Parashat Vayishlah

THE MESSENGERS RETURNED TO JACOB, SAYING, "WE CAME TO YOUR BROTHER ESAU; HE HIMSELF IS COMING TO YOU, AND THERE ARE FOUR HUNDRED MEN WITH HIM."

(Bereishit 32: 7)

 

Your Brother or Esau? - How Does One Interpret the Other's Intentions in Unclear Circumstances?

We came to your brother Esau - of whom you would say, "He is my brother", but he treats you as the evil Esau, still harboring his hate.

(Rashi Bereishit 32: 7)

 

We came to your brother Esau - and you found favor in his eyes, as you had spoken. And out of joy at your arrival and his love for you, he himself is coming to you, and there are four hundred men with him, in your honor. That is the essence of the plain meaning of the verse. And so, too, Even now he is setting out to meet you, and he will be happy to see you (Shemot 4: 1).

(Rashbam loc cit)

 

He himself is coming to you - out of great joy to welcome you

And there are four hundred men with him - to do you honor.

(Hizkuni loc cit)

 

 

A New Reading of the Story of Dinah

Gila Zivan

One of the freshest and most significant voices in recent biblical interpretation is that of women who have joined the exegetical beit midrash (house of study). This beit midrash is essentially male, thousands of years old, and it is comprised of various strata of scriptural interpretation.

In the following essay on Parashat Vayishlah, I offer the reader an opportunity to hear a little of the new voice of Jewish women in exegetical discussion. This new exegesis places all of us, women and men, before an exciting challenge, which both forces us to view the canonical textual exegesis through critical eyes, while also enriching the repertoire of biblical interpretation with women's voices that have been missing to this day from our Mikraot Gedolot (traditional collection of commentaries).

A reading of the story of Dinah, free of interpretive assumptions, leaves it full of gaps: we don't know how Dinah felt, what she thought, whether she wanted Simeon and Levi's vengeance and murder of Shechem's family. What did she say when Shechem son of Hamor raped her? Or was she struck dumb by fear and surprise? What did she say to her brothers Simeon and Levi as they led her from the town strewn with corpses to her parent's home? Throughout the parasha, Dinah's voice is not heard.

This fact could be easily clarified against the background of patriarchal biblical society, which tells the story from a male standpoint, but that will not satisfy later generations of readers. The silencing of Dinah requires explanation.

Since the days of the composition of the midrashim, traditional interpretation, including the medieval commentators, has taken an almost unanimous stance. If Dinah was raped, it must have been because she comported herself in a way inappropriate for a modest and proper daughter of Jacob. It couldn't be that the girl was an innocent victim. Surely her own actions must have brought about her terrible fate. Let us consider Rashi's comments, which draw upon Midrash Rabbah. They may serve as one example among many of how Dinah's character is treated by traditional exegesis.

Now Dinah, Leah's daughter whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land. Rashi explains: "Why does scripture mention that Dinah was Leah's daughter and not Jacob's daughter? She was so called because of her going out; she was Leah's daughter, who also a yatzanit [out-going woman], for it says and Leah went out to meet him (Bereishit 30: 16).

Dinah's going out to visit the daughters of the land was understood by the authors of the midrash, and consequently by Rashi, as testifying to Dinah's questionable character. She was a yatzanit, a wanton woman, like her mother Leah, who went out to Jacob after she "hired" him for the night from his sister Rachel, in exchange for her son's mandrakes. Of woman, the midrash says, the princess's honor is held inside, her place is in the home, and she who goes out - is a yatzanit, and deserves that he lay with her by force. In other words, if Dinah was raped, she must have played a part in the catastrophe that fell upon her. She was the sinner, therefore she became the victim.

We had to wait two thousand years for wise, sensitive, and literate women to come along who would be capable, even afer so many generations had passed, to understand the heart of their sister Dinah. These exegetes gave Dinah her voice, which had been silenced through the long years of patriarchal culture, a culture that usually had difficulty hearing the voice of a blameless rape-victim.

Dinah's new voice will now constitute a necessary element in any reading of the story. I have chosen to give expression to it way of the writings of three women.

