Vayetze — Rachel and Leah, the Two Faces of Israel

Good evening, dear friends. Still in Parashat Vayetze, tonight we take up the couple of Rachel and Leah — the feminine presence in the forging of the destiny of Jewish identity. It began, of course, with Sarah; but the feminine presence in the story of humanity had begun even earlier, with Chavah, with Adah, who stood at the origin of the three great civilizations, and it continued thereafter […]. Let us say, though, that the feminine presence to which the text devotes entire chapters is Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah: Sarah with her problem over Hagar; Rivkah with the diverting of Esav’s blessing to Yaakov; and Rachel and Leah, asher banu shteihem et beit Yisrael — “who, the two of them, built the house of Israel.” It was they who built the house of Israel.

When we bless a couple, we bestow on them this blessing taken from the Book of Ruth: “May Hashem make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and like Leah, who the two of them built the house of Israel.” Yet Rachel and Leah are two utterly distinct, utterly different personalities. When Yaakov is forced to flee, his mother tells him: go, and at the same time seek a wife; and just as I was received at the edge of a well, you too will find your match in the same way. And that is indeed what happens. He arrives in Charan and asks after his mother’s brother, Lavan.

They tell him: yes, he lives here. And no sooner have they told him than Rachel appears — and it is love at first sight. As a rule, the biblical text has never spoken to us of love within a couple before marriage. Of Avraham and Sarah we are told nothing. With Yitzchak and Rivkah, it is only after the wedding that the text mentions, in passing — vaye’ehaveha, “and he loved her” — that he loved her. Apart from that, one might perhaps take the example of David and Michal, the daughter of Shaul; but in the end that was a love that did not really come to fruition. That of Amnon for Tamar was a forbidden love and cannot serve as a model. This is what explains the complexity of that love we are forever seeking in Shir HaShirim (the Song of Songs), where the lover seeks his beloved and the beloved goes in search of her love; they find each other only with difficulty, and no sooner have they met, furtively, than they part.

Here, by contrast, this love is present. As we said, the only couple truly in love before marriage is the one destined for Yaakov. And he carries that love through to the end — because his mother’s personality is constantly present in this approach to Rachel. The text underlines it emphatically: “And it came to pass, when Yaakov saw Rachel the daughter of Lavan, his mother’s brother, and the flock of Lavan, his mother’s brother, that Yaakov drew near and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well, and watered the flock of Lavan, his mother’s brother” (Bereshit 29:10). Three times — “his mother’s brother” — in the space of a single verse. That Yaakov saw Rachel, daughter of his mother’s brother, we can accept. Then he watered the flock of Lavan, his mother’s brother; he lifted the stone that sealed the mouth of the well; and there again it says “the flock of Lavan, his mother’s brother” — he tended the flock of Lavan, his mother’s brother.

The presence of his mother hovers over the love of this couple. Well, for the moment there is no harm in that. But the means his mother used to divert the blessing from Esav to Yaakov will repeat itself in another form, another manner, through the transfer of this relationship from Rachel to Leah. The midrash tells us that he was aware of this problem — and that this problem made it an impossible love. Why? Because custom requires that the elder daughter be married first and only then the younger. And Rachel had told him that she had an older sister. This older sister, mind you, kept the house, while it was the younger sister who took care of fetching water from the well. But this sister who went to fetch water from the well possessed a beauty as much inward as outward —

— a beauty that did not leave him indifferent, and that marked him throughout his life: for Rachel he would agree to work another seven years. He would give Rachel precedence in every circumstance. It is always Rachel who is mentioned before Leah. When he must meet his brother Esav and has to split and divide the machanot, the camps — dividing them into four camps — it is Rachel whom he places last, because he wants to shelter her from any harm. And with Rachel he lives only fourteen years of intense love. A love marked at first by barrenness, because they are two whole beings who have no need to project themselves into a future.

Love suffices unto itself; there is no child. She must go by way of the shifchah, the handmaid: a handmaid whom Rachel gives to her husband — that is, she counsels this union, as Sarah had done — so that, through prayer, she finally manages to have a child who will likewise be Yaakov’s favorite. He resembled his mother so closely: vayehi Yosef yefeh to’ar vifeh mar’eh — “and Yosef was fair of form and fair to look upon.” He too was very handsome. And, mind you, this beauty has a meaning. You know that when Rabbi Yochanan came to the bedside of Rabbi Elazar, Rabbi Elazar began to weep. Rabbi Yochanan asked him: why are you weeping? Is it over the Torah you did not study enough?

