This picture of Rachel's Tomb compliments
of Avrohom Dovid
http://www.ThirdTemple.com
RACHEL: THE HOLINESS OF THIS WORLD (Part Two)
NOTE: This article was adapted from a taped lecture by Rebbetzin Heller. It is geared towards the intermediate reader.
RACHEL'S DEATH AND BEYOND
Let's take a deeper look at the wedding which was supposed to be Rachel's, but ended up being Leah's. Where did Rachel get the strength to do what could have ruined the rest of her life? Remember, Yaakov and Rachel loved each other from the first moment they met. One of the most beautiful statements in the Bible describes Yaakov's love: "Yaakov worked seven years for Rachel, and in his eyes it seemed like a few days, so much did he love her."
When, after seven years of waiting, their love was finally going to be consummated, Rachel's father Lavan pulled a deception and replaced Rachel with her older sister Leah. Rachel enabled him to get away with it by teaching Leah the hand signs Yaakov was expecting to look for. Where did she get the strength to put her sister's feelings above her own? The source of his great moral victory was her tzniut, her ability to focus on the inner reality.
Rachel's tzniut had two aspects, one was intrinsic and one she developed by her choices. Let's look at the intrinsic one first. Rachel was the second of the two daughters. Those of us who dabble in pop psychology know that it is a terrible thing to be a second child. A second child is always in the shadow of the first child. First children and only children are special; they are the apple of their parents' eyes and, additionally, their parents have so much more time to devote to them. A second child is deprived of all of this avalanche of attention.
The Maharal of Prague, a 16th century mystic, says that it's good to be a second child, because a second child is in the shadow of the first child, because a second child will not see himself or herself as being the pivot around which the world turns, because the second child is by definition second. Due to these spiritual advantages, not disadvantages, the second child will have easier access to tzniut, the perception of inner reality.
Thus, Rachel, the second child, was born with the opportunity to validate herself by her inner qualities rather than being pre-empted by external validation.
The Talmud attributes to Rachel specifically the tzniut of thought. The tzniut of thought means engaging in thought patterns which are not superficial. This means attributing importance to that which is truly important.
What does the word "important" mean? We use the word all the time: "I have an important message." "This is an important appointment." A rule of thumb for judging the importance of anything is: Ask yourself if this will still be considered important five years from now. If it won't be important in five years, odds are it's not important now either. It might be urgent, meaning that if it's not done now it can't be done, or done as well, later. But it's not important. Tzniut of thought distinguishes between what is important and what's not.
To a person who is very externalized, very superficial, everything is important. Did you ever see people pushing to disembark from an airplane? What are they accomplishing by not letting other people into the aisle in front of them? They'll get to the baggage check five or ten minutes earlier? And, assuming their suitcases actually come out before the other passengers', how will they use that five or ten minutes they saved? How many old ladies will they call? How many psalms will they recite for the sick? These are, of course, activities which are truly important, because their positive effect is eternal.
Returning to Rachel, her moment of spiritual greatness was when she disclosed the signs to her sister Leah. By so doing, she was able to distinguish what was truly important: not embarrassing her sister, since, according to the Talmud, embarrassing someone is akin to murder.
PRAYER AND EFFORT
When Yaakov confronted Lavan with his deception, Lavan agreed to permit Yaakov to marry Rachel one week later - for seven more years of work, of course. After Rachel's marriage, she was faced with an even more difficult test - because it was more protracted. Leah had children, but Rachel didn't.
At one desperate point, years into her barrenness, Rachel said to Yaakov, "Give me children or I'll die." Yaakov answered her harshly. He said, "Am I instead of G-d, Who's withheld children from you?"
Why did Rachel think it was up to Yaakov? She thought it was up to him because she didn't have a sufficiently real sense of her own power in tefilla (prayer). Yaakov answered her harshly because he wanted her to recognize that she couldn't use a medium. She had to approach G-d directly. Yaakov wanted her to understand that no matter who he was, no matter how actualized he was as a human being (and we're told he was as actualized as Adam before the sin), her line to G-d had to be direct. Only when Rachel learned this lesson, did her tefilla reach new depths of profundity.
Even when Rachel prayed from this more profound place, however, she wasn't answered immediately. The Torah recounts the episode of the dudaim. Reuven, who was a child at the time, found in the field a plant called dudaim, which people believed to have fertility properties. Reuven brought it to his mother, Leah. Rachel wanted it, bargained with Leah to get it, and, shortly thereafter, conceived her first child.
