Dvar Torah Vayishlach תשע״ח 2017 English, given at Yedidya in Hebrew

Shabbat Shalom.  

The story of Dinah is a difficult one.  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that it’s hard to find anyone who behaved well in this story.  There’s enough responsibility to go around for everyone involved:  

Shchem did the deed:  וַיַּרְא אֹתָהּ שְׁכֶם בֶּן-חֲמוֹר, הַחִוִּי--נְשִׂיא הָאָרֶץ; וַיִּקַּח אֹתָהּ וַיִּשְׁכַּב אֹתָהּ, וַיְעַנֶּהָ.   

Dinah went out:  וַתֵּצֵא דִינָה   Leah set an example for her daughter of “going out”:  וַתֵּצֵא לֵאָה.  Some midrashim imply that these ‘goings-out’ were a fault in Dinah and Leah.  Rabbi Sacks interprets the word to mean that Dinah was a “gadabout.”  My dictionary says a gadabout is “a habitual pleasure-seeker.”  

Shimon and Levi responded to Shchem’s act with terrible violence and bloodshed, and Dinah’s other brothers looted the city.  

Even the place is in part to blame:  According to the Gemara, the town of Shchem is מקום מזומן לפורענות (Sanhedrin Kuf-Bet).

Concerning Ya’akov,  Rashi quotes a midrash saying Yakov put Dinah in a box when Esav was approaching Yakov’s camp so Esav wouldn’t see her and take her as a wife:  

נתנה בתיבה ונעל בפניה, שלא ייתן בה עשיו עיניו. ולכן נענש יעקב שמנעה מאחיו, שמא תחזירנו למוטב, ונפלה ביד שכם    

In other words, if Yakov had felt and acted with chesed towards his brother, and if he had seen the moral power of his daughter,  then the disaster of Shchem wouldn’t have happened.  He protected Dinah when he needn’t have, and he didn’t protect her later when he needed to.  

No one is innocent in this story.  And yet surprisingly the principle criminal, Shchem, is humanized by the text, when we read:

  וַתִּדְבַּק נַפְשׁוֹ בְּדִינָה בַּת-יַעֲקֹב; וַיֶּאֱהַב, אֶת-הַנַּעֲרָ, וַיְדַבֵּר עַל-לֵב הַנַּעֲרָ

In light of all this, Rabbi Sacks says, “The overall effect is a story with no irredeemable villains and no stainless heroes.”  

We don’t get a clear moral message from the story of Dinah, and we don’t get a clear moral model in Yakov or his family.  Rabbi Sacks points out that nevertheless “stories do not appear in the Torah merely because they happened”; there must be some teaching in it for it to be included in the Torah, which means “teaching, guidance.”  

He suggests that the story is here to teach us something about violence:  

There is an important thought experiment devised by Andrew Schmookler known as the parable of the tribes. Imagine a group of tribes living close to one another. All choose the way of peace except one that is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. What happens to the peace-seeking tribes? One is defeated and destroyed. A second is conquered and subjugated. A third flees to some remote and inaccessible place. If the fourth seeks to defend itself it too will have to have recourse to violence. “The irony is that successful defence against a power-maximising aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power.”[9]

There are, in other words, four possible outcomes: [1] destruction, [2] subjugation, [3] withdrawal, and [4] imitation. “In every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes.” Recall that all but one of the tribes seeks peace and has no desire to exercise power over its neighbours. However, if you introduce a single violent tribe into the region, violence will eventually prevail, however the other tribes choose to respond. That is the tragedy of the human condition.

Rabbi Sacks concludes, quoting Shmookler, that 

“power is like a contaminant, a disease, which once introduced will gradually but inexorably become universal in the system of competing societies.” Shchem’s single act of violence against Dina forced two of Jacob’s sons into violent reprisal and in the end everyone was either contaminated or dead. It is indicative of the moral depth of the Torah that it does not hide this terrible truth from us by depicting one side as guilty, the other as innocent.

I appreciate the importance of Rabbi Sacks’ interpretation but it is very dark, so I want to continue with a more hopeful approach which I learned from Dr. Avivah Zornberg and Rabbi Haim Kornberg. 

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Dr. Zornberg focuses on certain midrashim which present Dinah’s story as an episode in Yakov’s life meant to illuminate Yakov’s inner journey:  Zornberg says, “The moral question about Dinah’s responsibility for her own fate does not arise in these midrashic treatments. To all intents and purposes, Dinah becomes a dream figure in Jacob’s consciousness -- as, indeed, do all the characters in his narrative -- as the midrash traces the patterns, shadowy and often repressed, of his experience.”  

On this view, Dinah’s rape is one of the series of disasters that threatened and befell Yakov during the period after he left Lavan. We are meant to understand each disaster that befalls Jacob or his family is a wake-up call to Jacob that he fails to hear.  

First he suffers the frightening approach of Esav, and the diminution of his wealth in his gift to Esav; then the man or angel who fought with him and wounded him, then the rape of Dinah, and then the death of Rachel.  

What was Yakov missing?  What was he meant to “wake up”  to? 

