Vayishlach
Synopsis
After staying with his uncle Laban, and having married Laban’s daughters Leah and Rachel, and then having made a personal fortune in livestock through selective breeding, Jacob is returning home after more than thirty years away. The sidra begins with him sending messengers ahead to his brother Esau, (who had sworn to kill Jacob when they had parted many years earlier, Jacob having stolen the birthright blessing that rightfully belonged to Esau.) He says to the messengers that they should tell Esau that ‘his servant Jacob’ has been with Laban until now. He has acquired herds and flocks and servants. Now he seeks Esau’s favour. Jacob sets aside gifts for Esau from his herds and property. He instructs his servants to go one by one, with space in between, to present Esau with these gifts. But if they do not meet Esau along the way, they may travel on through the land.
The messengers return with the information that Esau and a large army of men are coming towards Jacob.
Jacob’s response is to prepare for what he imagines is a confrontation with his brother – he has 2 approaches to the coming meeting: - firstly the pragmatic: he divides all his household and possessions in the hope that if Esau destroys one camp, the other may be saved. Then the spiritual: -he prays to God for protection.
The night before he is to meet his brother, Jacob is alone, yet the text also tells us that he spends the night wrestling and that at dawn his name is changed to Israel. The next morning he meets Esau peacefully, - indeed Esau is very pleased to see him and wishes him only well; Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, fell upon his neck and kissed him, and they wept. They part, with Esau returning to Seir and Jacob settling outside of the city of Shechem.
There, Jacob's daughter Dinah is raped by a prince of the town: Shechem son of Hamor, and, in retaliation, Jacob's sons go on a violent rampage, killing the entire male population of Shechem after they have agreed to undergo circumcision. Then they took the property of the people and took all the women and children captive. But Jacob said to Shimon and Levi, “You have brought me trouble. You discredit me among the people who live in Canaan. They will gather together and strike against us.” They replied to their father “should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?”
God told Jacob to go to Beit-El to live and to make an altar to God who had appeared to him when he had originally fled from Esau. Jacob did so, and before he moved he had everyone in his camp purify themselves, change their clothes and bring him their foreign gods, which he then buried under the oak tree in Shechem.
Deborah, the nurse of Rebecca, dies and is buried in Beit-El.
Leaving Beit-El for Efrat, Rachel goes into labour and dies on the road. She names her baby Ben-oni (child of my suffering) but his father changes the name to Ben-yamin (son of my old age/son of my right hand). Rachel is buried on the road towards Bethlehem and a tomb was set up.
The bible then tells us that Reuben, Jacob’s oldest son, sleeps with Bilhah his father’s concubine and mother of some of his other children, and Jacob finds out about it. Nothing more is said at this stage, but this will come into the narrative later.
Then we are given a genealogy of the children of Jacob.
Jacob arrives at Kiryat Arba, also known as Hebron, and we are told of the death of Isaac aged 180 years. When he dies, both of his sons, Esau and Jacob are there to bury him at the cave in Mamre.
Bible then gives us a list of the descendants of Esau, as well as the specific kings of Seir and Edom who ruled prior to King Saul - the first king of Israel.
D’rasha
This sidra is choc a bloc with story after story waiting to be told, and one of the most painful is that of the rape of Jacob's daughter Dina, and the retaliation taken on the rapist, Shechem, and his whole city.
Horrific as the story is, so much is omitted – we hear nothing of the terror or pain of Dina herself, nothing of the horror or pain of her father whose only daughter has been abducted and raped – the only feelings reported are those of Shechem who falls in love with the girl he has violated, and possibly the feeling of her outraged brothers.
Shechem and his father came to discuss marriage between the rapist and the victim, proposing in effect an alliance between the tribe of Israel and the tribe of Shechem. Jacob is not involved in the discussion, instead his sons respond to the request, making only one demand – that if Shechem is to marry their sister, then the men of Shechem must undergo circumcision, as Dina could not marry an uncircumcised male. One could argue that this ritual actually converted the men of Shechem to the covenant between Israel and God – they would undergo brit milah – and so they would become, as the Shechemites clearly believed, one people.
The Shechemites agreed to the condition, and three days later, when they were still in great pain from the operation, Shimon and Levi, two of Jacob’s sons, entered the city, killed all of its male inhabitants, and took the women and children as captives.
Jacob’s response when he found out about this is practical – he and his household are in danger from the other tribes around in the land. Surely they will gather together to destroy him and all his people. He is troubled, but not (as we are) by the morality of what has happened. He didn’t seem to be concerned about the personal damage done to his only daughter, and now he is only worried about the practical consequences of the actions of his sons. Increasingly we see that the focus of this story is jarringly political at the expense of anything remotely personal.
The Torah in this narrative is hugely disturbing. Where is the voice of the victims? First Dina then the people of Shechem are silenced as the political agenda is pursued. Where is the voice of morality? Can the response of the sons of Jacob really be seen as justification when they ask “should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?” Where is the voice of the God of all peoples who allows circumcision to become the vehicle for murder?
The meta Torah is perfectly clear from this narrative – when we think about politics at the expense of thinking about real living breathing people then we make the wrong decisions, we allow for violence to become justifiable, we think that retribution is ok, we think only of our own situation and not that of others.
The voice of Dina calls to us from this piece – “I was raped by Shechem and I was silenced by Torah. And this happened because you were focussing on your own enhancement, your own security, and your own needs.” The voices of the men of Shechem call out to us that they did what we said we needed and their action was callously used against them. What can we learn? If we put politics before people the outcome will always be violence and pain.
Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild