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Vayishlach: Walking into the Red Tent

12/5/2014

 
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This is the sermon I am giving tonight at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island.

This Sunday and Monday nights, the Lifetime Channel is airing a made-for-TV movie based on the novel The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. The book and the movie are a retelling of a very minor story in the book of Genesis that, I guarantee, you did not learn about as a child in Religious School. Either by design or coincidence, that story is also in this week's Torah portion (Vayishlach).

The story is about a character named Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob, the youngest child of Jacob’s first wife, Leah. In the Torah’s telling, Dinah has no lines, she does not speak. All that we know about her from the biblical text is that a terrible thing happened to her.

Jacob, Dinah’s father, had just arrived in the land of Canaan and had purchased land to pitch his tent and graze his sheep from the king of a nearby city. The king’s name was Hamor and he had a son named Shechem. Shechem saw Dinah and was smitten. 

The Hebrew text describes what happened in a series of short phrases: “Vayikach otah, vayishkav otah, vayane’ah,” “He took her, he lay with her, and he rendered her helpless.” That last phrase, which I am translating as “rendered her helpless,” is also used a few times in the Hebrew Bible as an idiom for something sexual that men can do to women, similar to the English idiom, “had his way with her.” It might mean rape.

The text continues: “[Shechem’s] soul became attached to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the maiden, and he spoke to the maiden’s heart. Shechem said to Hamor his father, ‘Get that girl for me as a wife!’” 

Shechem had his way with Dinah and he fell in love with her. He wanted to marry her. Did he use force to “have his way with her”? How did Dinah feel about Shechem? Did she love him, too? To our frustration, the text does not say.

Why? Why do we not know any of the important details of this story from Dinah’s point of view? Maybe it is part of the way the narrative keeps up our interest – the Bible keeps the reader guessing about what is going on in the mind of each character. Why did Shechem take advantage of Dinah? How is Hamor going to deal with his son who has put him in an awkward position? How will Jacob react when he finds out what has happened to his daughter? How does Dinah feel about the man who “speaks to her heart” and who has asked his father to arrange a marriage to her?

I would like to think that the Bible wants us to wonder about what is going on in Dinah’s head. I really want that to be true. However, I have a strong suspicion that it is not the case. I think the more likely reason for Dinah’s silence in this story is that her point of view just doesn’t matter to the story’s author or to the story’s original audience. 

For the most part, the Bible does not care much about what women think. It especially does not care what they think when it comes to love, sex and marriage. In the Bible, when a man desires a woman, the normal thing for him to do is to arrange for marriage through the woman’s father, perhaps with the man’s father negotiating on his behalf. That is what happened when Abraham sought a wife for his son Isaac. That is what Jacob did when he wanted to marry Rachel. It seems that it is also what Shechem should have done. From the Bible’s perspective, it seems, Shechem’s biggest mistake was having sex with Dinah before those arrangements were made, man-to-man. The preferences of women had very little to do with it.

That bothers us, and it really should bother us. We don’t live in the world of this story and we do not want to. The story of Dinah is troubling to us on many levels, but all of it boils down to this – we cannot abide a world in which women have no say, in which their feelings, thoughts and desires are not only ignored, they are treated as inconsequential. 

And I haven’t even gotten to the most troubling part of the story yet.

Hamor and Shechem went to see Jacob, who had heard that his daughter had been rendered “impure” by Shechem. Jacob’s sons were furious about the treatment of their sister. However, they felt powerless to oppose the king (who, after all, had a walled city filled with armed men nearby). So, Jacob and his sons played for time. 

Hamor asked Jacob’s permission for Shechem to marry Dinah. He further proposed that Jacob’s family become a part of the family of his city. Perhaps noticing that Jacob had eleven unwed sons, Hamor proposed that Jacob’s family could intermarry with his people. Jacob’s sons replied that it would only be possible for Dinah to marry Shechem – and it would only be possible for them to intermarry with the people of Hamor’s city – if all the men of the city agreed to be circumcised.

