Voices of WRJ: Vayishlach

To say that a lot happens in parashah Vayishlach would be a serious understatement. Jacob returns to Canaan, wrestles with a mysterious man, has his name changed, and reunites with Esau. Dinah is raped by Shechem, and her brothers take revenge. Rachel gives birth to Benjamin and dies. Reuven sleeps with Bilhah, his father’s concubine. Isaac dies. And there is a lot of genealogy. With all that, I’d like to focus on the women, specifically on three: Dinah, Rachel, and Bilhah. Each woman in this narrative has her agency taken or overridden by men.

Dinah is raped by Shechem, son of Hamor. Or at least, so most translations say. Anita Diamant, in her wonderful work, The Red Tent, chooses to make the act consensual. In the Torah text, exactly what happened is not clear, and Dinah is completely silent. Her wishes are unknown.  Her family, especially her brothers, is concerned that Dinah was defiled. She is now “damaged goods.” Gail Labovitz, writing in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, notes that the midrash, Breishit Rabbah,  explains that Dinah’s status as a virgin of marriageable age is why the text refers to Jacob’s “11 children” being sent ahead of him when he is about to meet Esau. Dinah was locked in a box to protect her from Esau, who might have taken her as a wife. Once Shechem has slept with her, regardless of whether it was consensual, her marriageability, and with it, her social status declines rapidly. Her brothers revenge themselves by killing the men of Shechem; apparently, they do not kill Dinah. Even today, in some societies, she would not be so lucky. Her “defilement” is seen as besmirching the family honor, and that is intolerable. We are not told in the text what happens to Dinah after this. She is silent and has no say. We must look to the midrash, whether ancient (Breishit Rabbah) or modern (The Red Tent), to hear both her voice and her fate.

Rachel dies giving birth. As she dies, she names the child Ben Oni (son of suffering or son of strength). Jacob then changes the boy’s name to Benjamin (son of my right hand). Here Rachel speaks, but her husband overrules her words.

Reuben sleeps with his father Jacob’s concubine (and mother of two of his brothers), Bilhah, an act for which he is cursed. Was this rape? Did she give consent? We have no idea because she is silent. In fact, we don’t even know how consensual (or not) her relationship with Jacob was.  We know her name and her sons, and that’s about it.

All three of these women, Dinah, Rachel, and Bilhah, completely lack agency in these stories.  Their futures and presents are entirely decided by men. Choice, consent, and all those other trappings of modern adulthood do not exist for them. It is easy for us to say—well, that was the ancient world; things are different now. For many of us, they are. But around the world and even here in North America, some believe that women should be subservient to their husbands and others believe that women’s bodies should be controlled by law, not by women. WRJ has led and will continue to lead the fight for women’s agency—as our mission says, “we strengthen the voice of women worldwide and empower them.” We do so in a myriad of ways—from publishing The Torah: A Women’s Commentary so that we might know the stories of the women who founded our people to advocating for a woman’s right to choose. We tell ancient stories so that we and our daughters can create our own. We have done so for 107 years, and we will not stop.