Sister-Wives for Real

Our foremothers did a lot of kvetching & worrying about fertility. Barrenness is a recurring theme in scripture for these important matriarchs, yet we rarely remember their recorded struggle to conceive. The first couple mothers, Sarah and Rebekah, kinda complain before we see the future patriarchs show up in the story. However, the case is a little different with Leah and Rachel. Leah, seemingly thanks to G!d’s compassion on her place as second favorite, seems to just keep having children for a while. However, her fertility is affected when G!d decides to show favor to Rachel after all her crying out for children. This goes back and forth a couple times, and we’re left at the end with twelve sons and a daughter between the two sisters, along with their respective maidservants, Zilphah and Bilhah.

Besides the (I can only guess) unruly playground of children, let’s stop for a moment to consider all the women. Four of them, to be exact – and the two official wives are sisters. The Torah doesn’t provide a lot of intermediary information, and most emotional details are absent (which makes midrash so much more fun!). So what was it like for these sisters and their maidservants? I often wonder what Rachel and Leah’s relationship was like beforehand – did this change things? Maybe I’ll write a modern midrash sometime…but I digress.

Parashat Vayetzei ends the same way it began: Jacob is setting out from a place, leaving to relocate. This time, though, he’s spent several years with Laban, adding family members while creating his own domain, and now he sets out to create a separate household. Indeed, we also read about his nervousness leaving Laban’s house because he is taking his daughters far away from their father. From this separation, we begin to see the shaping of what we consider our ancestral heritage.

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Komps kaos keeps katching up with me. I’m in the midst of finalizing a bibliography, organizing reading, and pushing ahead with studying. However, the last couple weeks I’ve had to travel a bit, I’ve taught Mishnah, and the cholidays have begun. By next week, I’ll have a bibliography – so there may be some late nights this week.