Rabbi Mati Kirschenbaum
This week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, is replete with conflicts and tensions which Jacob and his family need to urgently address. It opens with the news that Esau is coming forward to meet Jacob bringing with himself four hundred men. Worried that Esau will want to take revenge on his loved ones for stealing his birthright, Jacob tries to win his elder brother over by sending him lavish gifts. Still, afraid that this might not be enough to placate his angered sibling, Jacob sends his family to safety, on the other side of the Jabbok stream. Then he famously fights with a mysterious creature till dawn. Immediately afterwards Jacob encounters Esau, two brothers finally reconcile.
Once this family conflict is put to rest, Jacob’s family deal with tensions coming from outside. Jacob’s only daughter, Dinah, leaves the camp to seek female companions not belonging to their tribe. Tragically, her friendly disposition and curious personality result in a terrible tragedy. Shechem, the prince of neighbouring Hivites, seizes and rapes her. Subsequently, he offers to marry her and proposes the merger of these two nations, which requires circumcision of all male Hivites. When they are recovering from this procedure, two among Jacob’s sons, Shimon and Levi, avenge Dinah’s suffering by murdering all the convalescing Hivites. They justify their actions by saying that they could not bear the shame of someone treating their sister as a harlot. Confronted with the bloodshed inflicted by his sons Jacob fears that such openly treasonous behaviour is going to antagonise and unite peoples of Canaan against his tribe. Years later, on his deathbed Jacob curses Shimon and Levi for their actions.
Dinah and Esau are both mistreated. However, their societal status prior to abuse determines the extent to which traumatic experiences define further trajectories of their lives.
Even though he has been cheated out of his birthright, Esau becomes a leader of a powerful tribe and the founder of the nation of Edom. The concluding part of our portion contains a long list of Esau’s prominent descendants.
Dinah’s fate is radically different. Following her ordeal, she is only mentioned once in the Bible – we find out that she was among seventy members of Jacob’s family who left Canaan and settled in Egypt. Torah never tells us what the rest of her life was like, whether she recovered from her abuse. This silence prompted rabbis to offer their midrashic answers.
The midrash that I find particularly appealing turns Asenath, Joseph’s wife, into Dinah’s daughter. According to it, Joseph’s sons insist on killing Asenath as she reminds them of the ‘shame’ that Dinah brought on their family. Luckily, Jacob is able to save her but is forced by his sons to give her away. God godself sends Archangel Michael to bring Asenath to her adoptive parents, Potiphar, Joseph’s first master in Egypt, and his wife. Before she is brought there, Jacob writes her story down on a golden plate and hangs it on Asenath’s neck. Many years later, this plate enables Joseph to discover that Asenath is his niece. In line with the endogamous tradition of Abraham’s descendants, Asenath and Joseph get married and live a happy life of Egyptian aristocracy. While the midrash doesn’t say what happens to Dinah after she comes to Egypt, I want to believe that Asenath, knowing who Dinah is and what she has been through, doesn’t leave her mother to spend the rest of her days in poverty and oblivion.
Rather, she invites Dinah to live with her and Joseph in their palace. There Dinah can babysit her grandsons, Ephraim and Menashe. When Jacob dies, he leaves a double portion of his inheritance to Ephraim and Menashe not just because they are the children of his favourite son. He also wants to make up for his failure as Dinah’s father by championing their shared grandchildren. Subsequently, Dinah enjoys the luxury of Joseph and Asenath’s palace and lives out the rest of her days as a matriarch she always deserved to be.
Why did I choose this midrash? And why did I let myself write it further? Why did I dream about Dinah getting a happy ending in her golden years after a life marked by abuse, misunderstanding and lack of empathy towards her suffering?
The answer to all these questions is simple but painful. This midrash offers me an escapist fantasy from a scandal that has shaken the foundations of European Progressive Judaism. On Wednesday, 7 December, a summary of an investigative report into the situation at Abraham Geiger Kolleg, continental Europe’s only Reform rabbinical seminary was published. The findings of the investigation were terrifying.
