RACHEL: THE HOLINESS OF THIS WORLD
NOTE: This article was adapted from a taped lecture by Rebbetzin Heller. It is geared towards the intermediate reader.
Each of us has more ancestors than any of us can count, but we know almost nothing about most of them, and have no real relationship with them. On the other hand, each and every one of us has an eternal, unconditional relationship with the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish People, even though they lived some 3500 years ago.
The Patriarchs and Matriarchs are the spiritual gene pool from which everything we are is taken. Therefore, their qualities are always going to be part of us. Indeed this is the source of our redeem-ability. Regardless of who we are and the choices we make, we each have a spark of something that responds to life the way that the Patriarchs and Matriarchs did. That spark, whether or not we are conscious of it, gives us the potential to be redeemed.
In this essay, we are going to deal with the third of the Matriarchs, Rachel. To understand Rachel, however, we have to briefly encounter all the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, and see how she fits into the total configuration.
We begin with Avraham and Sarah. Avraham brought into the world an awareness of Hashem's unity. He came to this through becoming aware of the constancy of Hashem's giving. Avraham focused on Hashem's continual giving, and he responded by being emulative of Hashem by becoming a consummate giver. According to Kabbalah, Avraham's essential quality was hesed, which means giving forth to another.
Avraham was complimented by Sarah, whose ability to refine and to reject everything that was wrong or external prevented her husband's need to see goodness from becoming superficial. Thus, we usually see Sarah in contrast to Avraham. And in fact, the Torah almost never mentions Sarah's name except when she disagrees with Avraham, which might give us the erroneous impression of marital disharmony. In truth, the Torah assumes that each couple of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs was one soul and acted in unison except when the Torah shows them diverging. Sarah's words and actions continually expressed tzniut, which means internality. Her position was: "Don't be fooled by the externalities," whether it was in terms of Hagar's and Ishmael's behavior or her proclivity to remain inside the tent when visitors came.
Yitzhak began where Avraham left off. Yitzhak was able to say "no" just as firmly as Avraham was able to say "yes." Yitzhak's quality, which Kabbalistically is called gevura, means he was powerful enough to overcome anything that would act as an obstacle between himself and Hashem, even his own sense of self, even his own life.
Yitzhak's mate was Rivka, who, like her predecessor Sarah, also complimented and refined her husband's quality. The most observable quality in Rivka was her kindness and compassion, as exemplified by her readiness to give water to Eliazer and his ten thirsty camels. Rivka's hesed led her to being able to find what was redeemable, what was positive, in events and life situations in which Yitzhak by his nature would not have been able to see the good.
YAAKOV AND RACHEL
Yitzhak was succeeded by Yaakov, who began his life where Yitzhak left off. Yaakov was able to say both "yes" and "no" simultaneously. Kabbalistically, this quality is called emmet, truth. Emmet is the ability to see the whole picture. When a person looks at the world honestly, he or she is not going to see a place that's exclusively good or exclusively bad. If people look at the world and say cheerfully, "I believe that for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows," they're in fantasyland. And if they see the world as entirely black, they're also seeing only part of the picture. What Yaakov saw was that the world has concealment within it for us to overcome, and goodness in it for us to bring forth. Yaakov was able to see both parts simultaneously.
Yaakov had two wives. This is not coincidental. Yaakov's ability to develop truth within himself also had two aspects. That's why he was initially called Yaakov, while later his name was changed to Yisrael, which reflected a different aspect of his identity.
The first place that Yaakov sought to see Hashem was in the world itself. Only when the immanent aspect was clear to him was he able and willing to see Hashem's transcendent aspect. His first love, Rachel, was very much a person of this world, as we shall see. Her beauty, her presence, her actions, were of this world. Leah, his other wife, whom the Torah describes as gazing beyond, was very much a person of the hidden world.
The spiritual quality that defines Rachel is the term Shechina, which means "that which dwells." Hashem's presence in the world is referred to as the Shechina. Whenever we experience Hashem through the physical world, that experience is called "closeness to the Shechina." For example, we experienced the Shechina by lighting Shabbos candles, because we actually had to use candles and matches. We have to use the world to move us beyond the world.
The Jewish people embody this quality. We're in the world. The mitzvot that we do almost always engage our physical bodies and specific components of the physical world. In fact, the Vilna Gaon says that one of the primary differences between Judaism and gentile religions is our ability to integrate the physical world into religious practice. In virtually all gentile religions, the world and the body itself are viewed as the enemy; the more people vanquish the enemy, the more successful they are spiritually.
The goal of Judaism is to elevate the physical world at the same time that we elevate ourselves. That's why we have so many hands-on mitzvot: what we eat, what we use or don't use on Shabbat, how we conduct business, even marital relations.
The spiritual path of the gentile religions is much more ethereal. Even the seven mitzvot bnei Noah, the seven mitzvot that Hashem gave to all the children of Noah (i.e. all humankind) lack this positive engagement with the world. Six of the seven mitzvot are negative: Do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, etc. They protect those who observe them from being destroyed by the world. Even their one positive mitzvah, establishing courts of law, is a means of fighting evil. Thus, gentiles are enjoined to refrain from what will corrupt them, while Jews are given mitzvot which will build them.
The power that we Jews have within us to use the world well comes from Rachel. This quality is Kabbalistically called malchut, which means kingship. Malchut doesn't mean, "I myself am sovereign." Rather, malchut means, "I will make Hashem sovereign wherever I am, in whatever situation I find myself."
WEEPING AT THE WELL
Yaakov meets Rachel when he's fleeing from the murderous rage of his brother Esau. He arrives in the area where his uncle Lavan lives, and, at the well, sees Lavan's daughter Rachel. As a prophet, he immediately knows that she is his mate, the woman who could take his sense of truth and give it application to the world. He kisses her, and weeps.
