Siblings and Handmaidens and Sons

(Howards notes from Torah Study 6/30)

Genesis 30:9-19

30 June 2012

• Leah and Rachel are still struggling with one another.  Domestic details and drama are important in the Torah.
• Naomi Rosenblatt, Wrestling With Angels:  it’s a story of people wrestling with “their better angels,” as Abraham Lincoln once said/wrote.  People have polygamous leanings, but we do it one spouse at a time.  A monogamous relationship is run on trust; once a third party enters the picture, trust vaporizes and is replaced by jealousy.  We must acknowledge the polygamous nature of society and take measures to sustain the monogamous.

Rosenblatt writes (pages 277-278), “The most profound lesson of this triangular marriage is [that] monogamy, for all its restrictions, works.  Polygamy, despite its apparent advantages, doesn’t. We may feel far removed from a polygamous society.  But our sequential monogamy through multiple marriages and divorces, combined with the prevalence of extramarital affairs, underscores our polygamous leanings.”  [Speak for yourself, Ms Rosenblatt!] … We must acknowledge those leanings and deal with them.

“It takes discipline to sustain a monogamous relationship [Duh!]. Sexual intimacy and trust can thrive only between two people.  When a third person enters the picture, trust and intimacy are quickly supplanted by jealousy, suspicion, and anger. … If we’re serious about preserving a [monogamous] relationship [then] some issues are nonnegotiable.  Sexual fidelity is one of them.”

If people are polygamous by nature, how can monogamy flourish?  Through maturity, realistic expectations, and respect for the exclusivity of the relationship -- a conscious, on-going effort.  This means mediating those polygamous desires with serious commitments to fidelity, saying “no” when “yes” seems irresistible.

• 30:9. When Leah saw that she had stopped bearing [children], she took her maidservant Zilpah, and gave her to Jacob for a wife.
• Leah stopped bearing.  Hearkens back to Chapter 29, “she stopped bearing.” Since Jacob stopped having sex, Leah turned her servant Zilpah over to Jacob.  The term שִׁפְחָתָהּ, maidservant for life, is related to base שפח, clan or family.
• Ramban – Leah’s motive is different than Rachel’s – any child born from Zilpah is also Leah’s.

Ramban doesn’t understand why Leah offered Zilpah.  After all, Leah was not barren as were Rachel and Sarah.  He concludes (citing Midrash Rabbah 72:6 and Rashi on 29:34) that the matriarchs were all prophetesses who know that Jacob was destined to father twelve sons that would eventually become 12 tribes.  Leah wanted a majority of those twelve to be from her or Zilpah, thus making her a preeminent matriarch.

Ramban also proposes that Rachel and Leah knew that the fourth generation of Israelites who would leave Egypt would return to inherit the land (prophecy to Abraham in 15:16).  According to Midrash Rabbah 74:13, Bilhah and Zilpah were daughters of Lavan but from a different wife.  To ensure that the prophecy would come true, Leah and Rachel wanted Jacob to not marry a stranger, but someone in the clan.

• 30:10. And Zilpah, Leah's maidservant, bore Jacob a son.
• Unlike previous verses, there is no mention of pregnancy or conception.
• Rashi cites Genesis Rabbah 71:9, which states that Lavan tricked Jacob into thinking Zilpah, the younger servant, was Rachel.  Was Lavan a sneaky politician or what!

In the case of all of them (i.e., all Jacob’s wives), conception is mentioned, except for Zilpah, because she was the youngest of them all and so young in years that her pregnancy was not noticed. In order to deceive Jacob, Laban gave her to Leah, so that he would not perceive that they were bringing in Leah, for this was their custom, to give the older maidservant to the older [daughter] and the younger [maidservant] to the younger [daughter]. 

• 30:11. And Leah said, "Luck has come"; so she named him Gad. 
• “Gad” was a pagan deity [No, not an early translation of mazel tov, “gad luck”], according to Nahum Sarna (JPS Torah Commentary) corresponding to the Greek term for “Luck” and the Roman for “Destiny.”   However, Leah is using “luck” as an abstract noun, like the English “Lady Luck.”

Sarna also writes that this deity is mentioned in Isaiah 65:11 where it is paired with “destiny” and in other places in Joshua referring to town names.

