This week’s parashah is action packed. It begins with our ancestor Jacob preparing to meet his twin brother Esau for the first time since Jacob deceived their father Isaac and stole the sacred blessing from him; it also includes that seminal moment in Israelite history when Jacob wrestled with the divine figure and thus received the name Yisrael, wrestling, striving with God; and it contains the moment of reunion itself, where in the face of Jacob/Israel’s fears, his brother Esau embraces him, falling on his neck, the text says, and kissing him, before they eventually go their separate ways. But the moment in the parashah I want to focus on, is a somber moment that takes place in the aftermath of all of this, when Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel, while giving birth to their youngest son Benjamin, passes away.
Afterwards Jacob buries her not in the famous cave of Machpelah, the famous cave, where all of Jacob’s family members are buried, the esteemed ancestors Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and some say even Adam and eve, but, instead she is buried, in her own tomb, b’derekh ephrat, on the road to a place called ephrat.
“Why?” the ancient rabbis wonder. Why would Jacob bury Rachel there on her own, in this different location, instead of the famous cave of Machpelah?
Because, the rabbis teach, Jacob knew something. Jacob had the ability to foresee that eventually, the Jewish people would be exiled from their homeland, and that when that happens, when they were exiled, they who were would pass by derekh ephrat, the Road to Ephrat. Therefore, Jacob buried Rachel there, the midrash says, כְּדֵי שֶׁתְּהֵא מְבַקֶּשֶׁת עֲלֵיהֶם רַחֲמִים so that she might request mercy for them. So that she might pour out her heart on their behalf.
Based on this, the midrash continues, the book of Jeremiah says, in the haftarah portion we chant on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, ק֣וֹל בְּרָמָ֤ה נִשְׁמָע֙
נְהִי֙ בְּכִ֣י תַמְרוּרִ֔ים
A cry is heard in Ramah, near Efrat—Wailing, bitter weeping—[and it is] Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted For her children, the text says, who are gone.
The rabbis understand Rachel here to be what we call an intercessional voice—she intercedes with God on behalf of her descendants who will be exiled from the land. She weeps for them, refusing to be comforted until they return.
And, according to the prophet Jeremiah, it works: “Thus said Adonai” to Rachel, Jeremiah said. “‘Restrain your voice from weeping, Your eyes from shedding tears; For there is a reward for your labor’ —declares Adonai. ‘They shall return from the hostile land. And there is hope for your future.”
She weeps for her children, her descendants, and God hears her plea, and promises a return from exile.
Now, exile, in Jewish tradition, was not just a one time event, when the Babylonians exiled the Jewish people from the land of Judah in 586 BCE.
Exile, according to Judaism, represents the brokenness of the world; it represents the sometimes tragic, sometimes beautiful, but always complicated circumstances in which humanity finds itself.
And what is the salve, the healing powers of the exile according to this tradition? What does it take to begin to heal it? A mother’s tears. The simple, genuine outpouring of emotion by a mother, a parent on behalf of her children.
Sound far-fetched? That that’s what it takes, l’taken olam, to repair a broken world.
Not necessarily, when you consider Israel today. We know that a couple of weeks ago, the families of Israeli hostages and thousands of supporters marched over the course of four days, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, more than 40 miles over hilly country, arriving at the Prime Minister’s residence to call for a return of the hostages. We know that since that, over 100 of the 240 hostages have been returned to their surviving family members. We know that nothing humanizes a conflict like hearing directly from loved ones—loved ones like Rachel pouring out their hearts for their children.
At the same time, we know the world is not entirely healed. Far from it. So while one Jewish teaching flowing out of the episode of Rachel’s burial is to never underestimate the power of parents pouring out their hearts on behalf of their children, there is another teaching from this same event.
Some liken the weeping of Rachel on behalf of her children to the weeping of the shekhinah. What is the shekhinah? On a basic level, the shekhinah is the word the rabbis use for the divine presence, the part of God that is most present to us. But as that answer suggests, it’s more complicated than that. When we say the part of God that is most present to us, that suggests there are multiple parts even to the one God. As the famous Walt Whitman poem goes, Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Mystical Jewish tradition believes that even the one God contains multitudes; multiple different parts of God’s self. So yes, there is the omnipotent, all-powerful ein sof, that which has no end, that which is so beyond our minds to even conceive of, and their is also the shekinah, the divine loving presence, and the shekhinah, this tradition teaches, like Rachel, weeps when we are pain.
So according to mysical layers of Jewish tradition we can believe in an all powerful God who wills the world into existence, who effects divine providence, steering the universe with an unseen hand and/or we can experience a God who weeps alongside us, who, as my four year old daughter says, is in our hearts, who is present to every moment we experience, empathizing with us, pouring out their divine heart to us, even if not intervening to change the course of events on this plane of existence, even if we still have free will.
Judaism contains multitudes. Rachel can be rachel, the mother who weeps for her children, eliciting God’s response of compassion; or rachel can be the shekhinah, the divine presence weeping alongside us as we experience life’s heartbreaks, life’s losses, feeling strengthened by her presence even if she doesn’t intervene to fix things herself. Judaism contains multitudes, and so do we all. Wishing you a shabbat filled with unity and filled with multitudes.
Shabbat Shalom.