As for what one has studied — “one who does much and one who does little”: whether one studies more or studies less, the essential thing is the intention with which one studied. What one has truly taken in — that is what matters. Is it over your livelihood, because you lived in such poverty? Well, lo kol adam zocheh lishtei shulchanot — not every man merits two tables, that is, both the material and the spiritual. You have been granted success in the spiritual realm; you can take comfort in that and set the material aside. Is it because you lost a child in your lifetime that you weep?

Well, look at me: I lost ten children in my lifetime, and I have remained myself. — And what did he answer? No, I am not weeping over that. I am weeping over your beauty — your beauty, which is destined to be buried in the earth. And the two of them began to weep; they both began to weep. And one may ask why they wept. Over beauty? No — this beauty was as much inward as outward. It was the radiance of a spiritual life shining forth from their very being. That is why one weeps over it: people like that are very rare. Rachel and Yaakov were of that fabric.

So was Yosef, so was Binyamin. Binyamin is one of the four who knew death solely because it was inscribed in the destiny of humanity since the sin of Adam HaRishon (the first man); they themselves were not meant to know the throes of death. There were four: Amram, the father of Moshe; Binyamin; Yishai, the father of David; and a son of David, [Kil’av]. So Binyamin, too — the two children of Rachel — were truly the faithful product of a complete spirituality radiating from their very physical being. There was, as it were, the harmony of the human body functioning through the Ramach mitzvot aseh — the 248 positive commandments — and the 365 prohibitions, which correspond to the sinews, while the 248 correspond to the limbs. There was a perfect connection, which produced a unity of Torah such that one did not feel any composite of diverse elements; it was truly a single piece.

Mikshah — beaten out of a single piece. This, then, is the reason Yosef could not be the spiritual leader of the Jewish people. He could not attain kingship, even though his birthright had been recognized by Yaakov, who gave him two portions, as is due to a firstborn who takes upon himself responsibility for the whole family. But a perfect being indeed cannot govern and take charge of his society, his community. To take charge of a community, there must be something to reproach him with. As the Sages say, one appoints a leader over the community only if he has a basket of creeping things hanging about his neck — that is, one sees that he is a man who can be reproached; he is imperfect, but his imperfection is itself his advantage.

Let us recall what the text says: asher nasi yecheta — “when a leader sins” — which the Sages read as “happy is the generation” whose leader commits a sin and makes amends for it. For in doing so he offers a model of life to his community, to his people. If he is a tzaddik, a perfect tzaddik, that is a nature, a gift; HaKadosh Baruch Hu (the Holy One, blessed be He) gave him the means to be so. The others shoulder their destiny as best they can. But they recognize themselves far more in someone who earns this responsibility — Yehudah, in this case. Yehudah committed a sin with Tamar, Reuven committed a sin against his father; what mattered is that they did teshuvah (repentance) and were honest to the very end.

That is what raised them up; that is what justified what they were to be within their community. Now Reuven and Yehudah are not the children of Rachel; Reuven and Yehudah are the children of Leah. And Rachel — what does she do? How did she distinguish herself? Our Sages say that Rachel answered Yaakov’s advances by saying: “I have an older sister, and my father will never agree to marry me off before her.” So she knew. He said — vayaged Yaakov le-Rachel ki achi aviha hu — “Yaakov told Rachel that he was her father’s brother.” And our Sages say: but he is not her father’s brother! Her father is his mother’s brother. What, then, does “her father’s brother” mean? He said, in effect:

If your father takes the path of the tzaddik, of honesty, I will be honest with him. But if he takes the path of deceit, of wrongdoing, I will outmaneuver him. They agreed on a code. The code was that their marriage rests on three conditions: [the lighting of the lamp], challah — the separating of a portion of the dough — and niddah. [That is:] that nothing succumb to routine, which leads toward death; that not everything be left to the ordinary cycle of nature; that this love rise above mere natural attraction. And this secret code Rachel did not keep for herself; she handed it over.

She gave it to her sister when she saw that, come what may, her father would on no account give her to Yaakov first. And she said: my sister is not going to be humiliated, diminished — I will give her my code. So she sacrificed her love for her sister’s sake. And so Yaakov indeed loved Rachel, thought he had married Rachel, but the next morning discovered that it was Leah. You know that this image is carried over into our own customs. Before the wedding, the groom goes toward his chosen bride while her face is uncovered. He sees clearly that she is the one he chose. And then he covers her face.

