[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Mazel Tov to Professor Lena Magnone on her Bat Mitzvah this Shabbat, November 9 and 10 at the new home of Beit Warszawa near the center of Warsaw, Poland. Her explication of the Torah reading for this week, Toldot (Genesis 25:19-28:9) is brilliant. Dr. Lena Magnone’s enthusiasm and devotion to Judaism will be in evidenced not only this Shabbat but in coming months as she will occasionally prepare sermons and lessons. Dr. Magnone is part of a discernable Progressive Jewish life that celebrates a new chapter in post-Communist Poland. The Adult Bat Mitzvah celebrated at Congregation Beit Warszawa is part of the network of Progressive Jewish synagogues and chavurot under the nation-wide umbrella of Beit Polska sponsored by Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland and the European Union of Progressive Judaism.[/perfectpullquote]
Lena Magnone
My Bat-Mitzvah celebration has accidentally fallen on my so called „name-day”. In my Catholic family the 10th of November was always pompously celebrated, even if the hagiography doesn’t mention any alleged Saint Lena. Today, as a Jew by choice, I have a very concrete patroness, one of the matriarchs, Leah. She will be introduced in the parashah Vayetzei, read next Shabbat. We will then learn that she was the only one from four mothers of the Jewish people who didn’t suffer from barrenness.
Before her appearance, women figures are always touched by the same fate. Abraham’s wife Sarah was blessed with pregnancy only at the age of ninety. Leah’s sister, Rachel, will remain barren during all the years when Leah will sequentially give birth to Jacob’s sons. From today’s parashah we learn that the wife of Isaac, Rebekah, could not get pregnant for twenty years of her marriage. The parashah doesn’t inform us how Rebekah felt about it, whether she was convinced herself that the maternity was the sole destiny for every women. We only know for sure that it was Isaac who begged God for his wife to conceive and that God responded to his plea (ויעתר לו). [The same in Chayei Sarah, the end of the 24 chapter: the information is given about the fact that Isaac loved Rebekah – which is I think the first time in the Torah when a marital love is ever mentioned – but not a word whether Rebecca loved him back!]
Furthermore, when already pregnant, Rebekah allows herself to complain:
אם-כן, למה זה אנכי?
Those words can be translated in several ways: “If so, why do I exist?” or „If so, why me?”. Nahum Sarna suggests that the Hebrew phrase is actually incomplete, but as such even more powerful and dramatic (“If so, why then am/do I…”). This almost blasphemous exclamation addressed to God seems to herald the subsequent struggle of her son Jacob with God (as a result of which he took the name of Israel). Rebekah is also challenging ( לדרש ) the Almighty, asking Him if the complicated, painful twin pregnancy is really what the Lord expects from her. And indeed, Rebekah’s role definitively doesn’t end with giving Esau and Jacob the birth. She heard what Lord had told her, but she didn’t wait for her fate to come through, she took matters into her own hands.
What’s unique about Rebekah is that she didn’t content herself with the fulfilling of her biological role.
Earlier we could get the impression that she surrenders rather passively to her fate, or rather to the decision taken behind her back. In Chayei Sarah Eliezer talks about his mission only with Laban and Bethuel, her brother and father, who, without consulting with her, answer: “Here is Rebekah before you; take her and go” ( הנה ־רבקה לפניך קח ולך ). They request purely a few days delay before the final farewell. It’s only when Eliezer demands an immediate departure, Rebekah is asked for her opinion. But then, she is not allowed to choose whether to marry or not to marry the unknown Isaac, but only whether to leave to meet him right away or to postpone the inevitable event. As the choice is obviously virtual, it is hardly surprising that a resigned young girl answers “I will go” (אלך).* That is how she leaves her family and follows the servant sent by Abraham to become the wife of Isaac, whom she will properly see for the first time during the wedding ceremony.
At first it may seem that Rebekah does not have her own personality, that she just fills the space left empty after Sarah’s decease. There is a reason why the parashah introducing Rebecca is entitled Chayei Sarah and concluded with a sentence saying that to bring Rebekah to Sarah’s tent has comforted Isaac after his mother’s death! For a very long section of Toldot Abraham’s son seems to repeat exactly his father’s biography, casting his wife in the role of Sarah. As Sarah, Rebekah is barren for decades (it crossed my mind that if Isaac perceived her as an incarnation of his mother, maybe for all that time he hadn’t even slept with her?); the famine described in chapter 26 duplicates that from Abraham’s period; Isaac digs out the wells dug by his father and since that time filled up; his agreement with Abimelech in Beer-sheba reminds the previous one, concluded by his father. Also, it is hard to forget that in Gerar Isaac presents Rebekah as his sister and not his wife, like Abraham did with Sarah in the very same city – the difference lies in the fact that Abimelech, unaware of the trick, probably indeed had sex with Sarah, but, instructed by God, didn’t repeat this mistake with Rebekah – moreover, he made Isaac understand how careless and cruel his behaviour was.
