CBI Blogs

This week we are reading parashat Vayishlach, which continues the story of Jacob. Last week in Parashat Vayeitze Jacob meets Rachel and Leah and has twelve children with the two of them and with Bilhah and Zilpah. Then he makes himself exceedingly wealthy through his work as a shepherd over his father-in-law Laban’s flocks. Knowing his wealth came at the expense of Laban, he starts to create distance between the two families, but Laban tracks him down and finds him, only to say goodbye and bless his daughters and grandchildren. That was all vayeitze, last week.

Vayeitze means, “And he went forth.” It usually points to someone going out to something significant. We usually do not need to be told someone went out. I don’t ever say, I went forth and went to Costco. I just say, “I went to Costco.” So we know it is supposed to call our attention to what happens next. Jacob went forth last week to make his fortune, which he did with great success.

This week we see the verb again, but as vateitze. Vayeitze is the masculine form, and Vateitze is the feminine form of the verb. Usually when we read vateitze the sentence is about an object that goes out, like gifts being sent forth or in one case a spear going forth out of someone’s back. I found only four times in the entire bible when this verb is used for female humans going forth to do something important. One of those times is in this week’s parashah.

The beginning of Genesis chapter 34 says, vateitze Dinah bat Leah…lirot bivnot ha’aretz, “Dinah, the daughter of Leah went out…to visit the daughters of the land.” It is interesting that Leah gets named here, too, since most parental attributions in the Torah go through the father, but we’ll get back to that. The significant thing that happens after this vateitze is that Shechem the Hivite takes Dinah to bed, which is often translated as forcibly or as if he disgraced her. We tend to understand this disgrace as Shechem raping Dinah. Modern scholarship has called this interpretation into question, such as Anita Diamant who wrote a brilliant midrash asking what if Dinah wanted to be with Shechem. The support for her midrash is that in very next verse it says that Shechem clung to Dinah and fell in love with her, speaking to her tenderly, from his heart. Unfortunately, no matter how we choose to interpret the text, we never learn Dinah's point of view. She never speaks in the text, never gets a voice, never gives us insight into how she feels about everything happening around her.

Nevertheless, Dinah’s going out is meant to teach us something significant about what is about to happen. Unfortunately what happens is Dinah’s father makes a deal with Shechem’s father that their entire household will circumcise themselves, bringing them into the covenant of our people. While they are healing from their procedures, Dinah’s brothers murder the entire household. I would suggest that they are the real disgrace in this story.

But we can also learn from the other times we read vateitze in the text—other times women have gone out and done something significant—and it brings more to light about Dinah’s story.

The very next time we will read vateitze in the Bible is not until Judges, when Yael goes forth to welcome the evil general Sisera into her tent. While he sleeps there, she drives a tent peg through his head. Through Yael’s going forth, Sisera is defeated and the armies of Israel are successful in their campaign.

The time after that it is Ruth who goes forth to glean in the fields of Boaz. Through Ruth’s going out, she and Boaz become the eventual ancestors of King David.

But the time before Dinah’s going out is in last week’s parashah. The woman who goes out first among all four of the women in the Bible who get this verb is Dinah’s mother Leah. Leah goes forth to confront Jacob her husband, demanding that he lie with her that night. When Leah goes out, she tells Jacob she has hired him for the night, and they have their fifth son together, Isaachar. Years later, when Dinah goes out she is Dinah Bat Leah, daughter of Leah, inspired by her mother to demand what she wants from anyone, even a man.

So perhaps when Dinah goes out she does get what she wants, only to be disgraced not by her situation, not by her lover, but by her brothers who do not understand her forward thinking.

We have much to learn from all women who go forth. From Leah, Dinah, Yael, and Ruth we have much to learn. From all of the women in the Bible who go forth unnamed, all those who do not go forth and therefore more subtly engineer the course of our history, and all whose who go forth to this day—our mothers, sisters, and daughters; our friends and teachers who inspire us; our leaders who push us to go forth along with them. More important, we need to listen to our heroes who go forth and learn from their point of view, from their side of the story, from their perspective. Then the learning will be more powerful because it is more complete.