The first is the American-Jewish writer, Anita Diamant, whose book, The Red Tent, found its way into the hearts of many readers. Dinah's voice is returned to her in a long novel which is related entirely in her own first-person narration. It's impossible to begin quoting sections from the book or to analyze it in the space permitted by a parashat hashavua sheet. I will only say that Diamant takes up Shechem's love for Dinah, and his regret at having raped her. She allows Dinah to gradually fall in love with Shechem, and represents Simeon and Levi as bullies, whose action was motivated not by love for their sister, but rather by aggressive, extrinsic interests. Diamant's Dinah is angry at her father Jacob, the leader of the family, and blames her situation on him. She flees to Egypt, leaving her family and her bloody memories of Shechem behind in Canaan.

The second exegete I would like to mention is the Israeli writer, Mira Magen (see Korot Mibereishit, Ruth Ravitzky, editor, pages 275-79). Magen also chose to write in the first person, as if she were Dinah. Like Diamant, she recovers Dinah's lost voice twice: first, by revealing Dina's missing (perhaps better, silenced) words, second, by retelling the biblical story from Dinah's personal standpoint.

In her short and wonderful story called, "I am Serah's Aunt, and Rachel was My Aunt" (note that the story is not titled, "I am Dinah"!), Megan expresses the notion that that someone who has lost the right to cry out, the right to belong, and the right to hope becomes nameless. Her identity is erased; her name is erased from Israel. Megan tells the sad tale of the aged "Shemisha" [i.e., Dinah, literally "used one"] who goes to her brothers Levi and Simeon and demands that they return to her that which they have robbed her of, before the eyes of the entire family. .

That is, the personal honor that had been stolen from her at the moment in which her marriage to Shechem became impossible [with his death]. (The only way to redeem a raped woman in the biblical period was to have the rapist marry her, as is explained in Devarim 22: 28-9. In Dinah's case, Shechem had spoken to her tenderly and agreed to pay whatever bride-price might be asked of him in order to marry his beloved Dinah.)

Her voice, which she had been robbed of, and her name.

Simeon and Levi cannot help her, that which has been done cannot be undone. Dinah - Shemisha - must suffice with a walk to the goat herd, where, against their bleating she lets escape the cry hidden in her throat so many years;

"...They called me Dinah, daughter of Jacob, when I was a girl like Serah.

...When Shechem arrived and did what he did, I had no goat's wool to bite, and the shout that I had choaked escaped and was great and strong.

'Don't cry, girl,' said Shechem. 'I love you, I will wed you, no matter how much bride-price they demand, I will marry you.'

I pray so much that the only cry that I cried out will return to me, and I will cry it out once more...

Now that Simeon and Levi have reached the end of their days, I shall demand of them my name. They should stand in the center of town, and frighten the youths, announcing before family and community; "She shall not be called Shemisha, but rather Dinah , daughter of Jacob.'

...Simeon takes a break from his reaping and asks me, 'Why today?'

'Because the time has come to return the name that was stolen from me.'

...'If you hadn't gone out to visit the daughters of the land, that heathen wouldn't have seen you, he wouldn't have desired you and done to you what he did.'

...'Simeon, you were a youth and have grown old, and gained nothing of wisdom...I was an only daughter and you were twelve sons. There was no one to understand me. Who appointed you to chastise me? After all, if you were an only son with twelve sisters, you also would have gone out to find friends among the sons of the land.'

'But you were a girl. Your honor resided inside the home.'

'My honor? My honor was torn from me with my virginity, and repaid in love...I ask nothing of you but my name...'

...'Once you were Dinah, until you were used by a heathen, and you became Shemisha.'

...'That man loved me and paid you for me with his foreskin, and you came upon him treacherously and plundered his life.'

...'He made you into a whore and you grieve for him?' Levi asks..

'But that man loved me, and you and your brother killed him because his passion preceded his love'...

Levi rose up from the weeds, wiping the sweat from his face with his forearm....He said, 'Just as the sun does not spin around at noon to return to its origin in the east, deeds also may not be undone. Go home, woman!'

...I leave, throat full of cries yet choked.

...My feet clear themselves a passage among the piles of breathing wool, they walk to the place of screaming,...I walk to them to raise my voice among the noise of the multitudes, which will blot out the cry that I shall to return to myself."