Why did Yaakov weep? Rashi brings the well-known Midrash which says that he wept because he knew that they would not be buried together.
Imagine this scene. You're on your first date with a certain man, let's say in the lobby of a five-star hotel. The waiter comes with herbal tea and some delicious petit-fours. Suddenly the guy bursts into tears. You say, "What's wrong?"
He replies, "I intuitively know that we won't be buried together."
Do you know what I would say at that moment? "You're right. We won't be buried together because this is the last time we're going to see each other."
So what was going on with Yaakov at the well? This is a profound idea: Yaakov, who could see the whole picture, understood that Rachel was part of his life, but not the whole of his life. And he mourned that.
Rachel died in childbirth near Beit Lehem, and Yaakov buried her "on the way," by the caravan route. Although Hebron, the site of the Cave of Machpelah, the burial place of the other Patriarchs and Matriarchs, was not so far from where Rachel died, Yaakov knew prophetically that he must not take her to Hebron, but must bury her where she died. This must have been devastating for him, even though he knew it must happen from the moment they met.
Why wasn't Rachel buried with Yaakov? I don't mean: Which circumstances brought about the historical fact that she wasn't buried with Yaakov? I mean: What is it about Rachel that made it spiritually impossible for her to be buried with Yaakov?
Rachel had to be buried in a place that was accessible, open, part of the world as it is. By her very nature, she couldn't be buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is really a cave within a cave. Rachel could not be buried in the inner recesses of a cave. That would be contrary to her essence.
THE SUPER-RATIONAL
The Midrash tells us that Hashem, on His side, wanted Rachel to be buried "on the way," because in later generations when the Jews would be exiled from Israel and on their way to Babylonia, they would stop at this crossroads and weep. Why was it crucial that Rachel, rather than any of the other Matriarchs, be buried on the route of the exiles to Babylon?
The Gemara says that when the Jews of Judea were led off into exile, each one of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs wept and came before Hashem, pleading their case. Hashem answered them all rationally: The Jews deserve exile, and they need it. Basically, there was nothing more to say.
The last one to speak was Rachel. Hashem also answered her rationally: They deserve exile. What did Rachel respond? "You're right, but deal with them not according to justice, but according to compassion." She brought the level of her plea beyond rationality, to super-rationality.
People often confuse the super-rational with the irrational. People revert to irrationality when they have an emotional agenda and therefore do not want to know the facts which might interfere with their emotional agenda. An example of that would be the parents who find drug-related equipment in their child's room and say, "Chemistry . . . He's always loved chemistry."
Rachel was super-rational. On the night which was supposed to be her wedding night, she and Yaakov had anticipated that her father Lavan would try to trick Yaakov and substitute her sister Leah for Rachel, so they devised certain hand signs as a precaution. If the heavily-veiled bride did not make the designated signs, Yaakov would know she was Leah, not Rachel, and refuse to proceed with the wedding.
At the last minute, Lavan indeed replaced Rachel with Leah. Rachel was so moved with compassion for the humiliation it would cause her sister if Yaakov refused to go ahead with the wedding that she disclosed the signs to Leah. By so doing, she virtually gave away the love of her life to her sister (for Rachel had no way of knowing that her father would allow Yaakov to take Rachel as a second wife later). This was neither rational nor fair. Because Rachel had attained this state of super-rational compassion, she, alone among all the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, could evoke from Hashem that same super-rational compassion. Hashem therefore promised Rachel that in her merit "the children will return to their borders."
This whole episode begs the question: If Rachel didn't want to use signs to distinguish between her and Leah because she felt that the humiliation to Leah would be too great, why did she agree to use the signs in the first place?
When Rachel made the signs, she was confined to the world of the rational: "Lavan will try to deceive you. Secret signs could prevent this from happening." It was very sensible. When she was actually in the midst of the experience, however, she realized that Leah would never recover from this public humiliation. So she said to her "rational self" what she would later say to Hashem: "You are right. I should keep the signs secret. So what? There's something beyond rationality."
THE SHEEP
The name "Rachel" means "sheep." Now, among the Jews, certain animal names have always been popular. Aryeh means lion. Zev means wolf. But to name a child "sheep" seems impalatable because, especially in our day, passivity has such terrible press.
There are two kinds of passivity: passivity of cowardice and passivity of choice. What's passivity of cowardice? "I won't act because I'm afraid to act." Historically that attitude has always been disastrous. Passivity of choice means: "I won't act because I've decided that in this situation the best thing to do is refrain from action."
Let's delve deeper into the concept of a sheep. In many of the sacrificial offerings, a sheep was used. In fact, in the very first collective sacrificial offering that we made as a people, the korban pesach, the animal Hashem instructed us to use was a sheep. Hashem was teaching us to idealize the passivity of choice: "I have no ego. I'll go where you want me to go, Hashem. I have no separate will. My will is your will." That passivity of choice is holy, courageous, and extremely difficult.
The Gemara tells us she was called Rachel because a sheep can be silent when it's sheared. What does this mean? Historically, we've often had to be silent in the face of persecution. Sometimes this was the passivity of cowardice, but most often it was the passivity of choice. For example, during the Crusades, the Jews of many of the communities in the Rhineland were forced to assemble in their synagogue and given the choice to accept the Cross or die. Rare accounts of the few who escaped tell of the thunderous silence while the priests waited in vain for any Jews to accept their offer.
These two aspects of Rachel - her ability to sanctify this world and her ability to "be silent when sheared" - may seem to contradict each other. The lesson our mother Rachel teaches us is that the first requires as much humility as the second, and the second requires as much courage as the first.
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 DESCENDENTS
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.
