by Rabbi Avi Billet
After watching her sister give birth to 4 sons, presumably over a span of around 4 years, Rachel has had enough. She comes to Yaakov, jealous of her sister (30:1) and demands that he give her children. “Give me children, and if not, I am dead.”
This is not the arguments of yesteryear – of Sarah realizing she is infertile, and offering her maid to Avraham so he can have the child he desires. And who knows what will otherwise come of her generosity and her sacrifice? Even after he DOES have Yishmael with Hagar, we don’t hear a sound from Sarah about herself until after the Bris Milah, which prompted some of the Rabbis to suggest it wasn’t as much infertility as much as Sarah was not going to have a child until such time as Avraham was circumcised.
This is not the case of Yitzchak and Rivkah – in which the concern may have been that both of them were infertile (see Yevamos 64a - though this approach is suspect because God promised Avraham that “through Yitzchak will be your children”) as much as it was that Yitzchak specifically wanted his child (or children) to be born from Rivkah, and ONLY from Rivkah. And since there isn’t another woman in the equation at all, there is not much to talk about in terms of another possibility.
This is a unique case in which Yaakov is clearly able to father children, and the first woman he married is clearly able to carry children to term. And yet, Chazal tell us that all of the Imahot (mothers of the Jewish people) were barren (ibid.) because God pines for the prayers of the righteous. If they were all barren, what do we make of Leah, who seems to have begun having children right away after her marriage?
The Torah testifies to us that “God saw that Leah was snuah and so He opened her womb.” (29:31) It seems, then, that absent her being viewed that way (even if it was only in the mind), her being snuah (typically translated as “hated,” though likely means “less loved” or “not the preferred wife”) is what generated her ability from God to conceive a child.
In the book “Kol Simcha” the author suggests this is what Rachel was hoping for. Her jealousy of her sister and her confronting Yaakov to “give me a child” was all part of a plan to get Yaakov to “hate her,” because were she to become snuah, she’d be blessed as Leah was.
Yaakov’s initial response seems to spell “Mission Accomplished” because he gets mad at her and loses his temper, claiming “Am I in God’s place, is it my fault you don’t have a child?’
It might not work right away, as the next children are born to Bilhah and Zilpah. So what is Rachel to do?
Get into crosshairs with her sister!
When Reuven finds the dudaim, Rachel could have ignored it, been happy for her sister, and could have followed the conventional pattern – Yaakov was still clearly in “the Rachel camp” in that she was able to trade for Reuven’s dudaim by giving up her own evening with Yaakov.
When Yaakov was returning from work to be greeted by Leah, who told him “I bought you[r time for this evening] with my son’s dudaim,” we can only imagine what Yaakov was thinking. Was Rachel further demoted (at least for a short time) in his eyes for engaging in this kind of behavior? Selling her time with him for flowers? Seeing their human connection as an exchange that can be negotiated for an unproven aphrodisiac, or some kind of nice smelling flowers (however you want to understand what she saw in the dudaim)?
Verse 22 says “And God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her, and He opened her womb.” The opening of the womb sounds eerily like the way God opened Leah’s womb, which stands to suggest that the plan, ultimately, worked. God is remembering Rachel because of how she is being treated, or because of how she perceives herself.
No doubt every male/female relationship is complicated. “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” as the title of John Gray’s famous book goes. And while people in a marriage have certainly made a stronger commitment to one another than those who are in the dating stage have made, relationships can always be tested through disagreement, argument, not seeing things the same way, having very different perspectives on things, a breakdown in communication, the inability to communicate, or just the unwillingness to go through a hard process of working through differences.
Some arguments are worked through. Some are sidestepped, and in time are forgotten. And some fester, and become a real source of problems if never properly addressed.
What we learn from the Imahot in general, and in the case of Rachel and Leah in their own dealings with Yaakov specifically, is that they did not always see eye to eye with their husbands.
There are varying views as to when Akedat Yitzchak took place. But according to the view that Yitzchak was in his teens at the time, the Akeda took place more than 20 years before Sarah’s death. She might have had great difficulty navigating a normal relationship with Avraham after that tale. And their disputes over Hagar and Yishmael in the Torah speak for themselves.
We know nothing of Rivkah’s reconciliation with Yitzchak over her disguising Yaakov and playing a role in his getting the blessings that were purportedly aimed for Eisav. There are differing ways to calculate her age and how long she lived, but she certainly will not be alive by the time Yaakov returns home. Yitzchak lives another 21 years after Yaakov’s return home, so he is at least a widower that long. How was their relationship in all the time Yaakov was away? We don’t know.
But we do know that Avraham and Sarah were buried together, that Yitzchak and Rivkah were buried together, and that Yaakov and Leah were buried together, and that Rachel, for other reasons, was buried elsewhere, but not because of a fallout in their relationship forever. Clearly Yaakov consults with both of his main wives when it comes time to leave Charan forever and for good. (see 31:4-16)
Is fighting between spouses a good ingredient for having children? Probably not. But getting through fights in a healthy and productive way is certainly a good ingredient demonstrating maturity and also helping couples see that the value of their commitment to one another surpasses the need to be right, or the inability to be wrong, or the hatred that might otherwise come from seeing someone in a light that is unflattering and not healthy for a valuable relationship we wish to maintain for many years in the future.
May no one ever have to feel snuah. And may we find the path through difficult dips and dives in relationships so we can ultimately live the lives of companionship that is sought so deeply in human nature, and may every Jewish home be blessed with the Shalom Bayit we seek. Not necessarily because we always agree, but because we value our relationship much more than our need to be right.
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