Consulting his Wives - Jacob Breaks from Laban

·      Jacob is breaking a way, separating himself from Mesopotamia, like Abraham, Ruth, and the matriarchs, all of whom left their ancestors’ homes for a new land and life.  Even today, we are all children of those who left from somewhere.

Poem by Marge Piercy, “Maggid,” The Telling, about immigrant grandparents and the theme of wandering.  An excerpt is in Beth Am’s Maariv/Kabbalat Shabbah Prayerbook.

The courage to let go of the door, the handle.

The courage to shed the familiar walls whose very

stains and leaks are comfortable as the little moles

of the upper arm; stains that recall a feast,

a child's naughtiness, a loud blistering storm

that slapped the roof hard, pouring through.

The courage to abandon the graves dug into the hill,

the small bones of children and the brittle bones

of the old whose marrow hunger had stolen;

the courage to desert the tree planted and only

begun to bear; the riverside where promises were 

shaped; the street where their empty pots were broken.

The courage to leave the place whose language you learned

as early as your own, whose customs however

dangerous or demeaning, bind you like a halter

you have learned to pull inside, to move your load;

the land fertile with the blood spilled on it;

the roads mapped and annotated for survival.

The courage to walk out of the pain that is known

into the pain that cannot be imagined,

mapless, walking into the wilderness, going

barefoot with a canteen into the desert;

stuffed in the stinking hold of a rotting ship

sailing off the map into dragons' mouths.

Cathay, India, Serbia, goldeneh medina,

leaving bodies by the way like abandoned treasure.

So they walked out of Egypt. So they bribed their way

out of Russia under loaves of straw; so they steamed

out of the bloody smoking charnelhouse of Europe

on overloaded freighters forbidden all ports--

out of pain into death or freedom or a different

painful dignity, into squalor and politics.

We Jews are all born of wanderers, with shoes

under our pillows and a memory of blood that is ours

raining down. We honor only those Jews who changed

tonight, those who chose the desert over bondage,

who walked into the strange and became strangers

and gave birth to children who could look down

on them standing on their shoulders for having

been slaves. We honor those who let go of everything

but freedom, who ran, who revolted, who fought,

who became other by saving themselves.

In those days, it was difficult to move away from one’s family and home; nowadays, it’s too easy.

14. And Rachel and Leah replied and said to him, "Do we still have a share or an inheritance in our father's house?

·      31:14 – Jacob wants wives’ consent and in this verse, they respond.  Although the two wives are speaking, the Hebrew verb is singular.  What gives?

•Sages’ explanation: Rachel answered and Leah concurred.

•Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi): Rachel answered first because she loves him and is willing to uproot herself.

•They answered with one voice – they agreed.

•Women’s Commentary (page 171): shift in sisters’ attitudes toward one another; they now cooperate.

•Alter on “share” and “inheritance”: two words mean the same thing – a hendiadys [Online dictionary: a literary device expressing an idea by means of two words linked by "and," instead of a grammatically more complex form such as an adverb qualifying an adjective. Everyday examples of hendiadys are the expressions "nice and soft," rather than "nicely.”]

•Rashi - Why should we stop you from returning? Do we still hope to inherit anything of our father’s property among the males?  I.e., he reads the passage literally; daughters have no share because Lavan had sons [male chauvinist pig!].

•“Have no share” is used other places in the Bible.

-  II Samuel 20 – revolt against King David, because no one had a “share” in King David

-  I Kings 12:16 – same phrase as above

-  It’s an idiom for “I have no allegiance, no loyalty, no part, no stake.”

15. Are we not considered by him as strangers, for he sold us and also consumed our money?

·      31:15 – Rachel and Leah were treated as strangers; their father sold them and “consumed their money.”

•Rashi – “Even at a time when people usually give a dowry to their daughters, viz. at the time of marriage, he behaved toward us as [one behaves toward] strangers, for he sold us to you (for you served him fourteen years for us, and he gave us to you only.”  Rashi is saying that the dowry is supposed to be given to the bride.  The value of Jacob’s work should benefit the daughters.

•Alter (page 168) –Lavan was selling his daughters as slaves (like Rose – the Kate Winslet role in the film Titanic -- felt).  Recall when Lavan first met Isaac’s servant and frothed at the jewelry that was displayed In this case, Lavan kept all the proceeds from Jacob’s 14 years of labor.  Rachel and Leah “saw themselves reduced to chattel … as though they were not [Lavan’s] flesh and blood.” [That greedy bastard!]

16. But all the wealth that God separated from our father is ours and our children's. So now, all that God said to you, do."

·      31:16 – Rachel and Leah claim that God has given wealth to Jacob from Lavan. That wealth is ours by right.  Lavan gave nothing to us. So, as a practical matter, sisters say, let’s go!

17. So Jacob rose, and he lifted up his sons and his wives upon the camels.

·      31:17 – mentioning camels is foreshadowing a future event.

•Naomi Rosenblatt commentary (Wresting With Angels, pages 281-283) on guilt, an emotion that psychotherapists try to excise from their clients:  Is Jacob neurotic?  A product of bad parenting?  He flees in the face of conflict; he can’t cope and felt the burden of responsibility.  Yet he believed that he deserved his punishment, 14 years in Lavan’s servitude.