According to the law firm, Rabbi Walter Homolka, founder and rector of the Kolleg, had created a “network of dependencies” and a “culture of fear”. He threatened employees with dismissals. Moreover, Homolka had “de facto the possibility” to “control the entire career path of students”. One of the main instruments of Homolka’s reign of terror was the vagueness of criteria for ordination. The most problematic requirement for ordination was “confidence in the personality of the graduate”. This, according to the report, had created “enormous potential for abuse” as the students who lost Homolka’s “confidence” could be denied ordination. All this had led to the fact that “criticism and negative experiences during studies” were not verbalised “out of fear of negative consequences”.
This climate of fear silenced many Geiger students, myself included. We faced sexual propositioning and harrasment, we were bullied or expelled because our approach to the rabbinate did not resonate with Mr Homolka’s likings or objectives. Our suffering, like the perspective of Dinah, did not make it into the canonical story about Abraham Geiger Kolleg, the story of miraculous rebirth of rabbinical and cantorial education in Germany.
Is it because the Geiger students who were wronged were Dinahs and not Esau’s of the Progressive Jewish world? Most of those affected came from (comparatively) small communities and lacked international contacts. Many of us were dependent on the Kolleg financially as recipients of various stipends. Some of us were LGBTQ individuals chosing the rabbinate in the part of the world where belonging to this group makes it harder to find a job. Others were converts who, in spite of official policy of openness, still face prejudice and discrimination when they pursue the rabbinate.
Sadly, the factors that decide upon the difference between Dinahs and Esau’s of this world came into play when we decided to share our experiences. Just like Dinah, many leaders of the European Progressive movement looked at our stories through the prism of shame that could befall their institutions if our voices were heard far and wide. We did not seem to have the fear-inducing presence of Esau, which motivated Jacob to remedy past wrongs, to wrestle with the pangs of their conscience symbolised by the vision of the angel.
Nolens Volens, we had to become our very own guardian angels. We supported each other, believed each other and organised. This week our wrestling for truth and justice has finally paid off – Mr Homolka resigned as a rector of Abraham Geiger Kolleg. Sadly, it does not mean that, like in the story of Jacob and Esau, those who discounted our experience, finally embraced us and acknowledged the validity of our experience. Quite the opposite, many leaders of the European Progressive movement are still in denial as far as the complex truth about Abraham Geiger Kolleg is concerned. Our suffering is still discounted or relativised. They are still waiting for the angel who will teach them that in order to truly belong to the family of Jacob/Israel one needs to be able to confront difficult truths and act on reflections that arise from this struggle.
This all makes those who fight for justice and for a better future of the European Progressive Movement exhausted, just like Jacob was after his night-long tussle. The moral injuries make us limp, if only emotionally. We know that we still have a long way to go before we reach our goals: the apology for past wrongs and the creation of a truly safe rabbinical training school in Germany.
Luckily, we have Shabbat ahead of us, to regroup, recuperate and revel in the dreams of a better world. On this Shabbat we will repose, in Joseph’s palace, a splendid edifice made of dreams of rabbis of old and of today. There, Dinah and all victims of abuse in Jewish history can heal and grow where painful stories were told and hard lessons were learned. There, one does not need to wrestle with an angel to start a punishing journey to this palace, an angel is by one’s side to offer heavenly assistance.
Shabbat will end and we will have to leave the palace to return to the world as it is today. It might feel like a letdown. But we, those wronged by Abraham Geiger Kolleg, believe that it doesn’t have to be. We trust that each Progressive Jew can be not just a brother’s keeper but also a guardian angel. If we all ask questions, if we all pay attention to the developments at Abraham Geiger Kolleg, if we declare our interest, together, as a European Progressive Jewish community we will rebuild Abraham Geiger Kolleg and strengthen Progressive Judaism in Europe and beyond as a result. Together we can turn the Kolleg into a palace that will benefit everyone: Jacobs, Esaus, Dinahs, Josefs and Asenaths of today. May this palace be built soon and in our days. Shabbat Shalom.
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