We find hints in the text and in the midrash that Yakov carried guilt all his life for stealing his brother’s blessing.  For example, he overcomes the man he is wrestling with and says,וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא אֲשַׁלֵּחֲךָ, כִּי אִם-בֵּרַכְתָּנִי

Rashi says on the word ברכתני: 

הודה לי על הברכות שברכני אבי, שעשו מערער עליהם

The blessing Yakov wants from the man is this:  to confirm that the blessings he got from his father were legitimately his, that who he is and all he has rest on the solid ground of truth rather than on the slippery ground of deceit.  

Likewise, Yakov’s first message to his brother Esav after years indicates, according to Rashi, that Yakov is preoccupied with the blessing their father bestowed on him instead of on his elder brother.  Yakov’s message to Esav begins:     עם לבן גרתי and on this Rashi says

 לא נעשיתי שר וחשוב אלא גר, אינך כדאי לשנוא אותי על ברכת אביך שברכני: הוה גביר לאחיך, שהרי לא נתקיימה בי. 

Maybe Yakov is just trying to placate his brother, but in addition he may be wondering himself whether his father’s blessing has really come to rest on him, or whether it ever will, and even if it does, whether he deserves it.  

It seems Yakov feels guilty for how he behaved towards his father and towards Esav.   Yet even though Yakov feels guilty for what he got from his father by deceit, he doesn’t renounce his blessing and he doesn’t rush to his brother or father to make amends.  

He doesn’t try to make amends because he believes that he himself is, or can become, worthy of the status of first-born, of leader, of heir to his father and grandfather, worthy to become father of the people, and worthy of the blessing that goes with that status. In some sense, he knows that it was right that he got the blessing.  

But on the other hand he doubts his own worthiness.  He doesn’t feel that he was justified in taking the blessing in the way that he did, and all the benefits that it brought him are tainted for him because he sees them as coming to him through deceit.  

So Yakov can’t move forward without fear, can’t trust his brother, can’t imagine giving his daughter to him in marriage, and later, can’t return to his father’s house in a timely fashion.  (Regarding Yakov’s delay in returning home, Zornberg takes up this strand in the midrash in detail.)

Seen in this light, shutting Dinah in a box makes sense for Yakov.  After all, what if she does marry Esav and reform him?  If Jacob doesn’t retain the moral advantage, the status of ‘the good one’, then what advantage does he have over his brother, and by what right does he retain the blessing?   

Because of this worry about his moral status, the misfortunes he has suffered seem to him punishments for deceiving his father, for usurping his brother’s place as the elder and for illegitimately enjoying the blessings of the elder.  

Rabbi Haim Kornberg notes that years later, when Yakov arrives in Egypt and Pharoah asks him, “How old are you?” Yakov says

יְמֵי שְׁנֵי מְגוּרַי שְׁלֹשִׁים וּמְאַת שָׁנָה:  מְעַט וְרָעִים, הָיוּ יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיַּי,

וְלֹא הִשִּׂיגוּ אֶת-יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי אֲבֹתַי, בִּימֵי מְגוּרֵיהֶם.

Yakov is disappointed in his life and in himself.  

But seventeen years later, something changes in a dramatic moment.  Rabbi Kornberg describes this illuminating moment.  

Yakov is near his end.  Yosef and his two sons arrive at his father’s deathbed. Yakov crosses his hands: with his right hand he is about to bless the younger one with the elder’s blessing.   Yosef objects, but Yakov insists.  He is completely confident, despite his physical blindness, that he is doing the right thing.  

At this moment, as Yakov himself is about to bless his grandsons by placing his right hand on the head of the younger he is, in a way, re-enacting the scene when as a young man his father gave him, the younger son, the blessing of the firstborn.  Yakov’s heart, mind and hands act confidently and wisely.  

At this moment Yakov is granted a new understanding of his whole life:  finally he sees that he did not commit a crime by taking the blessing of his elder brother, rather he helped fulfil what God meant to happen.  The disasters and suffering were not, after all, divine punishments for his deceit, but rather proddings meant to hasten him home to a necessary reunion and reconciliation with his father, as he had vowed to do when he first set out towards Haran.  

He didn’t wrong his father.  Rather, he helped his father participate in passing on the primary blessing to the right son, the one who could lead and must lead. This was something that his father Yitzchak was not able to accomplish on his own. Yitzchak lacked a clear vision of his sons.  It was not that Yitzchak had judged his sons and found Esav worthy and Yakov unworthy; Yitzchak simply lacked clarity and wisdom in this matter and chose badly.  He lacked the vision needed to make the right choice.  

Yakov is able to understand his father only at this late moment because it is at this moment that he himself is blessed with clarity and vision.  He knows which of his grandsons deserves the higher blessing.  And since he is now blessed with clear vision when it is most needed, as his father was not blessed at that decisive time so long ago, then all that is left for Yakov is to pity and forgive his father.  Suddenly the years of guilt and bitterness end with forgiveness towards himself and towards his father.  Yakov speaks in the present tense of a redemption that he is finally experiencing, redemption from guilt and blame, and he blesses the boys with these words:  

האלהים הרועה אתי מעודי עד היום הזה

המלאך הגאל אתי מכל-רע

יברך את הנערים ויקרא בהם שמי

ושם אבתי אברהם ויצחק, וידגו לרב בקרב הארץ.