The Torah, however, says, "Hashem heard her prayers," implying that it was her prayers, not the dudaim, which finally enabled her to conceive. So which one was it - her prayers or the dudaim?
There's a law of spiritual causality which has a lot to do with Rachel's nature. The law is that, in addition to prayer, a person must exert effort in the things of this world. You have to put your body where your prayer is. The classic commentator the Sefarno says that until Rachel exerted herself in the realm of action by procuring the dudaim, her prayers could not be answered.
Let's be clear on this point: The physical effort does not cause the result. The result always and only comes from Hashem, who is accessible through prayer. But the physical effort is a pre-condition that Hashem has set in order to get your prayers answered. To give a mundane illustration: You want a new sweater, so you drive to the mall. Driving to the mall does not produce a new sweater, but if you don't drive to the mall, you can't get the new sweater.
STEALING THE TRAFIM
The final episode in Rachel's life is quite strange. As Yaakov, Rachel, Leah, their children, and their household are escaping Lavan's house to move to Canaan, Rachel surreptitiously takes her father's trafim. Lavan and his sons pursue them and overtake them. He accuses Yaakov of stealing his trafim. Yaakov denies the accusation, and invites Lavan to search their encampment. So confident is he in the innocence of his family that Yaakov pronounces a curse: Anyone who stole the trafim will die. Lavan searches the encampment in vain. Rachel, who is sitting on saddlebags containing the trafim, pretends to be "in the way of women," so her father does not make her rise from her seat. Shortly thereafter, Yaakov and his family enter Canaan, and Rachel dies giving birth to her second child.
What were trafim? In ancient times, trafim were meditative devices shaped like humans, which people used for divination. Strictly speaking, they were not idols. In fact, trafim were later used by Jews too as a meditative device. Since Lavan was an idol worshipper, however, it is likely that he used his trafim for idol worship.
Why did Rachel steal her father's trafim? The Midrash says that the Satan accused her of being a person who, because she was so connected to this world, was willing to take the world as it was, without effecting change. Her response was to attempt to change her father, to get him to stop engaging in idol worship, by stealing his trafim.
What is the Satan? Satan literally means "the accuser." The accuser lives within us. There is no external accuser. We sometimes picture Satan as a devil wearing red pajamas and carrying a pitchfork. In truth, the Satan is within us. Our own potential accuses our actuality. For example, if someone approaches us to give charity to a very worthy cause, and we say that we simply can't afford to contribute, and then go out and blow $100 dining in a fancy restaurant, there does not have to be any external accuser. The reality itself is the accusation against us.
Rachel's reality was her accusation. By taking her father's trafim, she wanted to distance him from idol worship. She wanted to create a situation where the unity of G-d with his world would become clearer, where there could be no accusation against her of tolerating separation - the world on one side and G-d on the other. Her motives were right, but what she actually did was a mistake.
By taking the trafim she granted them a certain form of empowerment. Let's understand this through an illustration. Imagine getting a letter and on the corner of the stationery is a little picture of a cupid. You wouldn't rage, "It's forbidden to draw pictures of angels!" or "This is a pagan quasi-diety!" You don't take cupid seriously enough to relate to it with any kind of gravity. If Rachel had left the trafim, it would have been a holier statement than taking them. This was her mistake.
The truth is that Rachel was doomed to die at that time and in that place. Stealing the trafim and Yaakov's subsequent curse were not the cause of her death. She was doomed to die at that place, near Beit Lechem, in order that her tomb could be passed by the exiles on their way to Babylonia. And she was doomed to die at exactly that time, because Yaakov had entered a new phase of his life by wrestling with the angel and receiving the name Yisrael. The mate of Yisrael was Leah, not Rachel.
RACHEL'S DECENDANTS
We can understand something of Rachel's essence from her descendents. The most famous of Rachel's descendents is her son Yosef, who, at the vulnerable age of seventeen, was sold as a slave into Egypt because his brothers hated him. Who could possibly have been in a situation more steeped in concealment than Yosef?
