This week’s parshah is Vay’etze (Gen 28:10 � 32:3), about Jacob’s sojourn with Laban. Now, strangely for Genesis, this is a story with more or less a happy ending. Laban doesn’t lose much by his deceptions, as he remains wealthy and his daughters would have married anyway (29:19). Jacob certainly comes out well, rich as Croesus, with two wives and two concubines, all of whom seem to get along reasonably well by the end of it. Rachel does well, as does Leah. Of course, it’ll all end in tragedy (or seem to), but not yet. So why should anybody do anything different?
Looking at it another way, what does anybody do that’s right? Laban first makes his nephew work for his room and board under brutal conditions (according to Jacob), then does the daughter switch. Jacob seems to accept the daughter switch rather easily, marrying both in the space of a week, and deserves more trouble than he gets. Leah and Rachel spat with each other for a while, but learn to get along eventually, and the competition for children has repercussions only much later (for which Jacob gets blamed, anyway). Jacob pulls some sort of fast one with the speckled goats, although I can’t quite figure out what really goes on. Rachel steals her dad’s house-idol. The whole gang of them deserve each other.
So where are the moments of decision? What happens if Laban deals honestly with Jacob, saying he won’t marry off the youngest until the oldest is married? Does Jacob find some other sap to marry Leah, have only the one wife and fewer children, and maybe ease off the sibling rivalry in the next generation? Frankly, I can’t see Jacob monogamous; the constant feeding of maidservants into his tent seems to imply that. What if Jacob didn’t bother with the speckled-goat business, and left as he came, only with two wives, two concubines and twelve children? Um, I think not. Could Leah have refused? Could Rachel?
Really, I can’t figure out this parshah. I can’t draw lessons from it, positive or negative, nor can I find that what-if. It’s a good thing I don’t have to lead discussion tomorrow.
,
-Vardibidian.
It is a parshah of theft and deception, and it starts out with Jacob claiming a permanent right for him and his descendants to the land where he happens to have slept. How can we trust him? Because he says God gave it to him in his dream?
How much is it right that we claim for our own? How much is given to humanity, and how much do we simply take?
It is a parshah of love and reconciliation as well. It is a parshah of respect for others, a parshah of pluralism if you will. Jacob must learn the ways of a foreign land, and we must learn the ways of a foreign time. That is never easy.
Today we reject polygamy and slavery and concubines. We have made tremendous advances in our attitudes toward people, at least those who are close to us. But our attitudes have changed surprisingly little toward land, toward property, and toward people who are Other or unnamed because they are not close to us.