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Daughters, 12 Tribes
06-02-12
We kicked off our yearlong study today,
the breeze wafting through the cool meeting room in Encino as we gathered and
checked in. Behold how good and nice to
sit together as brothers and sisters to study our ancient roots! There were 13 of us present as we started –
perfect for the study of the 12 Tribes, which will be our topic for the next
9-10 months - as we know that 12 = 13 when it comes to counting tribes (12 sons
of Yaakov + 1 daughter = 13; OR; Tribe
of Joseph splits into 2, Ephraim + Menashe, yielding 13 tribes, the 12 who held
territory plus the Levites).
An offered kavannah of our kavannah:
that we study the tribes with the mindset that separateness and wholeness are
one, that the disparate parts of each of us makes up the whole of us, that this
is the way of all things. This is a
concept front and center in Judaism, though not present in some other spiritual
traditions. YHWH = Eloheinu IS the tradition’s statement of the unity consisting
of both the many pieces and the whole simultaneously. So we will look at the 12 tribes of Israel as
their individual separate parts, but also as a piece of the totality that is
all of them together making up the Children of Israel.
After determining that the study of the
tribes must start at the point of the birth of their namesakes, the sons of
Yaakov, and so we began.
Genesis 29:16: “Laban had 2 daughters . . . Leah’s eyes were
tender . . . while Rachel was beautiful
of form and appearance.”
What does it mean “tender eyes”? That Leah’s eyes were gentle, kind, not
demanding? Or that they held a
vulnerability, perhaps even a pain of hurt and suffering for years at the hands
of her difficult father, Laban? Think of
the innocent eyes of a beautiful child who holds the secret of past abuses
within her. Leah is described with
reference to something intrinsic to her that radiates outward, her eyes, while
Rachel is described in terms of how others see her. We feel a certain sadness for each of these
women, given the history they each carry, the conflicts they will soon be
facing both between themselves and within themselves, and the circumstances in
which they find themselves culturally. These
2 sisters are the mothers of our people, of the 12 children that would form the
basis of the tribes. The inner struggles
of these women, their own intrinsic makeup, the nature of their relationship to
Yaakov, to each other, and each to herself, would be passed on, as these things
are from mother to child, into the character and energetic makeup of their
offspring and beyond into the generations to follow.
Genesis 29:25: “Why have you deceived me?”
Laban has tricked Yaakov into marrying
Leah, in place of his beloved Rachel, and Yaakov is furious. Laban gives him a
dressing down: this is how we do it here.
In our place, the firstborn is always married first (never mind that I
told you it would be Rachel and that I also gave Zilpah, the younger of the 2
handmaidens, to Leah to make you think she was Rachel). How
could Yaakov have been so naïve, and how could he not have recognized that it
was not Rachel in his marriage bed, but her older sister? We recall that Jacob was a mama’s boy of
sorts, growing up protected behind his mother Rivkah, living always in tents
and yeshivas, studying. He really had no
understanding of the politics of the world of chieftains, which is rife with
manipulation and deception. But he was
no stranger to deception himself, having stolen his brother Esau’s birthright
from him only 7 years before these events.
So Laban gives Jacob a hard knock lesson in the ways of the world, and
Jacob promises to serve him for another seven years to also gain the hand of
his beloved Rachel. Why does he love
Rachel so much? One teaching: Laban was
brother to Jacob’s mother Rivkah, and Rachel’s appearance greatly resembled
that of his mother, leading to the love at first sight when Jacob saw her at
the well (Gen 29:11). Finally we
realize that our spiritual inheritance from these ancestral tzadikim of ours includes
much “deception” energy. We are blessed
that our holy books do not hide the humanity of our ancestors from us, but
rather emphasize their foibles and shadows.
Our Torah teaches us the delicacy of the human drama, leading us to a
place of compassion for all, knowing that we too, after all, are only human.
Genesis 29:31:
“Leah was hated, so He opened her womb . . . “
Torah minces no words. But it does use the passive verb form – Leah “was
hated”. By whom? By Jacob because of Laban’s deception - did
he project his anger and frustration onto poor tender-eyed Leah? By herself?
Was she an abused child, taught to self-hate by her abuser? Yet she carries so much potential for
creativity and new beginnings, the open womb that beyond creating sons for her husband
(and for her people as a whole) will be her path to her own growth and birth of
Self.
Genesis 32-35: “Leah conceived . . .and she conceived
again . . . and again . . .”
Leah gives birth to 4 sons in rapid
succession, giving each one a name that on reflection is a “psycho-spiritual
Xray” of her sense of self at the time of their birth:
·
Reuven – “see, a son”.