Hamor took this message to the people of his city. He told them about the wealth of Jacob and his sons. Why should a little foreskin stand in the way of acquiring all those flocks and cattle? The men of Hamor’s city were circumcised. Once they were incapacitated by the pain of the surgery, Simon and Levi, two of Jacob’s sons, entered the city with swords and killed every man there, including Hamor and Shechem. They took Dinah from Hamor’s palace and brought her home, while the other brothers plundered the city.

Happy ending? Not so much. Just deserts for the abduction of Dinah? It does not seem very just to us. Does the Bible condemn what Simon and Levi did? No, but it does not condone it, either. After Simon and Levi murdered the men of the city, Jacob complained that their actions would only bring trouble to him and his family. 

When other cities find out what you boys have done, he said in effect, they will take revenge against us and we will be defenseless. Later, on his deathbed, Jacob told Simon and Levi that their anger was fierce and cruel. He chastised them, but his words were hardly those of a moral exemplar. He never said that their actions were evil and wrong.

In fact, Simon and Levi are the only characters in the story who offer any moral interpretation of what has happened, albeit their interpretation is a troubling one. “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” they told Jacob to justify their actions.

What are we supposed to make of Jacob’s passivity, his lack of moral outrage, and his self-centered response? What shall we say for the mute Dinah – the woman who is the center of the story’s action, whose perspective is entirely ignored? Why is this bloody, gruesome story even in the Bible? What are we supposed to learn from it? 

The biblical story, I believe is primarily about Jacob and his relationship with his sons. Jacob – the third patriarch, the son of the awestruck Isaac and the grandson of the ever-faithful Abraham – is never portrayed as a man of pure ideals in Genesis. He is a person, like all of us, who is a series of compromises. He is faithful and grateful to God, but he also relies on his abilities to decide and do things for himself without outside help. He faces life’s tough challenges with thoughtfulness and intelligence, but he is also willing to use his smarts to take advantage of others. He is always “looking out for number one,” and it is sometimes hard to tell who is Jacob’s number one: God or himself.

Jacob represents a relationship with God for the real world. The story of his daughter who is abducted by a rich man’s son is just one more challenge he must face with intelligence and guile. It is a story in which he has to manage sons who are less thoughtful than he is – sons who are more captives of their anger and fear than he is. 

The story of Dinah, as it is told in the Bible, is a story about making imperfect decisions in an imperfect world and dealing with people who are prone to act out of anger and hatred when caution and restraint would be better. We can all relate to that experience in some way.

But it is not enough for us. We need to be able look at this story and see more. The Bible may not care about what women think, but we sure do. We need to be able to say ‘No’ to the way that human lives are treated so cheaply in this story. We need to be able to say ‘No’ to the way that women’s lives, experiences, desires, sexuality, thoughts and feelings are ignored in this story. We need to plumb more deeply into the depths of the story and find other meanings.

That is what Anita Diamant did with her novel The Red Tent. The book, published in 1997, hit the New York Times best seller list because it gave a voice and a life to women who had previously been ignored in the Bible and in our society. The book hit a chord and sent out a message that millions of people were waiting to hear. 

Anita Diamant’s Dinah is not just a victim. Diamant follows hints in the text of the biblical story to find that Dinah was not raped. She heard the sweet words that Shechem spoke to her heart. She chose to depart from the ways of her father and brothers to find love and meaning in her life in a way that suited her, not as it might suit her male relatives. After Shechem was murdered by her brothers, according to Diamant, Dinah ran away and made a life for herself as a midwife, a woman whose life was spent moving among other women, giving voice to their stories as well as her own. It is a wonderful novel and I recommend it to everyone who wants to discover that the Hebrew Bible is still speaking to us, if we are willing to listen to new interpretations and to find our own.

In Anita Diamant’s own words, the tree of Jewish tradition is made up of roots, trunk, branches and leaves. Who is to say that the deepest roots have more legitimacy than this year’s new growth? The book is a celebration that our tradition continues to grow and there are new truths and meanings yet to be discovered.