• Rashi [I don’t need no stinkin’ pagan deity!] writes,

Hebrew. בָּא גָּד. Good luck has come [Targum Jonathan ben Uzziel] similar to (Talmud Shabbat 67b)“ May my fate be lucky (גָד גַדִּי) and not fatigued,” and similar to this (Isa. 65:11), “who set a table for Gad.” According to the Aggadah [Midrash Aggadah in the name of “some say”], he was born circumcised גָּד, meaning, “cut off”), like Dan. 4:11,“cut down (גֹּדוּ) the tree,” but I do not know why it is written as one word (בָּגָד) [in our verse]. 

Another explanation: Why is it read as one word? בָּגָד is like בָּגַדְתּ ָבִּי, you betrayed me when you came to my handmaid, as a man who has betrayed (בָּגַד) the wife of his youth.

• Also, the word is like גדד, to cut or gash, in I Kings 18:28, when Elijah faces off against the prophets of Baal and the latter resorted to gashing themselves when they lost the first round.
• Ibn Ezra- the name is also related to גְּדוּד, g’dood, for troop.

'A troop has come,' that is, Leah has had a troop of sons,' or 'let him be considered as many children [http://bible.ort.org/books/torahd5.asp?action=displayid&id=841, accessed 2July 2012]

• Hirsch, in the same vein as Ibn Ezra, comments that גדוד connotes a small military force that conducts quick raids; drives a wedge in the enemy lines; and thus changes the fortune of a battle.  Similarly, Leah believed that her latest son brought her good fortune.
• More Ibn Ezra [?]: another related word is בָּגַד, ba-gad, betrayal, relating to Lavan treachery in the above verse?

Maybe not.  Elie Munk, citing Zohar, answers Rashi question on why the two-word phrase for “good luck has come” is written as one word.  Gad was a child of good fortune, but his descendants chose to separate themselves from the other tribes and settle in Transjordan.  They “swerved from the right path and went astray” like a crooked turn of a river.  They “voluntarily alienated themselves from the source of sanctity which the Holy Land represented.” Thus the one-word phrase to indicate that part of their good fortune was missing.

• 30:12 And Zilpah, Leah's maidservant, bore Jacob a second son

Zilpah did not behave like the arrogant Hagar, so she remains a maidservant and is always called that.

• 30:13. And Leah said, "Because of my good fortune, for women have declared me fortunate"; so she named him Asher.
• The name אָשֵׁר, Asher, means happy or good fortune [from the stem ישר, according to Sarna]
• Hirsch on this word in Psalm 1, like a tree near a stream.  Happiness is moving forward.  Ashur – a step, to go forward, like Proverbs.  Happiness is always progressing toward something, moving forward, of value, and advancement; not what you’ve accumulated.

The first word in Psalm 1:1 is אַשְֹרֵי, praiseworthy, referring to the man who does not follow the counsel of the wicked, stand in the way of sinners and sit in the company of scorners but instead desires the God’s Torah and makes it his own, like a tree absorbing water from a stream [Rashi on Psalm1:2]

The reference to Proverbs is 29:18 – “Without vision the people become unrestrained, but he who keeps the Torah is fortunate [or praiseworthy].”  In other words, by ignoring the prophets, people degenerate.  People freely exposed to Torah, by prophets or the sages, will be set on the proper path toward righteousness. [Plaut, Book of Proverbs, UAHC, 1961, page 293; Ginsberg, Eliezer.  Mishlei  (Volume II).  Brooklyn: Mesorah, 2009, citing numerus sources]

• Much class discussion on slavery, Zilpah’s feelings, inheritance, surrogacy, and the womb as storage place for a baby (homunculus).
• Norman Cohen on incessant struggle between siblings: (before Naftali’s birth in 30:8) it’s a literary pattern.  We struggle with ourselves, our shadows, constantly.  Characters struggling with themselves, their shadows, the dynamics of self-struggle.

A hypothetical conversation between Leah and Rachel, adapted from Cohen, pages 140-141

Rachel, upon birth of Naphtali: “I have engaged in a god-like struggle with my sister and have prevailed through Bilhah’s pregnancy with Jacob.”  She feels that her mothering role has prevailed over her barren self.

Leah, either now barren or having a sexless relationship with Jacob, feels her bond with Jacob has become shaky: “I’ll give my handmaiden Zilpah to Jacob to regain his love.”  

Leah, after birth of Gad and Asher: “what luck, what fortune!”  She feels vindicated and even triumphant.

Cohen concludes, “The shifts in the fortunes of the sisters … and the constant role reversals … underscore … the ongoing dynamic and tension between these two symbolic sides of every person.  As different as they are, the two sisters experience their conflict in similar ways, just as each of us vacillates between feelings of control and vulnerability.”

What a script for a soap opera!

• Mandrakes – a love plant?  Stay tuned.