It’s only when Isaac becomes old and loses his sight, that we can see Rebekah differently that through his eyes; see her for herself, not as Sarah’s younger incarnation.
Chapter 27 presents Rebekah as a figure of female agency, the one who not only gave her husband sons, but also independently, without any consultation with him, decided about the fate of her progeny, thereby, of the whole Jewish nation. How would the history of Jewish people look like, if Rebekah didn’t resort to manipulation? Who would we be if we were not the children of Israel (Jacob)? Without Rebekah’s intervention, could God’s covenant with Abraham be fulfilled at all?
At first reading Rebekah’s behaviour may appear at least dubious, even morally questionable, as if nothing was left from her chesed (חסד ), strongly stressed in the previous parashah. Her intrigue starts with her overhearing a conversation between Isaac and Esau. We can argue if she just heard their exchange accidentally or was she really eavesdropping, lurking by the door, unseen for the speakers. We should remember though, that for the centuries those were the only ways for women – neither invited to any decision-making body nor treated as equal intellectual partners – to learn anything about what was going on. Her rapid reaction and immediate decision imply anyway that she must had everything planned for a long time (disguise for Jacob, a recipe for a delicious, but quick to prepare dish, etc.) and has just been waiting for an opportunity. After all, she had known for a long time that the ultimate blessing was meant for Jacob, she was given this information from God already when she was pregnant, therefore “Rebekah loved Jacob” ( ורבקה אהבת את־יעקב ).
[The story of the preference for one of the children, presented in Toldot, can resonate deeply with some of us, especially if, as it was in my case, we were rather in an Esau situation, i.e. that of the unloved firstborn. I must admit I am moved by Esau’s despair expressed in his words: “Have you but one blessing, Father?” What’s worse, the Haftarah leaves no doubt that not only each parent had his favorite son, but that the Almighty also “loved only Jacob, and hated Esau” (in Polish translation of Malachi 1,2-3)!]
As she proceeds to the realization of her plan, Rebekah is ready for anything: the loss of love and trust of her husband, a possible vengeance on the part of Esau. She takes full responsibility (“Your curse, my son, be upon me!” – she reassures Jacob when he worries that his father will discern the fraud and curse him instead of bless him).
It’s not the only moment when Rebekah decides for her son. After she learns that Esau declared his intention to kill Jacob in retaliation for the ruse, she sends Jacob to her brother Laban (there Jacob will meet two daughters of his uncle, Rachel and Leah, and he will be cheated in turn). It’s noticeable that when presenting the necessity of doing so Rebekah speaks once again in a very emotional way. She claims that Jacob must leave to find an appropriate wife, because if, like Esau, he takes one of Canaanite women, her life will stop having any meaning. Her threat (? למה לי חיים) sounds like her previous complaint to God (?למה זה אנכי), the difference is that the first one was a sincere plea for an answer, a way to persuade the Almighty to reveal His plans, while the second is pure rhetoric, an emotional blackmail the purpose of which is to cover her real intentions. Actually, Rebekah says that her life will have no sense, not in the case of Jacob’s unfortunate marriage, but in that of his death from Esau’s hand. Her worry therefore concerns the destiny of Jewish people: if Jacob were killed by his brother, he would never have a chance to become Israel, and the line which began with Abraham and Isaac would abruptly break here. Rebekah “chooses life” (cf. Nitzavim) – not her life, but ours.
The title of this parasha, Toldot, means “generations”. Indeed, although the first verse announces “the story of Isaak”, the parasha concerns his offspring, and this in the broadest sense, i.e. Jewish nation, whose future till Rebekah’s intervention remains very fragile. For good reason then Jacob presents himself to Rachel as “Rebekah’s son” (Vayetzei). All of us, in as much as “b’nei Israel”, are all the more “b’nei Rebekah”.
Jacob’s words in chapter 29, verse 12 are the last mention of Rebeca’s name in the Torah, which remains silent about her destiny and even her death, although it mentions the decease of Debora, her nurse (some interpretation suggest this is the veiled way of communicating Rebekah’s death). After she played her part, Rebekah disappears from the history of Jewish people.
The fact that she resorted to deception may be negatively judged and at first reading the way the infirm Isaak was used may raise opposition. However, this imposture was for her the only way not to submit to the automatism of nature (order of the birth of twins), but actively to create history.
For history does not happen without our participation. A woman has a greater role to fulfil than just a biological prolongation of the family line. Her decision can change the destiny of a whole nation.
This is an important lesson on the role of women in Judaism, one particularly relevant for those of us for whom Adonai have not assigned the task of childbearing.
Leah Magnone
*Conscious about the fact that this was read by Rashi as the base for the principle of the necessity of woman’s consent, I am also well aware that in the course of history that choice was for many women, as it was for Rebekah, only virtual, their consent being assumed or forced.
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