OF SISTERS AND BROTHERS

The Torah has a lot of stories about struggles between people, and certainly between brothers. From the very beginning, we read of Cain and Hevel (Abel), which resulted in murder. And the brotherly struggles don’t end there, sadly.

Ishmael and Isaac. Jacob and Esau. Joseph and his many brothers. Not as much and not as impactful of a struggle between Moses and Aaron, but it’s there, between the lines.

But what of sisters? Sadly, the Torah is woefully quiet when it comes to the voices of women.

There are the five sisters, Machlah, Noah, Choglah, Milkah and Tirzah, aka the daughters of Zelophechad, in the book of Numbers, chapter 27 who plead their case before Moses to be treated as equals to men concerning the inheritance of their father’s land when he died, which in itself is significantly huge, but we know nothing else of these sisters.

We also know that three times in Genesis, patriarchs “pass off” their wives as their sister. Abraham does it twice, and Isaac once.

Rachel and Leah started off with a good sisterly relationship, but it seems to have turned  and became one of jealousy and hatred. Even the names Leah chose for her first four children reflect the increasing tension between Leah and her sister.

Nora Gold writes, in “Kerem: Creative Explorations in Judaism”, (2010), Issue 12, pp. 96:  “…there are other sisters in the Torah besides Rachel and Leah, but these are either sisters to men (such as Miriam to Moses), or groups of sisters who are treated as a unit, rather than as individuals. So the Rachel-Leah story is the quintessential sister narrative, in contrast to all the brother narratives in the Torah, and as such, is crucial to our understanding of how the Torah views sisters – and, by extension, sisterhood. For this reason, this story has drawn the attention of many feminist readers of the Bible. And many, like me, have been troubled by the portrayal of the relationship between Rachel and Leah as being basically one of rivalry, of two women fighting over a man – sisters, yet no sisterhood.”

Furthermore, Nora posits that the real plot of the story is of Jacob, and not Rachel and Leah; that Rachel and Leah are a mere subplot. So much for the real, pithy, story of two sisters in the Torah! Maybe, though, it asks us to look more deeply.

In nearly every brothers-as-rivals story, it is the younger becoming more powerful in some way than the older, and usually, the younger one prevails in this effort. In the Rachel-Leah story, the older seems to hold onto the older-as-dominant position.

And yet, are we left with the story of Rachel and Leah as only a story of unresolved enmity between them? Is this how the Torah leaves us with how it is between sisters?

Perhaps not so much…

On Jacob’s first wedding night, the one where his bride is supposed to be Rachel, we know that Rachel’s father pulls a bride swap on Jacob. However, both Jacob and Rachel suspected this might happen, and so they arranged for signals and code words so that Jacob would know it was Rachel and not a substitute. However, what does Rachel do? Right before the wedding she has compassion for her sister. She doesn’t want her sister to feel embarrassed or humiliated, so at the last minute, she teaches Leah the signals and code words. In Rachel’s mind and heart, she knew she was letting go of the man she loved deeply, for the sake of her sister’s embarrassment and humiliation. Rachel had no idea Jacob would be willing to work for another seven years to be able to marry Rachel.

This is why it is Rachel’s name who proceeds the name of Leah in our prayers, because in this act of kindness and tenderness, she understood what Leah might feel, and was willing to let go of Jacob before humiliating her sister.

For this reason, Rachel is known as Rachel imeinu (Rachel, our loving mother) and that is was for Rachel’s sake that Israel was restored to its place. Rachel, the weeping mother. Rachel was buried on the side of the road on the way to Efrat, after giving birth to Benjamin. Yet, it is Rachel’s Tomb which has become a holy place, a place of healing, not Leah’s. It is Rachel who wept for her children, born and unborn, even her children born of other mothers, because she loved them as her own. As Nora Gold writes again, “Rachel teaches us to live with sorrow, to choose sorrow and compassion over detachment from others.”

Leah, too, had her compassion, love, and kindness for her sister. According to Nora Gold, a midrash (Midrash HaGadol, cited in Louis Ginzberg’s 1956 Legends of the Bible, p. 176) relates the following: “All the wives of Jacob [Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah] prayed with Jacob to erase Rachel’s barrenness, and after that, for the first time, and on New Year’s Day, G!d granted Rachel a son.” Here we find Leah doing the very thing for her sister which we would not suspect: Leah prays for her sister-rival to have the one thing that gives Leah superiority over Rachel.

What brings me to write of this topic are several threads running in the background for awhile now. In reading Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s book, G!dwresting Round 2, I am deeply moved by his words of brotherly discord and wrestling, interwoven with stories of his own struggling and wrestling with his older brother. I am deeply moved by siblings who, despite having no choice in being siblings, learn to love one another and respect one anothers’ differences. And, I am deeply touched by a moment forever etched in memory at the surprise 90th birthday party for my mother-in-law yesterday.

For brevity, I will just say that when my mother-in-law reached the top of the stairs and across the threshold into the main area, where there was an assembly of more people yelling surprise, due to her severe vision issues and emphysema which left her breathless from the stairs, she had no idea who these people were. She couldn’t see us. She was stunned and overwhelmed and didn’t understand what was going on. To her, she had walked into a room filled with strangers and had no idea why. She was so clearly stunned and overwhelmed, and not in a good way.

Someone brought her a bottle of water and a chair, and after sitting for a bit, catching her breath and drinking the water, her breathing began to return to normal.

And that’s when the most endearing moment of the entire event happened, and what has inspired this post. As she was sitting there collecting her breath and drinking the water, her sister, younger but herself up in years and not in great health, came over to her and got right in her face so she could see her, and said, “Don’t you remember me? Don’t you recognize me?” Then tenderly taking her older sister’s face in her hands, she said so sweetly, “I’m you’re sister. It’s me. It’s your sister. Don’t you remember me?”

At that moment everything else faded away, and none of the other guests even mattered, because it was the reuniting of the two sisters who love each other. While they talk on the phone a lot, they haven’t seen each other in person for quite a few years. That moment was so very very touching, and holy. I can’t even imagine such a thing….

Over the years, they’ve been through a lot, together and separately, from losing their mother at a young age, an angry father, a new stepmother… because there was no money for school the older one joined the Army and ended up in St Louis, while the other went to nursing school (after there was more money available) and stayed in New England. Both married and had 5 children each. And from time to time, they have been angry with each other. But always, there was love. They were sisters, cut from the same cloth.

At the end of the day, my mother in law was well wished on her day. What she enjoyed more than anything else was getting to play cribbage with her sister and her niece.

It was such a deeply touching moment.

Perhaps the Torah doesn’t have as much to say about sisters as it does the brothers because sisters have a place in their hearts that brothers don’t always find. But of the scarcity of words about sisters, at least we can see in the story of Rachel and Leah that, despite a patriarchal system trying to pit them one against the other as rivals in a game of possession and deception between two men, at the end of the day, Rachel and Leah loved each other. They looked out for each other. They prayed for each other and loved each other’s children as her own.



I witnessed that kind of endearment in a tender moment yesterday, and I am truly blessed. At those moments, everything else fades away….