Yes, he chose her — but is she part of his destiny? That is another aspect of things. For it is from G-d that a woman is destined for a man. And therefore, when this woman walks toward the chuppah (the wedding canopy), her face is covered: it is destiny that leads her to the chuppah. And it is this destiny that will be the subject of the blessings under the canopy. There are thus two aspects to marriage: that of choice, of being loved; and that of the reality one discovers upon waking. And upon waking — yes, it is another woman. Vayehi vaboker vehineh hi Leah — “and in the morning, behold, it was Leah”; one realizes that it is Leah, no longer Rachel. Rachel was the gentle ewe, as her name indicates — tender, the one you take in your arms, caress, and love. Leah is a weary being, nil’ah, as the name is often understood.

She had given up. She had given up because she was not sure of her destiny. It had been said: Yitzchak has two sons, Yaakov and Esav. Esav is for the elder — for the elder daughter, who is Leah. And the younger, Yaakov, will take the younger, who is Rachel. But Leah wanted no part of that destiny. She wept day and night. Yes — and yet there was weeping on his side as well. It is said that when he first met Rachel — something unheard of, which the Torah never mentions elsewhere — he kissed Rachel. That was not customary; it was not within convention. The people around mocked him somewhat, and he felt embarrassed.

He wept. But the text tells us no: he wept because in truth he had glimpsed a future that would not be radiant, not bright, for him. Now Yaakov finds himself with Leah the morning after the wedding. If such a thing happened to anyone, he would immediately begin divorce proceedings. That is not what Yaakov does. He considers that meHashem ishah le’ish — that a woman is destined for a man by G-d — that there is probably a destiny at work here. He understood. He does not turn against his wife. He reproaches her with nothing, for he had once done the very same thing himself. But he turns against his father-in-law, because Lavan had not told him beforehand that he could not give him Rachel as long as he had not married off the elder.

But then, let us picture for a moment this forced marriage, that of Yaakov and Leah. And the “hatred”: as much as Yaakov loves Rachel, so much are we told snu’ah Leah — Leah was hated. She is hated. Hated why? Because she entered the game. Why did she enter the game? She was not honest […]. She took her example from Yaakov. He had fought to wrest the blessing from his brother, and the birthright. She says: well, me too. And that is the power of defiance: on the one hand to weep over one’s destiny, but not to let oneself be crushed by it, and to seize the first opportunity to fight and obtain what one desires.

For in the morning, when Yaakov said to her, “All night long I kept addressing you as Rachel, and you answered me,” she said to him: “Well, you too — did you not say to your father, anochi Esav bechorecha, ‘I am Esav, your firstborn’? You substituted yourself for Esav. I, in turn, […] substituted myself. So I did nothing wrong; I took what you yourself had declared.” Setting out along this path, she will pursue her way, and it is she who will give the kehunah — the priesthood — the malchut — the kingship — and the Torah: all the qualities required to secure the future of a family. It is she.

Of course, Yosef and Binyamin have a fine role […], but Yehudah is the one who holds the center of kingship. And Yehudah is the fourth child. Look at the first children. Reuven, Leah’s firstborn: ki ra’ah Hashem be’onyi — “for Hashem has seen my affliction”; He took pity, He saw my misery. The second, Shimon: ki shama Hashem — Hashem has heard that I was unloved. The third, Levi: hapa’am yilaveh ishi elai — “this time my husband will be joined to me.” It is as though, at the third child, Yaakov begins to adopt Leah, draws close to her, accepts Leah as his wife. And indeed, the first two she names herself, but the third — al ken kara shemo Levi, “therefore he called his name Levi” — it is Yaakov who names the third child.

And so, at the fourth child, what does she say? Why call him Yehudah? Hapa’am odeh et Hashem — “this time I will praise Hashem,” for He has given me what I desired. So, in sum, we are in the presence of two personalities. One is the perfect tzaddik, in the person of Rachel; the second is the ba’al teshuvah, the person of repentance — she is incomplete, but she will fight to reach her goal and turn the situation to her advantage. And it is she whom HaKadosh Baruch Hu rewards, because the perfect tzaddik is not of this world. He is not the one who will truly bring this world to its fulfillment, because he settles into what he is and is somewhat passive.

