful men will kill them for their wives, they pretend to be siblings, essentially offering up their wives to anyone who may want them. These married men would rather other men invade their wives than stand up for them. No wonder Jacob, the last of the three, has no respect for women! He learned it from his father and grandfather!
Although this community accepts it as normality, the inclusion of the matriarchs in our prayers, particularly in the T’fillah, is a very modern liturgical addition. We can’t take the patriarchs out for being sexist, but perhaps one of the reasons we include the matriarchs can be an acknowledgement of what they had to endure by these men whose morality seemed to be so focused on love of God that they didn’t really consider love of women. Of course, Torah was written down thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away, so a totally different ethical code was in effect compared to today. And yet, if we understand the phrase that Noah was righteous in his generation to mean that his ethics were far superior to those around him, could we not ask the same of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? To let them off the hook because that was just how men were back then seems too little to me.
Reform theology tends to view revelation not as Divine dictation from God to Moses but, rather, as an excurses by the men of the time as to what it means to live with God. The maleness of Torah is not a problem in any Temple where only men can come up to Torah itself, but in a community like ours, where both men and women can come up to Torah, how do we respond? How do we take the lessons of equality that we as Reform Jews hold so dear and apply them to Torah? It’s not enough to say “Well, that was then and this is now” because we read it every week - it’s our narrative. We mention these men in our prayers. I think the answer is that we really need to explore between the lines. We have to do what the Rabbis always did through midrash – try to work out what the characters were thinking and feeling, and saying to each other when the Torah wasn’t recording it. We have to look for the hidden narratives, especially of the characters that are acted upon, which is normally the women. By asking how they might have felt, we often get a very different response to what our tradition suggests was going on. Our Torah becomes renewed with perspectives that we would never have imagined before.
What’s most interesting for me about delivering this sermon is that it reminds me to constantly remember who I am. I’m not just a Rabbi, but I’m a male Rabbi. I think like a man, I read Torah as a man. I’m not embarrassed of being a man, not at all – I love being a man - but I know that it does influence the way I read texts, especially the Bible. I know it influences the way I relate to men in the Bible, and the way I relate to women in the Bible. There is nothing threatening about the awareness of our gender when we’re reading a text. In fact, it’s very healthy - it adds more to our understanding.
So, I feel that as a man in the 21st century, I resent the behaviour of Jacob in this text. I resent the way he uses women, pays for them, and then jumps into bed with them whenever he can. I resent it as the base behaviour of someone male. That is my reading as a male rabbi. And if you don’t think that gender has anything to do with the way we read texts, ask yourself one simple question. This sermon about men mistreating women in the Bible was given by this synagogue’s male rabbi. How different would your thoughts about this sermon have been had it been given by our female rabbi? Let us therefore use this week’s portion of Vayetze, and the reading of Jacob, Rachel and Leah to explore our own gendered influences on the way we read Torah, and let us not only hear the interpretations of our very gendered tradition, but also those waiting to be uncovered through the ethical perspectives of today, and let us say, Amen.