You can almost here her screaming in joy to Yaakov – “see what I have
done for you, I have given you a son!
Will you love me now!?”;
·
Shimon – because God “heard” how I am hated, maybe now Jacob
will love me?
·
Levi – this time my husband will be “attached” to me
Seeing herself only as an extension of
Jacob, desperately seeking his love, Leah runs through each of the senses – “see
me, hear me, touch me” (did Peter Townsend write those lyrics, or did he take
them from Torah!?). Finally, with the fourth
son, Leah leaves the desperation of her condition, and connects directly to the
divine flow:
·
Judah – this time, I
am “grateful” to YHVH. She grows beyond
a point of view of herself in which she can only be substantiated by her husband, to one that establishes a direct
connection with the flowing Presence that is hers to have in her own right.
Genesis 30:5: “Here is my maid Bilhah . . . that I may be
built up through her. . . Bilhah
conceived”
Rachel, envious of her sister’s
fruitfulness and finding herself still barren, offers her handmaid to Jacob
for wife, much as Sarah did with Hagar 2 generations earlier. This was the custom of the day, that the
handmaiden would give birth, “bear upon my knee” as Rachel puts it, to children
that would be adopted as the children of their mistress. Commentary from the Plaut chumash confirms this
practice: "Rachel performs the ancient custom of establishing the child's
legitimacy or of adopting him by placing him on her knee. Henceforth she
speaks of Bilhah's children as 'mine.' This procedure is attested to in
Babylonian, Hittite, Hurrian, and Greek laws." Thus, the next
2 sons could be viewed as children of Rachel, albeit indirectly through Bilhah:
·
Dan: “he has judged”
·
Naftali: “my maneuvering” (or struggle, scheming,
manipulating) – through her “sacred scheming” Rachel sees herself prevailing in
her attempt to equal her sister. Rachel
seems to have a “mean girl” side to her that would make her a star in a
tele-novella.
Genesis 30:10: “Zilpah, Leah’s maidservant, bore Jacob a
son”.
Not to be outdone by her sister, Leah
gives Jacob wife number 4, the younger of the 2 handmaidens, and Zilpah
responds by quickly giving birth to 2 sons:
·
Gad: “luck”
·
Asher: “good fortune”
Genesis
30:17: “God hearkened to Leah and she
conceived . .. “
Wait a minute, Leah’s not done herself
yet, coming back for Round 2. Can you
feel Rachel fuming?
·
Issachar: “reward”.
Leah saw Issachar as a reward for having given Zilpah to Jacob.
·
Zevulun: “home/abode”.
Now at last, Leah thought, Jacob must make his permanent home with me,
who has given him 6 sons.
·
Dinah. Torah gives no
further description regarding her name, typical when it comes to the women of Torah. But Dinah comes from the same root as Dan,
having to do with judgment and judging.
Perhaps Leah now hopes the final judgment will be in her favor, having
given Jacob so many children (up to this point 8 sons and 1 daughter, to
Rachel’s 2 adopted sons through Bilhah).
Interestingly, though Dinah is Jacob’s only daughter mentioned in Torah,
there is a trippy Midrash that says each of Jacob’s sons was born with a twin
sister, and that the twins later each married one another. Hmmm . . .
Genesis 30:22:
“God remembered Rachel . . . she conceived”
Rachel is remembered, as was Sarah in
her day, and bore her first biological son.
·
Yosef: “adding on”. It
is interesting that his name still indicates her competitiveness with Leah, as
she either is glad to have added on another son (to the 2 she already
indirectly has), or some commentators suggest this name is her prayer to add on
yet another.
We finished with some final thoughts
about the power and energy of names. The names, coming as intentional prayers
from the mouths of our ancestral prophetesses, are a reflection of what they
bring to the world. And what they bring
is all possible faces to the intention of the name: thus Dan and Dinah may
bring the benefits of justice, as well as the discomfort of being judged;
Naphtali may bring both the positive and negative faces of maneuvering and
manipulation; Yosef can mean both adding on and subtracting. It is curious that on balance, the names of
the children of Leah, the most outwardly troubled of the 2 sisters, are the
most optimistic of the names, while Rachel’s names reflect a subtle degree of
dissatisfaction or struggle. The various
“energies” of each of these names are all simultaneously brought into the
character of these children, and the future tribes that will result from them,
and are carried through the collective unconscious of the Jewish people from
generation to generation, even to this day.
Next
Gathering: Saturday, July 7
Location:
Santa Monica or West LA, exact location TBD
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