Torah Tidbits: Parshat Vayeitzei

Lots to discuss in the odd, Vayeitzei soap opera...

29:19 - Strong praise from Laban vis-a-vis giving (!) Rachel to Jacob:  "'It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man." Nice.

29:23 - I never understood this:  Laban gives Leah instead of Rachel to Jacob, who doesn't realize the switcheroo until the morning after he sleeps with her?!?!  Was he an idiot?  (Clearly he liked to do it with the lights out.)  I would be seriously pissed off at Laban if he did this to me.

29:27-28 - Why did it never occur to me how odd, how weird  it was that Jacob married two sisters?  So Leah and Racher were sisters and sister wives?!?  Seriously, though, I thought it was assur to have relations with your wife's sister -- am I wrong about that?

29:30-31 - More bad patriarchal/matriarchal behavior:  First, Jacob not only "loved Rachel more than Leah," but "the LORD saw that Leah was hated"...now there's a recipe for family discord!  Then, just to "fix" things up really good, God makes Leah pregnant rather than Rachel.  No jealousy there.  Why does God make things harder rather than easier?

30:1-2 - More jealousy -- and drama -- from Rachel:  "And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and she said unto Jacob: 'Give me children, or else I die.'"  Jacob, of course, then passes the buck:  "...he said: 'Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?'"  Hard to tell who is at fault here, but in any case, no one seems quite accepting of God's will here.

30:14-17 - This story of Reuben and the mandrakes is strange and creepy.  According to the Kehot interpolated version (which I'm not vouching for, but it does fill in some of what would otherwise be entirely incomprehensible), Reuben brings the mandrakes -- which can be made into some kind of fertility drug -- to his mother, Leah, even though she clearly doesn't need it.  (Why does he do this?)  Rachel, who does need the help, asks for them instead of Leah.  Leah is pissed off, saying "Is it a small matter that thou hast taken away my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also?"  Rachel offers a swap:  Leah can sleep with Jacob on that night in exchange for the mandrakes, which Rachel will use in advance of their next night together, in order to conceive.  So, in short, Reuben gets involved in the fertility conflict between his two mommies, who wheel and deal over who gets to have sex with Jacob and when.  I'm totally serious when I ask: Are these the people we're supposed to emulate as paragons of Jewish virtue?!?!

30:24 - Joseph is born.  Remind me, why isn't Joseph thought of as a patriarch?!?

30:28-42 - The account of the deal between Laban and Jacob over what the former should pay the latter for his years of service is a real gem of this portion.  Almost half of chapter 30 is devoted to an extended discussion of different kinds of goats and sheep -- their colors, markings, and mating habits -- and who gets what, how and when.  On the one hand, I get it; livestock was important back then, so they cared about these kinds of things.  On the other hand, it's hard for me to understand the point of this extended discussion at this point.  Heck, the akkedah gets less ink than the goats and sheep do.  Are we to understand that something more important is going on here?  It's curious to me.

31:19-20 - Interesting juxtaposition of language here:  Rachel steals (vatignov) Laban's idols...then Jacob outwitted (vayignov) Laban by not telling him he planned to flee.  [You really have to read the Hebrew when it comes to certian things!]  My question, though, is why Rachel steals her father's idols.  What possesses her to do this?  The JPS version relates that "Rachel stole the idols [teraphim] that belonged to her father..."  The Kehot version adds "hoping in this way to wean him from idolatry," which I suppose makes sense, but there's no other indication in the text that this is why Rachel does this, and her own behavior up to this point hasn't exactly been exemplary.

31:30-37 - So Rachel has her father's idols when she, Leah and Jacob flee.  Laban catches up to the next day...when several very curious things happen.  First, Laban, among other things, angrily asks for his Gods (elohai) back and Jacob, the good Jewish monotheist that he is, takes Laban's side, saying "With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, he shall not live..."  Instead of telling Laban that his Gods mean nothing and go piss off, he threatens to kill whomever took the idols?!?  Second, Rachel, rather than admit what she has done, sits on the idols to hide them, lying that she can't get up because of her period?!?!  Finally, and perhaps most weirdly, the story ends here -- we never know what happens to the idols, whether Jacob learns about what happened, or what Laban does afterwards.  So what is the moral to the story?  It's okay to lie -- including to one's spouse -- when it comes to separating other people from their idols?