Rosenblatt is both a psychotherapist and Bible teacher.  The psychotherapist in her tries to help patients cope with a guilty conscience.  In her Bible teacher guise, she claims that guilt has a moral value, one that explains why we are human and know the difference between right and wrong.  Feeling “guilty” is an understanding that a moral code has been violated; we feel remorse.

There are two extremes: total denial of guilt and swimming in guilt.  The former is tantamount to criminal behavior; the latter eats away at self-esteem to be emotionally crippling. Goal is to achieve a balance between these poles.

Jacob may be an example of an individual with a guilty conscience, a borderline neurotic.  His guilt [from tricking Esau and Isaac] has followed him to his current situation.  Yet he takes full responsibility for past actions, never blaming his problems on others.  [Is this why the sages portray his as a righteous man?].  Nevertheless, those guilty feelings have been hard on his self-esteem; he cannot stand up for himself, even to the rapacious Lavan.  Thus, he repeats his adolescent actions of running away from the problem.

18. And he led all his livestock and all his possessions that he had acquired, the purchase of his acquisition, which he had acquired in Padan aram, to come to Isaac his father, to the land of Canaan.

·      31:18

•Jacob packs all of his possessions, which the text emphasizes that he acquired legitimately.  Remember, Lavan will pursue him and accuse Jacob of stealing.

•Fleeing the land with great wealth – foretells the exodus.

•Abravanel (Spanish 15^th century) – Jacob went in plain sight so no one will suspect theft.  He ought to know; he witnessed the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492.

•Metziv [?] - Jacob wanted to go back to his father’s house and to the holy land.

19. Now Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and [meanwhile] Rachel stole her father's teraphim.

·      31:19

•Lavan goes to shear his sheep, a huge festival in ancient times.  With everyone busy, it’s a good time for Jacob to slip away [and get a three day head start, as Rashi explains in 31:22]

•Rachel stole the teraphim (JPS translation - household idols, figurines representing ancestors) – an ambiguous word use many time in bible but never explained.  Many possible Hebrew roots …

-  Teraphim are small enough to be hidden beneath a camel cushion.

-  I Samuel on David’s first wife, Michal, Saul’s daughter – Michal risks her life to save David from Saul.  She took household idols and hid them beneath a cloth and net of goat’s hair.  In this case, the teraphim were more people-sized.

-  Other places where teraphim are used to forecast the future:

•Ezekiel 21

•Zechariah 10

•King Josiah burned them.

•Why steal these items?  In addition to forecasting, they have the following uses.

-  Divination -- to prevent Lavan from finding out where Jacob went

-  Fertility – Rachel wants another child.

-  Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, pages 435-436 (on 31:20) – Rachel is hedging and still has loyalty to her household idols; she’s not a confirmed monotheist yet [but has she been Bat Mitzvah?  Ba-dum-bump!]. 

-  Rashi citing Midrash - She intended to separate her father from idolatry. — [from Genesis Rabbah 74: 5]. 

•But others such as Ibn Ezra ask, why not just bury them? 

•Insights into Genesis Rabbah 74:6 (Wasserman Edition, Mesorah Publications, Ltd, 2011) asks, why would Rachel think that taking the teraphim would make Lavan turn from his idolatry?  She sought to interrupt his worship of those idols and make Lavan pause and reflect on the practice.  One who periodically engages in introspection and contemplation of his life (is there room for improvement?) is likely to be more successful than one who is always busy with lots of activities.  The opposite is also true; in Exodus 5:9, for example, Pharaoh increases the work burden on the Hebrew slaves after Moses demanded that they be released.  Pharaoh sought to keep them so busy that there would be no time to recognize their dilemma. Rachel hoped that Lavan would stop and realize the error of his ways. It didn’t work, as will be seen in Lavan’s knee-jerk reaction in 31:30,why did you steal my gods?

-  Class comments: sentimental attachment?  Revenge?

-  Women’s Commentary (page 172): Rachel is also a trickster, a good match for Jacob.  One motive for Rachel’s theft might be to possess the household gods as a symbol or token of leadership or inheritance.  This is an example of how marginalized people outmaneuver the power elite to survive or guarantee justice.

Kass (page 435) comments that both Rachel and Jacob are thieves.  Rachel steals the teraphim and Jacob steals Lavan’s “heart,” i.e., his daughters and grandchildren.

-  Book: And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Modern Hebrew Women's Writing, by Wendy I. Zierler. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004. 368 pp. $49.95.  This book serves as an introduction to Hebrew women writers as well as an interim report on the state of the field. The works of most, if not all, of the writers the volume explores have recently become part of the revised canon, and the writers themselves subjects of study. Zierler builds on these earlier studies—generously giving credit to her predecessors—and adds to this growing body of literature.  (from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sho/summary/v024/24.4berg.html; also on http://books.google.com/books/about/And_Rachel_Stole_the_Idols.html?id=cHntjY-0PZYC )

-  Anne Roiphe, Water from the Well, page 234: “Before they left, Rachel went into the tent of her father … She way his teraphim, his household gods, stone, dead eyed, on a stool.  She picked them up and stuffed them under her shawl, holding the garment tight about her body with one hand, and with the other she grasped them as if there were jewels, Jewels that belonged to her.