Parsha Vayeitzei: Genesis 28:10 – 32:3

The parsha (weekly Torah portion) for this week is Vayeitzei. Vayeitzei means ‘and he left,’ and is the first distinctive word in the portion. Be sure to check out the video at the end of this article, especially if you need help keeping track of how many kids are born in this parsha!

Last week, we left off with Yaakov being strongly ‘encouraged’ to leave home and head to visit his kin in search of a wife. While he was on his journey, he finds a place to rest. He took some stones and made a pillow for himself. It may not have been the most comfortable but it was what he had. While he slept he had a very odd dream. There was a ladder and there were angels. Some were going up and some were going down. G-d came to him and said, “I am your G-d, the G-d of your father Abraham and Isaac. The land where you are laying your head will be the land I give your children.”

G-d goes on to tell Yaakov that his descendants will spread east and west and they will be blessed. Not only this but G-d reassures him that G-d is with him to guard him wherever he will go. Here Yaakov wakes up and gives us a now famous line, “G-d was in this place and I, I did not know it.” Why does he say this? Some rabbis have told us that the place he settled down to sleep was what is now the Temple Mount. So if Yaakov knew that this was such a holy place, he would have not have slept. He got up in the morning and used the stone that was his pillow as an altar, anointing it with oil.

It is time for Yaakov to continue on his way. He makes a very odd vow with G-d. He says, Look, G-d, if you stay with me and protect me on my trip and give me food and clothing to wear and then help me return to my father’s home, then you will be my G-d. That sounds awfully conditional to me. Regardless, he headed east to where his family lived. He comes upon a well with a big rock on the opening and several shepherds with their flocks lazing about. He asks them about his uncle Laban, to which they reply that his daughter would be coming with their sheep soon. In a feat of super-human strength, Yaakov pushed the rock from the well and he helped Rachel water her sheep. He was instantly enamored with her. He kisses her, he cries, and only then does he tell her who he is.

When her father hears about this, he comes running out of his house and hugged him and kissed him. Why the warm response? Rashi tells us that it wasn’t so warm actually. He remembers when Eliezer came and took his sister Rivka away to marry Yitzhak. When that happened, the servant had ten camels laden with jewels and gold. However, here is the child of that union on his doorstep looking like a pauper? Did he not have any wealth with him? The midrash tells us that he was sent away with money and jewels but that one of Esav’s sons ambushed and robbed him shortly after he left home. By the time he reached Laban he had nothing left. But Laban was greedy and a cheat. He wanted to be sure. So when he hugged him, he patted his pockets and Rashi says he even went so far as to check his mouth for anything stashed there.

Reluctantly, Laban lets Yaakov stay in his home for a month. This was not without cost, however. Yaakov had to work for him by pasturing his sheep. After a month, Laban asks him what he would like his wages to be and Yaakov suggests that he would work for him for seven years to marry his younger daughter Rachel. There was an odd difference in the two sisters, Leah and Rachel. It says that Leah’s eyes were tender and Rachel was beautiful. What does this mean? That Leah was ugly? No, in fact, Leah had been constantly weeping for a long time because it was decreed that she was to marry Esav. It was known that the older daughter would marry the older son and the younger daughter, the younger son. Leah did not like this challenge. She did not want to be married to this brute of a man. She prayed very hard to change this decree and there we begin to see the true difference in the sisters.

Yaakov works hard for seven years to marry Rachel, but his love for her made it feel like it was just a few days. After the time was completed he asked to be wed. At this point, Yaakov was already 84 years old! So they made a feast and the wedding happened . . . only it turns out that Yaakov was fooled into marrying Leah and not Rachel! What is interesting here is that Yaakov and Rachel knew that her father might try to perpetrate something like this. They created hand signs to use that night so he would know it was her but when she saw her sister being prepared for the wedding, she took pity on her and told her the signs. She did not want her sister to be embarrassed by their father’s actions nor did she want her to have to marry Esav.

When confronted, Laban brushed off the concerns by saying that it is their custom to marry off the elder before the younger sibling. However, he was interested in making a deal. He tells Yaakov to enjoy this first week with Leah and then he can marry Rachel too and work another seven years for her. Since Yaakov had promised to marry Rachel, he couldn’t break that vow, not to mention that he loved her. So he did just that. During the next seven years there are a lot of developments.

G-d knew that Leah was the less favored wife and so he enabled her to have children while Rachel was barren. She bore Yaakov four sons -- Reuven, Shimon, Levi, and Judah. When Rachel saw all this, she was jealous. She says to her husband, “Give me children too! I am not dead!” But Yaakov was angry; it wasn’t him who was keeping her from conceiving. So she gave him her maid, Bilhah so she could have some children in the mix. Bilhah bore Dan and Naftali, whom Rachel claimed as her own. Well, Leah wouldn’t have this. She saw that she wasn’t bearing any more children so she gave Yaakov her maid, Zilpah, and she had two sons -- Gad and Asher.

One day, Leah’s son Reuven was in the field and found some dudaim (jasmine), which was rare and a fertility treatment. Rachel wanted some but Leah made her trade her night with Yaakov for it. So Leah slept with Yaakov that night and conceived another son, Issachar, and then another, Zevulun. At this point, she realizes she has borne six children and each maid had borne two. They knew there were to be twelve tribes and here we have ten. When she finds herself pregnant again, she prayed hard for it to be a girl so her sister would have the chance to be at least equal to the maids in sons. She had a daughter named Dinah and our sages say that she actually changed her sex in utero. It was only now that Rachel conceived and bore Yosef (Joseph). Why did she have to wait so long? Well she passed up a night with her husband to try an herbal remedy and Leah conceived on that night. The sages say if she had trusted more in G-d and not tried to fix it, she would have conceived earlier.

It was at the time Rachel gave birth to Yosef that Yaakov decided it was time to leave Laban’s house. He asked for permission to leave and for a portion in compensation for his work. The next section of the parsha is quite confusing and intentionally so. Laban is trying to cheat Yaakov out of his wages but everything he tries, fails. At one point, he does take a portion and makes it thrive. Any livestock or plants that Yaakov took succeeded and that angered Laban and his sons. Finally, G-d tells him that it is time to head home. Yaakov, being the good husband he was, consulted his wives. He laid the poor treatment by their father at their feet and proposed to them to leave. The women reminded him that he treated them no better and so it was time to leave.

They all packed up while Laban was gone and headed out . . . except, Rachel took her father’s idols. She hid them under her saddle and they left. They had a three-day head start when Laban realized what had happened. He went after them full of anger. He was incensed that they would slip away without his knowledge, however G-d warned him not to speak either good or bad to Yaakov. Laban did accuse them of stealing his gods. Yaakov tells him, “Look we didn’t take them but whomever you find them on shall not live,” not realizing that Rachel had taken them. Laban’s people searched everywhere and when they came to Rachel sitting on her saddle, she didn’t get up. She told him that she had her female monthly visitor and could not get up, which he readily accepted.

At this point, Yaakov is mad. For twenty years he slaved away. He only took what was rightfully his. After having it out, Laban decides to make a pact with Yaakov and move on. In a last fatherly warning he tells Yaakov not to take any wives but these sisters.

In the morning, they were free of Laban but their journey had just begun! Stay tuned for next week to see what happens to Rachel, who stole her father’s idols!

Parshat Vayetze from G-dcast.com

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