To conclude, I will mention Rivkah Lubitz's midrashim ("Sippur Dinah: Scripture, the Sages, and Ourselves," in Avi Sagi and Nahum Illan, editors, Tarbut Yehudit B'ein Hase'ara - Sefer Hayovel Le'Yoskeh Ahituv, pp. 742-753). She chose not to write a novel, as did Diamant, nor a short story, as did Magen. Rather, working from the perspective of a religious feminist, she composes midrashim in the classic style. Her work engages in an exchange with the midrashim of the Sages of many years ago. By adopting the classical midrashic genre, it is as if Lubitz is saying that a contemporary feminist reading takes a place of honor among the myriad interpretations of scripture written across the generations.

"From reading the biblical text," Lubitz writes, "one gets the feeling that Dinah's story has yet to be told. The Sages told a particular story, but it is possible to tell a different one. This possibility is a necessity for our generation" (op cit pg. 752).

From all of Rivka Lubitz's collection of midrashim, I have decided to bring here the one relating to the words now Dinah went out, which is clearly engaged in an exchange with the midrash from Bereishit Rabbah and with the quote from Rashi that opens this article.

Now Dinah went out

There are those who explained, "like mother, like daughter," and others said "like father, like daughter."

Like her mother, for it is said and Leah went out to meet him; just as one went to meet her husband in order to fulfill a mitzvah, so this one went to find a husband.

Like her father, for it is said and Jacob went out; just as the one went because of his brother, so this one went out because of her brothers, to find herself a place.

We see that Rivka Lubitz interprets the word vateitzeh (and [she] went out) in the manner of the Sages, but to a completely different purpose. She overturns the midrash that criticizes Dinah for learning from her out-going mother, as if to say: if "like mother, like daughter," why see something improper in Leah's going out to meet her husband? Is this going out for harlotry? After all, she was his wife, and she set out o perform a mitzvah! Not stopping at this, Lubitz reminds the Sages and the readers of midrash that the verb "goes out" was applied also to Dinah's father, and not only to her mother (and Jacob went out, see Rashi there and which midrash he chose to cite regarding the exit of a righteous man from the town). In Dinah's case, going out is not deemed a negative action, but rather an understandable and natural act, given the preponderance of boys in the family.

Finally, I will mention Lubitz's marvelous midrash that relates to Dinah's voice, which is missing from the biblical story. Dinah's "silence" is taken by Lubitz as evidence of her vulnerability. It is not clear, she comments, "whether Dinah's silence is born of the pain...caused her by Shechem, or whether born of the injury inflicted upon her by her father and brothers in their lack of consideration for her wants and needs (loc cit).

And he lay with her by force yet it does not say and Dinah cried out. Is it even imaginable that Dina did not cry out? Rather, she became like a mute. The pain and humiliation silenced her.

Rivkah Lubitz gives Dinah back her scream, she sounds the voice that the Torah had hidden. As is written in the end of her midrash, "Dinah's silence resonates from one end of the world to the other, it is the cry that is in the heart."

In our new reading of Dinah's ancient story, we listen to the cry of Dinah's heart. Perhaps from this reading we will learn to listen to the cries of the suffering women who are around us.

Dr. Gili Zivan is the director of the Yaakov Hezog Center for Jewish Studies in Kibbutz Ein Tzurim.

 

 

And Esau Ran...and Hugged Him...and Kissed Him...and They Wept

The words "and they cried" give reliable evidence that we have here a manifestation of pure human emotion. A person can kiss without his heart being in it, but the tears that break forth in such moments can only originate in the depths of the heart. This kiss and these tears reveal to us that Esau is also of the seed of Abraham our father. He is not just a wild hunter, for how could he have risen to the rank of a leader? The sword alone and sheer material power cannot prepare a man for that.           

(R. Samson Raphael Hirsch on the Torah)

 

And they wept - they both wept. This comes to teach us that at that moment, Jacob's love of Esau was also awoken. And so for all generations: In the hour that Esau's descendants awaken in a pure spirit to recognize Israel's seed and their virtues, and then we also awaken to recognize Esau, for he is our brother. As Rabbi truly loved Antoninus - and there are many other examples.

(From The Netziv's commentary, Ha'Emek Davar)

 

 

 

 

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