Yosef reached the pinnacle of spiritual greatness when he resisted the seductions of his master Potifar's wife. The Gemara attributes his self-discipline to something which I find fascinating. Why was Yosef in the house that day? Nobody else was home except him and the woman of the house. The Gemara tells us that it was an Egyptian holiday and everyone was celebrating by going to "circuses and theatrical performances." All the other servants and slaves went.
Yosef said, "I don't want to go to this base entertainment. I find it repulsive. It's not me."
Only after Yosef said he was staying home did Mrs. Potifar develop her headache, or whatever, that kept her home as well.
Thus, Yosef's first choice was to not allow himself to be defined by the culture in which he lived. This is what gave him the strength a short time later to stand up to the allurements of Potifar's wife. From here we see that the small choices pre-make the big choices. This is a very important idea.
To illustrate this concept with a contemporary example: A short time ago in Israel, two Arab terrorists armed with automatic rifles broke into the kitchen of a yeshiva in Itomar. Four yeshiva students were preparing to serve the Shabbat meal. The terrorists mowed down the four students in the kitchen, then stopped to replace the magazines in their guns before going on to massacre the hundred or so students sitting in the adjacent dining hall. The terrorists didn't notice that one of the four, 23-year-old Noam Apter, was still alive, if barely. Noam managed, with his last breaths, to crawl to the door separating the kitchen from the dining hall, lock it with the padlock hanging on the lock, and throw the key under a large commercial refrigerator. He thus saved all the other students.
How does a person reach such a level of heroism that, as he's dying, his thoughts are only on how to save others? Noam's parents said that they raised him to always think of the needs of others. That means that throughout his twenty-three years, Noam repeatedly, in many small ways, gave priority to the needs of others. He no doubt got up and gave his seat on the bus to older passengers. He no doubt went out of his way to do favors for his fellow students. Then, because of all the small choices he had accustomed himself to making, in his final moments, he was able to rise to heroic heights, saving scores of lives.
The Gemara tells us that at the very moment of temptation, Yosef saw his father's image. Now, when I consider this, I think, "You know, if I saw Yaakov's image when I was about to sin, I'd also be able to rise to the occasion and resist."
Imagine this: You're standing in line at an expensive amusement park, like Disneyland. You're eighteen years old, but you look like sixteen. The cost of a ticket for under-eighteens is five dollars less. You could buy a nice snack with five dollars. So you get up to the cashier's window, and just as you're about to say, "child's ticket," you see your rabbi right behind you. Could you claim an exalted level of integrity because you buy an adult ticket?
Yosef was not great because, in the presence of his mental image of his father, he succeeded in not sinning. Yosef was great because he purposefully and constantly, amidst all the decadence of Egypt, made it a practice to conjure up a symbol of spiritual reality, his father's face.
Yosef's concept that Hashem could be sanctified in the midst of all the impurity that the world flounders in was reflected in his request to his brothers: "Don't bury me in Egypt permanently. When you go back to the Land of Israel, take my bones with you." Yosef said this because he had a unique and specific relationship to the Land of Israel. Israel is the place in this world with the greatest possibility of sanctifying the physical. Yosef, the Viceroy of Egypt, was able to identify Israel, not Egypt, as his permanent home.
Moving forward in time, we come to the forty years in the desert and the daughters of Tzlafhad. These five sisters were from the tribe of Ephraim, a son of Yosef, thus descendents of Rachel. When their father died without leaving male progeny, these sisters sought out Moshe and requisitioned from him a hereditary portion in the Land of Israel. Why? Because, as descendants of Rachel, their desire to find holiness in this world drew them like a magnet to the Land of Israel.
The first king of Israel was Saul, who also was a descendent of Rachel. Saul's zeal to carry forth the conquest of the Land of Israel derived from this soul spark of his ancestor Rachel.
The Gemara tells us that the ultimate redemption will have two phases: the phase of Moshiach ben Yosef and the phase of Moshiach ben Dovid. The phase of Moshiach the son of Yosef is the actual physical conquest of the Land of Israel. The Vilna Gaon says that Moshiach ben Yosef is an era rather than a person. What inspired people, even people who were very far from Torah, to return to the land, to fight for the land, even to die for the land? Sometimes, not always, they understood that meaning could be found here. This is what Rachel brought into the world.
From our mother Rachel we inherit the capacity to take this world, with all its externality, with all the failures that come as a consequence of its externality, and to ultimately redeem it, and thereby redeem ourselves.
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