I wrote this small dvar Torah about Leah because I was puzzled and disturbed by her description. Something did not click. I could not imagine the matriarch being a pitiable, plain looking, half blind invalid – this was not it. So I allowed myself a flight of imagination coming to the idea of Leah as a passionate intellectual, and I like this image.
I have to admit, I don’t understand the character of Leah. Why did she want to marry a man who so obviously did not love her? I recall myself at the marriageable age of late teens – early twenties, what was I seeking in a future husband – someone smart enough that I could talk to, good looking enough to introduce to family and friends, someone kind and good natured, who would make me feel at ease and not freeze up or faint at his sight, and most importantly someone who would love the selfish and shallow ME. In the opposition to all common sense, Leah chooses a man who does not love her, but who loves God, is close to God, and that is everything.
Here is this perfect couple, Jacob and Rachel, blessed by the mutual love, and Leah cuts into this happy romance and superimposes herself as another wife, eventually taking place as the wife, the one who bore most of Jacob’s children and who survived Rachel by many years, becoming the only wife. How could she steal the husband from her own sister? Why did she agree to marry a man who did not love her, why not wait for someone who would love her exclusively, who would care only about her?
I find my answer in a different assumption about Leah’s eyes. It is traditionally assumed that Leah had weak eyes from crying because she was promised to Esau. But there could be various reasons as to why one’s eyes would grow weak. My assumption is that Leah was a learned woman and that she studied at night after spending her day cooking and taking care of Lavan’s family, including her beautiful young sister Rachel, who spent her days shepherding outdoors, in quiet contemplation, without a care in the world. As the older sibling, Leah was responsible for running the household, retreating into the spiritual world of study only at night, which eventually damaged her eyes.
Another meaning of weak eyes is that Leah was not only intelligent, but also a passionate woman, who had difficulty concealing her feelings, and her eyes were weak in a sense that they betrayed her. Leah’s weak eyes showed everything that was supposed to be hidden in the depth of her soul.
My other assumption about Leah is that she had a beautiful, desirable body, with seven children as the proof. Esau wanted to marry her, as the sensual beauty was something that he could appreciate. If Esau married Leah he would praise and enjoy her body and would take care of her every physical need, as he’s done for Isaac, but at the same time he would have been mocking her learning, and being used to the treyf meat he would not be able to appreciate her cooking. A man like Esau who epitomized the trait of instant gratification would never accept the laws of family purity.
And this is why Leah refused to marry Esau, or any other suitor. She recognized Jacob as her true match, as the only one whom she could love unconditionally, dropping everything for his sake, the only one for whom she would bear children, as many as possible, disregarding every other aspect of her life. Leah chose to be one of Jacob’s wives, to have only a part of him, rather than having another man entirely for herself.
I re-read the parsha searching specifically for any indication of feelings by Rachel towards Jacob, and did not find many. From the start we hear how much Jacob loved Rachel, how the sight of her gave him strength to move the boulder off the well, and how he kissed her, and cried, and wept. But did Rachel love and desire Jacob? The first time her feelings are mentioned is when she becomes jealous of Leah’s fertility and demands from Jacob to give her children. Rachel offered Jacob her handmaid Bilhah to build herself up, pressuring Leah to do the same. And then, in the incident of dudaim, she forfeits her night with Jacob, while Leah eagerly comes out to greet him, the controversial ‘Vateitzei Leah likrato …”
So was Leah jealous of Rachel? I think she devotedly loved her sister, whose beauty, purity and sweet innocence made her holy like an angel. Leah was learning and praying and doing mitzvoth trying to achieve the level of holiness that came to Rachel naturally. Unlike Rachel, Leah was physical, even aggressive, bound to this world, involved in the task of physical survival of her family and the future Jewish people.
The Torah does not mention the girls’ mother, so I assume that Leah was like a mother to Rachel, guiding her and taking care of her every need. I think Rachel wanted Leah to be a part of her marriage because she knew that eventually they will have to leave home and go to another land and she felt helpless without Leah. And probably part of Leah’s desire to be with Jacob was to remain bound to Rachel as well. She may have been prophetically aware of the mortal danger that the child birth posed to Rachel and tried everything to redirect this danger to herself, to spare her from the labor.
I would imagine that the first encounter between Jacob and Rachel when he kissed her at the well would have sent little Rachel to Leah crying about the strange grown up man and that would have driven Leah to protect Rachel from him. Leah sees Jacob as a strong, passionate man, too passionate for the little Rachel, and it feels to her like a mistake that he would pursue a little girl. Have we seen this before – Yentl and Hadassa, Tatyana and Olga in ‘Onegin’, thousands of strong intelligent women rejected by great men in favor of sweet and shallow. Leah’s pain is what we all carry, to a greater or lesser extent. Sometimes we feel forced to pretend being like someone else, someone we believe to be better liked, only to burry our true self and going through life in a borrowed personality, until an illness or a major stress shocks us into awakening.
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