Veyetzeh is a moment when the fabric of a human life becomes transparent, when past and present fuse before our eyes into the organic unity they indeed are. Vayetzeh renders biography transparent, as Bereshit does for history; the random, is revealed as purposive; the casual sequence becomes a meaningful pattern; punishment and reward both grow from the deeds of man.
In Toldot, Jacob deceives his father. However necessary it was to prevent the blessings from being squandered on Esau, whatever rights Jacob did indeed have to these blessings, even if Isaac himself really intended all along to reserve the blessing of the spiritual heritage for Jacob - the fact that Jacob masqueraded as his brother in order to manipulate his father remains a hard cold fact. In Vayetzeh Jacob must taste the fruit of that deception. He may indeed be the blessed son (and Isaac, of course, blesses Jacob knowingly and most profoundly before his son leaves home), but the complexity of experience - personal and moral - cannot be exhausted by that single adjective.
It is from this perspective that I should like to look at the marriages of Jacob to Leah and Rachel. That the encounter with these two sisters is a continuation of all that has happened before, that Leah and Rachel are to be most meaningful in the context of Esau and Jacob, is anticipated in the famous midrash quoted by Rashi: “The eyes of Leah were tender but Rachel was of beautiful form... (29:17) - her eyes were soft from crying for so was it said; the younger (Rachel) will marry the younger, the older (Leah) will marry the older (Esau).”
And so Jacob chooses Rachel. But Jacob is not simply Jacob; he has masqueraded as Esau, and this masquerade will not allow itself conveniently to be dismissed and forgotten. Certainly Laban (“Because you are my brother, should you work for me for nought” [v. 15]; The irony here should not be missed) knows of this masquerade, and so does Leah; Jacob will not be allowed to evade it. For he once chose to be Esau.
And so Laban substitutes Leah for Rachel: “And it came to pass in the evening that he took Leah his daughter and brought her to him. And it came to pass in the morning that behold it was Leah and he said to Laban: ‘What have you done to me!’ And Laban said, ‘It is not done in our place to give the younger before the first-born!’ [v. 23-26] ‘No, in our place it is not done so to give the younger precedence over the elder; what was done in your home, Jacob, is another matter. . . And then again, if you are indeed the elder by virtue of blessing, it is all as it should be: the elder married to the elder.” Deception does not end at the will of the deceiver; he must live with it as with himself.
The Midrash (Baba Bathra 123a) knows well that this is the meaning of the episode. Rachel is said to have warned Jacob when he asked for her hand: “Beware of my father, for he is a deceiver,” to which Jacob answered, “I am his brother in deception [and can master him].” There it is recognized that Laban, when he does successfully outwit Jacob, is beating his future son-in-law at his own game. Jacob, the Talmud continues, gave Rachel certain trinkets by which he would identify her on that night, and these Rachel gave to her sister Leah: And so Leah, the elder, enters the darkness of the wedding night bedecked as Rachel, the younger, much as a younger son had entered the sightless world of his father wearing the clothes of his older brother.
“All night long Leah responded to Jacob as though she were Rachel, and in the morning, with the rising sun there also rose Jacob’s reproach: “Oh thou deceiver…Why didst thou answer me when I called Rachel’s name?” To which Leah answered: “Is there a teacher without a pupil? I profited from your instruction. When your father called Esau, did you not say, Here am I?” So the Midrash tells us. (Bereshit Rabbah 70:17) Let it never be said, therefore, that Jacob’s deception of his father had no impact on his life. Leah, rather than his true love Rachel was his first wife and with her alone was he buried at Hebron. Rachel’s son, Joseph, was his favorite, but Leah’s son, Judah, was his first-born (see I Chronicles 5:1-3): Joseph receives a double inheritance, but Judah is father to Mashiach.
The clothes of Esau and the skins of goats - these were the unwitting accomplices in the tent that day. And years later, when Jacob was compelled to endure the most terrible moment of all, it was by clothes and a goat that he was tormented: “And they took Joseph’s coat, and killed a he-goat, and dipped the goat in the blood; and they rent the coat of many colors, and they brought it to their father; and said, “This we have found. Know now whether it is thy son’s coat or not!” Haker nah (“know now”) how treacherous is man’s knowledge and how easily he is deceived; Joseph’s coat did not forebode the death of Joseph, though Jacob thought it did - but then Esau’s clothes did not cover Esau in the tent that day. The goats, too, were never forgotten for with two goats did Israel come before God on Yom Kippur in the Temple and beg atonement (Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 65: 18).
At the close of his life, Jacob will bless the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Menashe. He too, as his father before him, will have scant vision (“now the eyes of Israel were dim with age”). He too, as his father before him, will bestow the prime blessing upon the younger brother. But laden with the memories of his past, he will see fully (“and Israel said unto Joseph: I had not thought to see thy face, and lo God hath let me see thy seed also”), and he will know “I know it my son, I know it, he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great, however his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.”
Rabbi Gerald Blidstein, Assistant Professor of Religion at Temple University and a fellow of the Rogosin Institute of Ethics, is a member of Yavneh’s National Advisory Board.
YAVNEH STUDIES IN PARASHAT HASHAVUA, edited by Joel B. Wolowelsky, was a 1969-72 project of YAVNEH: THE RELIGIOUS JEWISH STUDENTS ASSOCIATION. The bios here are as they were at the time of the original publication. For a history of YAVNEH, see Benny Kraut, The Greening of American Orthodox Judaism: Yavneh in the 1960s (Cincinnti: Hebrew Union College Press, 2011).