Thursday, December 15, 2011

the distance

As we read into the book of Bereishit, it seems to me that the main male and female characters in each portion are growing father and father apart from each other.  Eve is made out of Adam's rib, the closest kin to Adam, then Sarah is Abraham's cousin or niece, very close to him spiritually, although not the same flesh and blood as Eve to Adam.  But comes Rebecca and what we see is that she is so  overwhelmed at the sight of Isaac that she falls from the camel, and then she does not dare to tell him about the prophecy about their sons, has to lie and find round about ways to secure blessing for Jacob, so there is less closeness between herself and Isaac than there was between Sarah and Abraham.  In the generation of Jacob the female soul is split into two women - Rachel and Leah - each with her own attributes, where one has beauty and the other strength, each having only a part of Jacob, a half-wife.  And then where is the main woman in the life of Joseph?  If it is Potifar's wife her soul is as far away from his as it ever gets.  And if it is Potifar's daughter according to the midrash, we don't hear much about her in the parsha.  Where is the man for Dinah?  It cannot be Shehem - did she forfeit her mate, is he anywhere in the book?  Could it be Joseph - an impossible match, a man who would not take her for a second or third or a hundredth wife, because that would be an incest.  Is it possible that after being rescued from the palace of Shehem by her brothers she ran away from home, led by a prophetic dream, traveled south to Egypt and married a man called Potifar?  The distance keeps growing as we descend into galut, becoming an abyss.

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