I will be watching the Lifetime Channel’s version of the story on Sunday and Monday nights. My expectations, I admit, are not very high. It is, after all, a movie made for television. But I am hopeful to see some new growth on that tree that is still growing.

Shabbat shalom.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Vayishlach: Let's Get Small
Vayishlach: The Closest We Can Get to the Face of God

Vayishlach: Let's Get Small

11/28/2012

 
You are Jacob. You have just spent the last twenty years in exile from the land of your birth. In all that time, you have not seen your parents. You also have not seen your brother, Esau, as you live in mortal terror that he will kill you the next time he sees you. 

Esau wants to kill you because of the terrible tricks you played on him, because of the lies you told at his expense, because of all that you stole from him. Deep down, you probably think that, if he did kill you, you would deserve it.
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And now, you are going home to face him for the first time in all those years. How do you feel?

How do you feel when the messenger you sent ahead to greet your brother comes back to tell you that he is now heading in your direction with four hundred men? Scared?

You divide your family—consisting of two wives, two concubines, and twelve children—into two camps. You hope that one of those camps might escape while the other is plundered by Esau and his men. You look to God and you say:
God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Adonai, who said to me, "Return to the land of your birth and I will be good to you," I have been made small by all of the love and faith that you have shown me, for I once crossed this same Jordan River with nothing but my staff, and now I have become two camps! Please save me from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am frightened of him, frightened that he will come strike me down along with the mothers and children. (Genesis 32:10-12)
These words contain some unusual images of being large and being small. First, Jacob says that he had been made small by God's many kindnesses to him. He then remembers the way he crossed the Jordan River as a refugee, twenty years earlier, with no possessions to his name but a walking stick. Finally, he appears to boast about how he now is so large with possessions that that they fill two camps.

It's not hard to see that Jacob's statements about being small and being large have double meanings. Was Jacob really made small by God's love? Not on a literal level. In fact, the very opposite is true. God's love for Jacob made him a huge success, a man who possessed great flocks and wealth. There are at least two possible ways, though, that Jacob may have felt small as he crossed the Jordan for the second time. 

Jacob felt humbled by God's generosity in showing "love and faith" to him. This is the feeling we have when we realize just how lucky we are. We feel small with humility when we recognize the miracles that rule over our existence and just how insignificant all of our accomplishments are when compared to the incredible good fortune of just being alive. Jacob had good reason to feel that kind of smallness.

On the other hand, Jacob also felt small because of his fear of Esau. This is the smallness of recognizing, in terror, just how fragile we are and how easily our mortal lives can be snatched from us. With the approach of Esau and his four hundred men, Jacob had every reason to feel that small, too.

Isn't it interesting how these two types of "small"—born from humility and from fear—exist together in this dramatic moment? Maybe they are really the same thing. Maybe the humble feeling of smallness is also a recognition of our mortality. Maybe our fear of death is also a recognition of how valuable life is.

Notice that Jacob makes a bit of a joke on himself in this passage. He boasts about how much property he has amassed in the last twenty years—so much that it fills two camps. But Jacob knows that his possessions have been divided in two merely as a hedge against losing them all. The boast can be read as a sarcastic comment by Jacob as he ponders the foul turn of events that threaten his life and all his accomplished. "Look at me," he seems to say as he divides his family in half," I have so much stuff that it fills two camps. How lucky can you get?" 

In this moment, Jacob realizes that all of his might and greatness are really nothing. They are just a mask he wears to cover his fear. Did you ever feel that way?

Here is the question this story is burning to ask: When were you small?

In that moment when you felt most praised for your accomplishments, did you have the humble sensation of knowing that you were really small? In a time when good fortune shone most brightly on your face, were you able to say to yourself, in all humility, "I have been made small"? On a day of dreadful fear, when you could only pray for the strength to make it to tomorrow, did you allow yourself to remember the love and faith others have shown you, and in that memory, feel truly small?