He isolates himself. The other, on the contrary, now has a goal. He must rebuild himself, call himself into question, define his objectives. And that is how the cell of the Jewish people is formed: though Rachel is the model, it is Leah who determines its future. Love, in the same way, does not exhaust itself in the present but projects itself — projects a future; that is true love. Otherwise it dies in the present. And so too in the realm of the tzaddik: he is the one who must project himself onto a future, and not content himself with ben porat Yosef, ben porat alei ayin — “Yosef is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring” — that is, with a perfect success in this world, but one that somewhat isolates him from the rest of the community.

And that is why the couple of Rachel and Leah is presented as two worlds that merge into one another. It is said that Rachel is alma de’itgalya, the uncovered, revealed world, while Leah is alma de’itkasya, the covered world, the hidden world […]. But both are complete; the two merge into a single personality. And that is why, when we bless a couple, we say: like Rachel and like Leah. There we are. If you have questions to ask, go ahead. — Yes, if you will allow me, Kevod HaRav: what about the Messiah, the Mashiach?

If you say that the leader must be imperfect — well, I have never heard of the Mashiach’s flaws. And the second question also concerns the Mashiach: if Rachel embodies perfection and Leah does the work, one ought to expect the Mashiach of Leah to be the one who brings us closer, and the Mashiach of Rachel to finish the work. — I would have to refer you to the chapter that the Christian world itself adopted for its own messiah, namely, that it presents him as a persecuted being, afflicted […], one who is also weighed down by sins and reviled by everyone.

So the Mashiach is not the perfect being; he is the one who succeeds in bringing about a perfection within humanity. He is the one who gathers all the units together under one flag — all of them units, all independent, autonomous elements, but under a single banner. That is the Mashiach. The Mashiach has never been defined as a perfect being; that is a mistake. In any case, you speak of Mashiach Tzidkenu, “our righteous Messiah” — the one who must restore justice. And the one who must restore justice is Leah, not Rachel. But if both Rachel and Leah were needed, why then is there need for a Mashiach [from Rachel’s side] as well as from Leah’s? Because we need a point of reference. That point of reference is Yosef.

That point of reference is Rachel. Look: Yaakov, all his life long, finds himself with Leah, even in death. Did he want Rachel at his side? No. Rachel lies far away […]. He himself asks to be buried where Leah is buried — but he does not forget Rachel. He speaks of her; she is present, always present. He does not forget her; he never forgets her. Besides, when she had none — how did she have her child, Yosef? Through prayer. Prayer you offer only when you feel the need for it, when you become aware of your imperfections, of what you lack and would truly like to obtain, and of your desire to triumph over your weaknesses.

So prayer has greater power than study. And when, for example, she has a fit of jealousy because her sister has children and she has none, and she turns to Yaakov and says, roughly, havah li vanim — “give me children!” — what does he answer her? Hatachat Elokim anochi asher mana mimech pri vaten? — “Am I in the place of G-d, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” But this is not a way of flaring up in anger at a person who feels diminished, lessened, by having no child. No — he is telling her: you yourself are capable of praying; you are capable of offering that same prayer […]. But for that, one must feel it as something truly indispensable.

And if you pray in awareness of what is lacking, well, you will see Yosef — you will see the child she has. She calls him Yosef: “may Hashem add,” He will add. That is to say, she has now become aware that she must not remain merely a woman fulfilled by her husband’s love, but must project that love onto a future and not live it entirely in the present. That is where […]. Another question, then? — I’ll say see you next week. — I think we can’t hear you. — See you next week […]. — Excuse me, there. I have a question somewhat on the side. We have just read the Book of Ruth.

We read there that Ruth should be “like Leah and Rachel.” Can we see her as something like — not quite, but as a secondary matriarch, or truly a matriarch as well? — Yes, precisely. We said that there is something forced about this marriage. She is a young woman, a convert, seeking her place within the people of Israel, who is not recognized at first […]; she has to obtain that recognition. Leah is in the same situation: she is not recognized, and she too must obtain that recognition. But on the other hand, Ruth is admired for her human qualities. Boaz is, so to speak, filled with admiration before the virtues of this woman, Ruth — so much so that he gives her six measures of barley, [which stand for] the messianic attributes.

And so there is this double aspect in Ruth: both that of Rachel and that of Leah — but always Rachel before Leah, since Rachel is the standard. — Thank you very much. — There we are. — Todah, thank you so much. Kevod HaRav, you are wonderful. Todah rabbah. Shavua tov. — Shavua tov, thank you very much.