A surprising midrash offers a transcript of one of the first conversations between Yaakov and Leah, after their wedding. Embedded in this midrash is a strong statement about the difficult and imperfect choices our forefathers and foremothers faced and which we too face in a world where precious little is truly black and white.
The midrash (Agadot Bereshit, chapter 48, and quoted by Da’at Zekenim) states that, upon first discovering that the woman he discovered is not Rachel, his intended, Yaakov said to Leah: “You are a liar, the daughter of a liar – last night, I called you Rachel and you answered me; now I call you Leah and you also answer me!” She said back to him: “Are you a man with no students? Your father called you Esav and you answered him, and then he called you Yaakov and you also answered him!”
This midrash points out, quite starkly, six points of similarity in Leah’s deception of Yaakov and Yaakov’s prior deception of his own father: 1) one sibling pretends to be the other; 2) the deception is instigated by a parent; 3) the deception ends up for the good, in spite of the initial anguish experienced by the deceived party; 4) there was no time to wait – not taking action would have resulted in an irreparable loss; 5) the victim was fooled because he could not see (Yitzchak because of blindness, Yaakov because of the dark of night); 6) the deception appeared to be the only way of accomplishing an important goal – directing the blessing to its ideal recipient, Yaakov, and bringing Leah together with Yaakov (which, judging by the number of children they had, and these childern’s stature, appears to verify that they were well suited for each other).
Both situations involve difficult moral decisions, wherein the right choice was not clear. There was no good choice or at least no ideal one. Truth and honesty were sacrificed for a larger goal. The more we examine these two episodes, and others faced by our role models, the personalities in the Torah, the more we see that most of the choices they faced were quite complex, fraught with difficulty, and left lingering problems. Still, they chose wisely and we are bidden to follow their examples.
This Dvar Torah was adapted by Harry Glazer from the chapter “Redeeming Ourselves: Lessons from the Mothers,” pages 49-54, in Rabbi Francis Nataf’s book Redeeming Relevance In the Book of Genesis: Explorations in Text and Meaning (Urim Publications, Jerusalem, 2006).
18 Cheshvan 5775
November 11, 2014