We are small. Human life is short, and the accomplishments on which we stake our egos are forgotten sooner than we dare imagine. Yet, even a brief and small life is an incredible gift that we have been given without deserving. There is a terror in recognizing how lucky we really are.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Re'eh: The Message and the Messenger
The Blind and the Light

Vayishlach: The Closest We Can Get to the Face of God

12/4/2011

 
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For the second time in his life, Jacob runs away.

In this week's Torah portion (Vayishlach), Jacob is furious over the way he has been treated by his uncle/father-in-law. Without telling Laban, he packs up his large family and all of his belongings to return to the place he had fled as a youngster. It is on the final leg of the journey back to Be'er Sheva that Jacob sends his family ahead and spends the night in a wrestling match:

Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he was not able to defeat him, he struck his hip at its socket, and Jacob strained the socket of his hip while wrestling with him. He said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” He said to him, “What is your name?” He said, “Jacob.” He said, “Your name will not be Jacob anymore, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and were able.” Jacob asked, “Please, tell me your name.” But he said, “Why should you ask my name?” And he blessed him there. Jacob named the place Peniel, saying, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life was saved.”  (Genesis 32:25-31)

In most artists' depictions of the wrestling match (like the one above by Gustave Doré), Jacob's opponent looks like an angel, complete with wings and an effortless mastery of the struggling Jacob. But that is not the way the scene looks to me in the biblical text. The Torah never says that the man is an angel. What is more, the text makes it clear that neither wrestler can defeat the other. Their battle is a struggle for both of them. In fact, they appear so equal that there is a confusion of the pronouns in the Hebrew that makes it uncertain which lines of the dialogue are spoken by Jacob and which are spoken by "the man."

What's going on here?

Clearly, "the man" is not an ordinary fellow. After the match, Jacob gives the place a name that means "Face of God," and he himself is given a new name that means "Strives with God." Somehow, Jacob believes that he has wrestled with God, but how can that be? Is Jacob really strong enough to be evenly matched with God? Why is it that the text goes out of its way to say that Jacob was "alone" in the same verse it says that he wrestled with a man? How can you wrestle with someone else when you are alone? Why does the man mock Jacob's simple request, "Tell me your name"? Is he suggesting that Jacob already knows it?

Perhaps the wrestling match ends in a draw because Jacob actually is wrestling  an opponent with whom he is perfectly evenly matched…himself. Jacob wrestles with his own conflicting identity. Who will he be? Will he be a cheater and a liar like his Uncle Laban? He has been that. Will he always be cowed by father figures who do not see him for who he truly is? That was his experience with his real father, Isaac, and, until he left him, it was his experience with Laban, too. Will he always be the person who runs away from his problems?

Jacob is at the crossroads of his life. He is at one of those moments when people feel the need, once and for all, to take a stand and to take charge of their own identity. He needs to find his own name.

Have you had such a moment? In that moment, did you find yourself arguing for and against each possibility? With whom were you arguing, if not with yourself?

How often does it happen in our lives that we find ourselves torn by our conflicting needs and desires! We wrestle with ourselves, as Jacob did. And how is it possible that anyone can "win" a wrestling match with him or herself? What does victory even look like? If you win, is it not necessary that part of you must lose?

The victory that Jacob earned—the one that made him and the Jewish people merit the name Israel, "Strives with God"—is that he wrestled at all. After this story, Jacob does not change much. He remains a bit of a swindler, a bit blind to his faults, and he will be again a bit of a coward in confronting a threatening adversary. But he will never again run from himself. Jacob's merit—and perhaps ours, too—is that he is willing to confront his own complicated, contradictory and fallible self. He puzzles over life's unanswerable questions and tries, as best he can, to come up with ways to be true to himself and to be the best person that he is able to be.

In this world of imperfection and limitation, that may be the closest we can get to seeing the face of God.


Other posts on this topic:
"Not One of Them Was Left"

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